When $230 million becomes $2.5 billion

The Streetcar Extension East shouldn’t be thought of as just a $230 million project. It’s actually the leading edge of a golden dream that could cost taxpayers more than $2.5 billion.

That’s one reason the Extension, which will carry the Atlanta Streetcar onto the Beltline, looms larger than other projects approved for funding by the city’s More MARTA sales tax.

Viewed alone, it wouldn’t even be the most costly of More MARTA’s nine Tier 1 projects.

But viewed as the first phase of the 22-mile Beltline streetcar loop, it’s the downpayment on a much larger project.

As the streetcar advocacy group Beltline Rail Now put it: “The extension will show the ‘proof of concept’ of BeltLine rail and will become the model for the expansions both south and north from there and on other sections of the BeltLine on the west and southwest sides of the loop.”

If the Extension finally is built, it will include only1.3 miles along the Beltline from Irwin Street to Ponce City Market. That’s one-seventeenth of the way around the Beltline loop.

Where would MARTA find money to build the other sixteen-seventeenths?

Probably not from More MARTA. Another 14 miles of Beltline streetcar remain on More MARTA’s “Tier 2” list. But it’s doubtful that More MARTA will have much money left once the Tier 1 projects are completed.

Another seven miles (mainly in the Northwest quadrant of the Beltline) don’t appear on the More MARTA list at all — Tier 1 or Tier 1. In fact, after 20 years, Atlanta Beltline Inc. hasn’t even settled on a precise route for those segments.

So please pardon our skepticism when say we don’t believe the entire 22-mile streetcar loop will ever be completed.

And here’s the problem as Atlanta Beltline Inc. streetcar boosters continue to push for Extension: Without the rest of the loop, the Extension makes even less sense than it does as part of the larger vision. Gone entirely, for example, is the already weak claim that Beltline rail will connect disadvantaged neighborhoods to new opportunities.

For more on the Beltline streetcar, check out our Beltline Streetcar Backgrounder.