Better Atlanta Transit statement on City Council & Beltline rail

Separating "wheels” from “heels” will serve more people at a much lower cost than Beltline rail.

No single issue has held Atlanta transit back more than the decades-long quest for a rail loop that will never be built and that wasn’t designed to solve an actual transportation problem.  It’s time for our City Council to get serious about transit instead of performatively calling for a project that is more fantasy than solution.

The rail loop will never be completed because its cost is astronomical – especially for a line that Atlanta Beltline Inc. itself says will draw a paltry ridership of 11,507 riders per day.  ABI found that only 21 percent of those riders would represent “new transit trips.”  Astoundingly, this tiny fraction of the ridership necessary to justify a $3.5 billion-plus investment depends additionally on the completion of four MARTA infill stations, optimistically estimated to cost another $1.3 billion.  Nearly $5 billion dollars is far more than even the most optimistic scenarios for capital investment in transit available in Atlanta over the next two or three decades.

The rail loop's low ridership also would burden MARTA with ever higher operating subsidies. Experience is a good guide: Because of poor ridership and high operating costs, MARTA props up each rider of the Atlanta streetcar at literally 10 times the rate for heavy rail or bus service.  The increase in operating subsidizing for a rail line projected to carry even fewer riders per mile than the existing streetcar could cause MARTA to cut more impactful transit offerings at the same time that transit agencies struggle to remain solvent in a budget-constrained environment.

Meanwhile, PATH counts of actual users show that a comparable number people currently get from Point A to Point B on just a small stretch of the Beltline by foot, bike and other means to the number that will board the entire Beltline rail loop years from now.  Micromobility is a greener and more economical form of transportation that has been embraced in recent years by cities such as Amsterdam and Paris. The Beltline is precisely the kind of “last mile” micromobility corridor that can extend transit to the Beltline.

It’s not difficult to see a path forward that promises a bright future for both the Beltline and transit in Atlanta:

1. Fund transit projects that serve actual transit needs and advance equity. The long-desired Hollowell Parkway/North Avenue bus rapid transit line is a good example. It’s projected to cost fewer dollars and carry more people per mile. It also has equal standing to Beltline rail on the More MARTA list that we voted to fund in 2016.

2. Relieve overcrowding and the dangerous mixture of pedestrians, cyclists and scooters that threaten the quality of the Beltline experience by installing a second, parallel path to separate “wheels” from “heels.”   Rooted on their own experience, more and more Atlantans are speaking out for this “wheels and heels” approach as an obvious and elegant path for the Beltline to take.

The astronomical cost ensures that the rail loop will never be completed –  no matter how hard its advocates wish it to be so.  The real risk is that we waste precious transit dollars on an extension of the failing streetcar to serve mainly upscale neighborhoods on the East Side.  Such a pity if More MARTA’s promise ends up being frittered away on a fantasy trolley that fails to meaningfully improve transit offerings for communities that actually rely on transit.