Shirley Franklin to headline Beltline rail forum
The mayor who launched the Atlanta Beltline is about to tell us what she thinks about the Beltline streetcar.
As the city’s chief executive from 2002 to 2010, Shirley Franklin led the drive to win approval for the Beltline’s chief funding source, oversaw the establishment of Atlanta Beltline Inc. and created the Atlanta Beltline Partnership. Under her leadership, the Atlanta Development Authority published and the city adopted the 2005 Beltline Redevelopment Plan, which has guided the project’s progress for nearly 20 years.
Franklin will participate Monday evening in a panel discussion about the controversial streetcar. She’ll appear alongside affordable housing leader Renee Glover and Atlanta Community Food Bank founder Bill Bolling.
First conceived in 1993 as a “Cultural Ring” of parks and trails, the Beltline was taken up as a cause in the early 2000s by then-City Council President Cathy Woolard and planner Ryan Gravel. Gravel had proposed a rails-only version in his 1999 Georgia Tech masters thesis, and he also gave the project its name.
Franklin was one of many Beltline backers who expressed skepticism about the idea of fixed-rail transit going around in a circle rather than based on ridership demand. But she ultimately bought into a modified version of the plan, which called for greenspace, affordable housing and “active transportation” (i.e. walking and biking) to be tackled before transit.
In recent years, Franklin has said little publicly about Beltline rail aside from recollecting her thinking in a 2022 TV interview. “We can do trails and we can do parkway, kind of a linear park,” she said she thought in the early 2000s. “And we believe that we can set aside money for affordable housing and make it accessible to everyone. And maybe someday someone will be able to do light rail and transit.”
The former mayor will get a chance to update us on her thinking – alongside Glover, who served as president of Atlanta Housing Authority during the Franklin administration. Bolling will moderate the session.
The forum, which will be held 6 pm Monday in the Trolley Barn in Inman Park, was organized by intown residents who believe the $2.5 billion streetcar was pushed by special interests without ever being properly vetted. More than 50 people are serving as co-hosts for the event.
“I started asking questions about the streetcar and realized that the concerns I and others shared hadn’t been addressed,” says Ron Martin, an Inman Park resident who has served as lead organizer.
Martin emphasized that the event isn’t “anti-streetcar” per se but is intended to provide interested Atlantans with a broader, more informed perspective on issues surrounding the controversial project. He said panelists will also include transit and planning professionals.
