MARTA’s board of directors voted unanimously Thursday afternoon to move forward with extending the Atlanta Streetcar to the BeltLine and north to Ponce City Market.
The board voted to contract with the HDR firm to complete architectural and engineering design services for the Atlanta Streetcar East Extension project.
The vote followed about 20 people who spoke on the project — about half in favor of moving forward and half asking the board to put a pause on the project and consider alternatives. The MARTA board already had approved the streetcar extension — largely because City of Atlanta officials and Mayor Andre Dickens have been strong advocates.
“It’s a passionate issue on both sides,” said Thomas Worthy, MARTA’s board chair, before the vote. He proposed “a friendly amendment” asking for HDR to initially propose enhancements and reliability for the existing streetcar as a way to improve the performance of the future streetcar expansion.
MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood said HDR is accountable to MARTA for the engineering consulting work. He said it would be prudent for HDR and MARTA to work on the timeline of the project as part of the contract.
“This is good news,” Clyde Higgs, president and CEO of Atlanta BeltLine Inc., said after the vote. “We are moving forward.”
Higgs, who spoke in favor of BeltLine rail at the meeting, said he appreciated the “robust debate” on the project.
“It reconfirms what we have been saying all along,” Higgs said. “Many of the fears we hear about BeltLine transit are mostly aesthetic – issues that we can design through.”
Atlanta BeltLine Inc. is committed to the project being green, safe and pedestrian friendly.
“It’s still going to be a lush, green, verdant corridor,” Higgs said. “People should hold us accountable. It’s about sustainability. Trees, bushes, greenery – that’s consistent with our core values. We have to do an educational campaign on how beautiful it can be. That will allay many fears.”
Greenwood described Thursday’s vote as significant in moving the project forward.
“It was a long-awaited conversation in the stage of this important discussion,” Greenwood said after the board meeting was adjourned. “It’s important that there’s a commitment to proceed but also a willingness to listen to the input of the many folks who came out here today.”
Using that Paris photo of a grassy streetcar alignment is misleading.
MARTA has said explicitly that:
1. there will be no grass on the tracks
2. there must be a fence along the tracks
In addition, it seems certain that the trees lining the tracks will be eliminated, thereby rendering the foot/bike path unshaded.
That photo keeps appearing at the Beltline Rail Now website as well as here on the Saporta Report.
Here are some alternative photos:
https://savethebeltline.net/Pictures/Save%20the%20Beltline%20-%20Pictures.html
We have only been planning transit on the Beltline for 25 years! The Beltline has ALWAYS been envisioned as a transit corridor FIRST! We can and should plan and build on the trail network throughout the city but the Beltline will have transit.
Beltline is overcrowded and needs separation between pedestrian paths and cyclists/scooters. Two lanes of rail will just add to the congestion.
The rendering is not at all how the downtown streetcar looks, and MARTA has stated that this is a continuation of the same design with some added barriers between businesses/pedestrians. Why keep sharing inaccurate photos?