A streetcar on the Beltline would be a train wreck

By Guest Columnist HANS KLEIN, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

Atlanta is at a turning point for transit. With explosive growth in population, employment and traffic, our city is ready to renew its commitment to transit and reduce its reliance on privately-operated automobiles. The good news is that MARTA and the City have big plans for deploying transit in the near future. The bad news is that those plans involve deploying streetcars on the Beltline.

MARTA’s planned streetcar extension on the Beltline’s eastside trail is a prisoner of the past, embracing an inherited streetcar technology that is not cost-effective and a historical right of way that bypasses the urban core. It is not too late for Atlanta to redirect today’s transit enthusiasm toward appropriate technologies and high-functioning routes. Without changes to today’s plan, the city will lock itself into low-functioning transit for decades to come.

The problems with today’s system are the right of way (the Beltline,) the technology (streetcar/rail,) and the timeline of deployment (now). The Beltline right of way is a tract of land that creates a continuous corridor through an otherwise complex urban landscape. Creating such a right of way afresh in today’s urban environment would be prohibitively expensive and legally infeasible. For this reason, the underutilized railroad beds that compose the Beltline are a godsend, offering up a route through Atlanta that no governmental decree could create from scratch. Small wonder then that in the early 2000’s transit enthusiasts would see this pre-existing right of way as the answer to their dreams, as it would allow uninterrupted inner-city transportation.

Klein is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on transportation policy, Internet policy, and policy processes. He has advised the US Congress and the US Secretary of Transportation on intelligent transportation systems and has served as a policy analyst for the Transportation Research Board.

Sadly, however, while the Beltline right of way is indeed rare and valuable, it is not well-suited to urban transit. Civil War-era rail engineers created the Beltline to avoid the urban core, and it is exactly this urban core that any transit system needs to serve. On the Beltine right of way, “you can’t get there from here,” i.e. you can circle the city center, but you cannot get to the city center.

Transit systems the world over are designed as spokes radiating from the urban core out to residential areas, but the Beltline does not do this and cannot do this. The Beltline’s path through the city is exactly wrong for transit. The Beltline’s circular path is, however, perfect for recreation, which explains its unforeseen success as an inner-city linear park – which is all the more reason not to run streetcars on it.

The second problem with today’s transit plan is that it uses streetcars running on light rail. The economic and technical characteristics of streetcars are problematic: The up-front capital costs are very high, subsequent route changes are infeasible and the technology is so inflexible that a single double-parked car can bring a system to a grinding halt.

So what should be done instead? A host of new technologies offers better characteristics than streetcars. Elsewhere in Atlanta MARTA plans to deploy bus rapid transit (BRT). With a reserved right of way, BRT buses can provide all the functionality of light rail at a much lower cost and with nearer-term deployment. Moreover, BRT allows MARTA to standardize its technology, perhaps ending the need for expensive parallel maintenance facilities for buses and streetcars. In addition to BRT, MARTA last year successfully field-tested “on-demand” transit, in which a shuttle serves passengers’ specific destination.

Alongside such public sector alternatives to streetcars, nonprofits and private firms are delivering myriad new means of transport. Pioneered by the PATH Foundation, Atlanta now has an extensive network of multi-use trails, contributing to explosive growth in the use of scooters, e-bikes and regular pedal bikes. In a symbiotic development, private firms have blanketed the city with micro-mobility services for bike sharing and scooter sharing. Perhaps to its own surprise, Atlanta Beltline Inc. has evolved into a major operator of trails for such light individualized transportation (LIT) and has had to widen trails as it struggles to accommodate this explosion in alternative transportation. And of course, car-share systems like Uber, Lyft and even Zipcar have delivered flexible transportation services.

Expensive streetcars on immovable rail beds are a dinosaur technology from the last century — as Atlanta’s troubled streetcar system shows all too clearly. Moreover, the specific plan to extend today’s streetcar line to Virginia Highlands has terrible equity implications. Transit usage is far higher among lower-income residents, and those residents – many of whom are Black — tend to live on the south side of the city, far away from the planned streetcar’s east extension.

Flexible, lower-cost, IT-enabled transportation can better serve urban travelers. A radial system of bus rapid transit on arterials roads like North Avenue and Northside Drive (not to mention Summerhill Ave., Campbellton Road and the Clifton Corridor,) complemented by on-demand transit, light individualized transportation and ride-share services can provide better and more equitable service at lower cost with greater adaptability to future demand.

The final concern about today’s transit plan is that it seeks to deploy Beltline rail now. Even were streetcars to be deployed on the Beltline, they should only come after other deployments. What is needed first is transit on radial spokes, for that is the pattern of demand. Once such spokes are operating there might be some justification for a circular route, much as the I-285 perimeter highway eventually connected the I-20, I-75 and I-85 radial highways. Deploying transit on the Beltline perimeter route before deploying it on spokes reverses the logical order of deployment. Nor is there time pressure to deploy transit on the Beltline, since that right of way is secure and will still be there in 10 years. Far better is to build radial transit routes now and build peripheral connections later.

Atlanta needs transit, and Atlanta is embracing transit. That is good news. But we must choose wisely, for the decisions made today will shape the transit for decades to come. Transit planners must free themselves from both the shackles and the temptations of history – from an inherited and ineffective streetcar technology and from an alluring right of way that doesn’t serve passengers — and must instead look to the future. Less-costly transit technologies and more useful radial routes are the basis of successful transit. Today’s funds should be used to deploy BRT on radial routes, and a longer-term vision should embrace on-demand transit, light individualized transportation, micro-mobility, and a host of emerging transportation solutions.

…

Would you like to write a guest column for SaportaReport? The SR team strives to uplift and amplify the diverse perspectives in our community, and we want to hear from you! Email Editor Derek Prall to discuss the specifics.