On Sept. 21, the Atlanta City Council formally backed the addition of light rail along the Beltline with a unanimous vote.
Now what?
After nearly two hours of public comment at the City Council meeting, 14 councilmembers voted to pass Kelsea Bond’s Beltline rail resolution. It shows support for the 22-mile planned transit loop. It also creates an accountability metric.
The resolution asks the mayor’s office, the Beltline and MARTA to develop an implementation plan and timeline for the project by January. Once created, the resolution also requests quarterly project updates.
It’s still largely a symbolic move. The resolution can’t require anything of the city legally, but it represents a changing tide around Beltline rail. The mayor pulled support for the original project plans in 2025, which would extend the downtown streetcar onto the path. Then MARTA quietly stopped work on the project.
Now, the Beltline is seemingly back on board with rail. Officials presented their final recommendations for a $3.5 billion transit system earlier this month, complete with 13 stations and an estimated annual 4.2 million riders.
But what comes next? Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens told SaportaReport in an exclusive interview after the Atlanta Committee for Progress meeting it comes down to money – and he promises to reveal a more detailed plan by the end of the year alongside Atlanta Beltline Inc. CEO Clyde Higgs.
“Now it’s time to go down the path of actually implementing these things, and you will see,” Dickens said. “We’ve got Clyde (Higgs) and his team working to produce something.”
City of Atlanta Chief of Staff Courtney English said the mayor’s office has to “explore all options” on making rail a reality, but the leadership seems to be on board with the plan. Dickens even went into detail about some implementation challenges.
Rail proponents say the funding already exists, through the 2016 More MARTA half-penny sales tax – it set aside about $570 million for the project. But it won’t cover the entire capital costs of building 22 miles of light rail.
“There’s somebody that can write ‘Beltline rail’ on the internet, and you know, if you put those two words together you sound very smart,” Dickens said. “Until you start figuring out that we’ve got to operate this thing, we’ve got to bond it or something.”
It also won’t cover maintenance or operations. “One thing is the capital, which I think most people get more excited about, but they forget it has to actually operate,” Dickens said. He pointed to MARTA’s funding. The fare box for Metro Atlanta’s transit system only covers about a quarter of its operating costs.
The rest of the funding comes from local sales tax revenue and federal dollars. Previously, Beltline CEO Higgs cited support for extending the Beltline TAD to help fund the rail project. The Beltline Tax Allocation District is set to expire in 2031.
Extending the TADs has been one of the mayor’s key legislative goals in his second term. But city, county and school officials were skeptical of his plan to renew all eight of the city TADs, since the school board and County Commission would continue to lose tax revenue if the extensions go through.
Mayor Dickens eventually released a scaled-back TAD extension plan without the Beltline and Perry-Bolton Tax Allocation Districts. But the fate of the city’s most lucrative TAD isn’t set in stone.
Dickens said there is “no final decision on extending the Beltline TAD” because the city has to decide the Beltline’s “transit situation.”
“You don’t construct 22 miles in a day, and you don’t even construct and do it all at once. You really are going to have to create segmented development,” Dickens said.
He added that certain areas are easier to develop than others, which will also impact development. The mayor previously cited support to begin rail on the Southside Trail, which is less developed and trafficked than the popular Eastside Trail.
Timelines, construction and funding are looming over the future of Beltline rail. But Mayor Dickens said there will be “something” by this fall.
“We are moving forward with the things that we said we were going to move forward with,” Dickens said. “With making sure that we start putting design and construction and actions towards providing transit on the Beltline, and that plan is forthcoming.”
Glad to see the Mayor telling it like it is. He is a great leader and knows what he is doing to facilitate transit for Atlanta. No Grandstanding, just great management and a logical appoach.
Bullshit! Dude didn’t even want to do it until the voters and council forced him to. He was ready to listen to a handful of business leaders over thousands and thousands of voters. Spare me. Dickens can’t even explain to you the concept of Beltline rail you asked him, I can prove this with a video lol. And then to insult the intelligence of Beltline rail supporters???
“You can put the two words Beltline rail together on the internet and sound really smart” meaning he thinks that if you talk about it, you’re an idiot who doesn’t know what you’re saying and have no idea of it beyond the surface level. How insulting. How does he forget there’s literally transit executives, urban planners, and civil engineers that are advocating for this shit across the country who know far more than he ever could. It’s the reason he has to hire them. And this is coming from an urban planner. OF COURSE, we know how this will be funded. Probably more than his damn office does.
One thought…one should not espouse two conflicting standards/concerns unless one’s aim is simply to confuse and scuttle the effort…when planning forward progress…which is the issue to avoid, the areas with higher higher capital development costs or the areas with lower anticipated revenue…The Mayor’s musings would seem designed to discourage both so that he can spend money elsewhere…has that not been the actual major problem for the last several years?
Atlanta can not afford to drag its feet on any rail. With a congested metropolis as it is, the city must move forward or get left behind.
Of couse more public transport is teriffic but don’t take eyes off THE number one issue facing all urban areas; housing ALL workers can affordlocated closer to where the jobs are.
Let’s not worry yet about workers earning over 100k a year as they can still afford private transport to get to their work. Let’s focus on housing workers earning less than 40k a year. Business in the urban core and elsewhere needs them but where do they need to live? How far is their commute?