King District residents plead with city to address their streetcar concerns
O4W residents measure 24-foot-wide Auburn Avenue. Photo by Jennifer Bentson.
King Historic District residents directly affected by the planned Atlanta Streetcar extension onto the Beltline are insisting that the city get more transparent about the project. But they aren’t optimistic that their efforts will bring any changes.
“Most of us were made aware of this proposed route and plan only last year, just before and during a public forum held by MARTA in September 2022,” says a letter, sent in December by 26 residents to Mayor Andre Dickens and City Council members.
“Since then, we have provided feedback and our concerns to the City, members of City Council and MARTA representatives … but have yet to receive a response that provides us with any level of confidence,” the letter continues.
Jennifer Bentson Hubert, one of the signers, said Dickens responded to the joint letter by arranging for the group to meet with Atlanta Beltline Inc. CEO Clyde Higgs and other ABI officials.
“They basically said we appreciate the feedback, we will share it with our consultants, and then we’ll plan to meet again in a few months,” Bentson said. “But I don’t know that any amount of minor design tweaks can fix the problem. There seems to be no consideration for rerouting or not extending the streetcar to the Beltline.”
On the other hand, Bentson reported that some of the City Council members contacted indicated in their replies that they might be open to alternatives.
The route, which was presented to residents in 2022 as a fait accompli, was at least the third one proposed by MARTA. An earlier one would have carried the streetcar along Irwin Street, which is four lanes wide, to the Beltline. Another route would have carried the streetcar by the Martin Luther King Jr. birth house on Auburn Avenue – a non-starter for the National Park Service.
The fallback extends the streetcar east along Edgewood Avenue from its current east-side turnaround point at Jackson Street. From there, the rail lines would turn up a narrow residential block of Randolph Street and onto an even narrower block of Auburn Avenue before reaching the Beltline at Irwin Street.
Unlike the existing streetcar section, the entire extension will be dual track, which means more disruption. Rather than one set of rails, there will be two, with streetcars going in both directions.The two blocks affected on Auburn Avenue are only 24 feet wide, which will make the tracks a pretty tight squeeze – given that the streetcar requires a 35-foot right of way once it gets to the Beltline, .
Plans also call for Irwin Street to be closed at the Beltline crossing, which would change traffic patterns in both the Old Fourth Ward and Inman Park.
“Just getting through multiple years of construction will be really tough,” Bentson said. “The construction. The noise. The safety. Just the fact that it will crowd out everything on our little street – and all this is for an expensive fixed-rail line that a vast number of people say isn’t even needed.”
The residents are a diverse group – black and white, young and old, longtime residents and recent arrivals. They include five Better Atlanta Transit Advisory Board members Matt Eckmann, Renee Glover, Julia Neighbors, David Patton and Bentson, who agreed to act as the group’s spokeswoman.
The letter details a shocking lack of outreach by Atlanta Beltline Inc., MARTA and city officials on a project that will dramatically alter at least two residential streets. Even after being made aware of residents’ concerns, the agencies have failed to reach out to affected residents.
“An open records request (ORR) was required to learn the details of the impact on our neighborhood from the current 30% design documents,” the letter says. “From the ORR, we learned that a Real Estate Acquisition Management Plan was prepared, which listed several of our residences and nearby properties as requiring acquisition or easement and at no point in time did anyone from MARTA, the City, or the consulting firm provide any type of notice or communication that our specific properties would be so negatively impacted. To date, we have still not heard directly from anyone on these issues and how they can be eliminated or mitigated along with financial recompense.”
The diverse O4W group is one of several raising questions about the $2.5 billion Beltline streetcar plan and the process with which it’s been pursued. Among the others are:
restaurateurs and shopkeepers concerned that their Beltline storefronts will be blocked off from customers both during and after construction;
advocates for more urgently needed transit projects in other parts of the city that have lost out on funding because so much money is being spent on the streetcar;
property owners and managers who believe the streetcar will make the Beltline a less desirable location;
and residents of Inman Park, where a small group endorsed the streetcar on behalf of the neighborhood without providing an opportunity for alternative views to be heard.
