Mythbuster 4: Beltline rail is just the start of a streetcar system

This rendering conveys the Beltline streetcar, according to the project’s current design drawings.

Verdict: Not anymore, it ain’t.

A decade ago, then-Mayor Kasim Reed tasked Atlanta Beltline Inc. to come up with a streetcar plan for the entire city. Never mind that ABI wasn’t a transit-planning agency or that its mandate didn’t cover transportation for the entire city.

Nobody was surprised when ABI came up with a plan built entirely around a project that was in the agency’s purview: the Beltline streetcar.

The Atlanta Streetcar System Plan, published in 2014, is the closest thing the city now has to a coordinated transit plan. It envisions 52.4 miles of “interoperable” fixed-rail transit, anchored by the 22-mile Atlanta Beltline loop. Those 52.4 miles included the 2.7 mile Downtown Streetcar, which was under construction before the SSP came out.

There’s one problem: Events since have rendered the streetcar plan obsolete, leaving the case that it made for the Beltline streetcar in tatters.

In the 10 years since the SSP was published, no additional tracks have been laid. The only streetcar project to undergo any design work – the 2.3-mile Streetcar East Extension onto the Atlanta Beltline – is mired in questions about its viability.

The critical issue has been money. With streetcar and light-rail construction (the Beltline streetcar would have elements of both) running $50 million to $100 million a mile, the remaining 50 miles of the SSP could approach $5 billion. And that’s just capital expenses. Annual operating subsidies are expected to run well into the tens of millions of dollars.

And don’t forget that necessary investments in existing transit modes (such as heavy rail and buses) and in emerging modes (such as bus rapid transit) would still need to be addressed.

The SSP vision was further hampered by the uncertainty of obtaining federal funds for projects that were difficult to justify based on projected ridership, equity and other criteria – most notably the Beltline loop. (That’s why local taxpayers are being saddled with the entire cost of Streetcar East Extension.)

“Interoperability” was a key feature of the SSP.  The idea was that the Beltline ridership would increase if it served as a sort of trunk line linking subsidiary lines into a contiguous network. This was based on reams of data showing that overall ridership drops when passengers have to transfer between modes to get where they’re going.

ABI’s Streetcar System plan was an ambitious way to justify Beltline rail.

Here’s the problem though: Other than the Beltline loop (and two short runs to connect the downtown line to the Beltline), there no longer are any fixed-rail projects planned for the city. Each of the lines that were to merge into and out of the loop either have been switched to a different transit mode or, at least for now, abandoned.

So much for interoperability!

From Beltline rail’s start as the central idea of Ryan Gravel’s masters thesis, planners questioned its viability for one simple reason: It wouldn’t efficiently connect a large enough number of people to where they want to go. That’s why, in 2005, when it was time to adopt a long-term Beltline strategy in 2005, city leaders opted for one that kicked fixed rail down the road. 

The Atlanta Beltline Redevelopment Plan leaned instead into an earlier vision for the Beltline known then as the Cultural Ring, and later as the Emerald Necklace. The result was the smashingly successful Beltline that we have today.

But, pushed by streetcar enthusiasts and its own bureaucratic inertia, ABI kept coming up with ways to justify the streetcar. In 2010, the agency published something called the Atlanta Beltline Transit Implementation Strategy. The strategy didn’t emerge — as most successful transit projects do — out of unbiased study to determine the best way to serve Atlantans’ transit needs. As ABI put it:  “The intent of the TIS was to develop a strategy to implement segments of the Atlanta BeltLine corridor incrementally to build out the vision of the entire 22-mile Atlanta BeltLine transit system.”

In other words, the tail would wag the dog. The strategy wasn’t built to address transit needs. It was built to make the Beltline streetcar more viable by combining it with other streetcar lines. Without those other lines it would be impossible to “[link] the BeltlLine to the major employment centers of Downtown and Midtown.”

Despite feeder lines into the Beltline, ridership estimates for the Beltline streetcar were abysmal. For example, in 2013, the only actual model run for a footprint similar to the SCE projected that a much longer segment (including the downtown streetcar and an additional leg into Piedmont Park) would only attract 5,521 daily passengers. And as we know, the downtown streetcar has drastically undershot its projections already. To put this in perspective, based on Beltline user traffic counts at Irwin and Ponce de Leon avenues, bikes, pedestrians and other users appear to already outnumber that estimate -- and that's on a stretch less than one-half the length of the section of streetcar modeled!

Now, however, the streetcar feeders (other than Streetcar East Extension and a similar unfunded connector to the westside Beltline) are dead and buried. Transit lines along Hank Aaron Drive and the Clifton Corridor are planned as BRT lines. And seven other lines that the streetcar plan proposed to feed into the Beltline are envisioned either as BRT or something similar (they’re not even funded, anyway).

While the projected costs of streetcar lines escalate, the lack of “interoperability” can only drive ridership for the Beltline streetcar down even further. That doesn’t bode well for the extension of a streetcar that MARTA’s own figures show costs $48.60 per passenger mile to operate.

If any transit system does emerge over the next couple of decades, it’s one based on bus rapid transit and arterial rapid transit lines, which allow MARTA and the city to stretch More MARTA sales tax revenue because those modes cost a fraction of fixed rail systems. But that system will be pretty sparse unless MARTA and the city shepherd those More MARTA dollars wisely. The good news is such projects also are more likely to qualify for federal funds.

It still seems unlikely that even BRT would ever be built on the Beltline, however. That’s partly because the advocates who have kept Beltline transit alive for two decades have been adamant that it must be a streetcar. But it’s mainly because the Beltline is more suited to serve as a short-distance transportation corridor – which is exactly what it has become with the help of bicycles, e-bikes, scooters and other micromobility vehicles.

One thing is certain: The Streetcar System Plan, which served as a prime justification for the Beltline streetcar, is no longer.

— Ken Edelstein