MYTHBUSTER #1: “The Beltline streetcar is all about equity”

A bus leaves the Bankhead MARTA station. Neighborhoods that are less wealthy than those on the eastside BeltLine deserve good transit. Credit: Better Atlanta Transit

Grade: Who are you kidding?

The first two legs of the Beltline streetcar will serve some of intown Atlanta’s wealthiest neighborhoods. Those may be the only phases ever built.

Or MARTA could shift the $230 million it’s set to spend on just the first sixteenth of the rail loop. It could instead use that money on projects serving less-advantaged neighborhoods that actually need better transit.

“Freedom Parkway” and “Virginia Highlands/Ansley” have the highest income among the Beltline’s nine “subareas,” according to Atlanta Beltline Inc.’s Demographic Data Explorer. While 2021 Census data put Atlanta’s per capita income at $55,000, the Virginia Highlands/Ansley subarea’s per capita income topped $92,000. In the Freedom Parkway subarea, it was $80,000. On top of that, Beltline neighborhoods are on the whole wealthier than other parts of the city, outside of Buckhead.

Streetcar advocates put a fig leaf on this reality when they claim the entire fixed-rail loop will achieve equity by “connecting 45 neighborhoods.” Don’t most — all? — transit lines “connect neighborhoods?”

But many projects that have been delayed or are going unfunded in favor of the streetcar actually are more efficient at making those connections. The Beltline streetcar’s first phase will traverse three neighborhoods at a cost of $230 million. For half that amount, the proposed Crosstown Bus Rapid Transit line along Hollowell and North avenues would traverse seven neighborhoods. At two major crossings, it would connect riders to the Beltline. It also would deliver riders to two MARTA stations, along with the employment centers of Georgia Tech, Coca-Cola, the Beltline and lower Midtown.

Similar arguments can be made for half a dozen projects in southwest, northwest and northeast Atlanta that are now downgraded, delayed or unfunded in lieu of the streetcar.

The Beltline streetcar may attract some tourists. But few Atlantans are likely to become regular riders today based on the vague promise that one or two generations from now it may deliver people from struggling west side neighborhoods along a semicircle route to the wealthy east side.

Just ask westsiders if they’d rather get to jobs on the eastside Beltline by traveling 11 miles on a streetcar at an average speed of less than 20 miles an hour or five miles on a crosstown BRT more quickly than a car. The answer shouldn’t be difficult.

The More MARTA sales tax that voters approved in 2016 to pay for new transit came along with a list of 73 projects that might get funding. Sixty-four of those are now on ice; nine are currently moving forward. Of the three to get the highest scores from MARTA’s modeling for “access to jobs,” the Clifton Corridor light rail to Emory and the CDC was downgraded to BRT, a similar system up Peachtree Street has been delayed at least another decade, and BRT along I-20 from downtown to Moreland Ave. has been cut entirely.

A plan that truly valued equity also would include projects that are less sexy but just as meaningful as new transit lines. Among these would be more frequent bus service, station upgrades and new “infill stations” that would improve access to the Beltline. Some of these projects remain More MARTA priorities, but most have been cut or delayed.

There’s an argument for concentrating new transit in upscale neighborhoods – just not a very good one. It’s the implied but unspoken case for the Beltline streetcar. It goes something like this: “Well-to-do professionals will only use transit if they don’t perceive it to be dominated by poor people.”

But that argument has two problems. The first is that the best way to increase ridership actually is to provide clean, dependable and frequent service to destinations that people need to go. That means funding decisions based on merit – not political pull.

The second problem is that it values service for well-to-do professionals over service for those who actually rely on transit. And that is the antithesis of equity.

— Ken Edelstein