Friday, October 15, 2010
Transit Atlanta's downtown streetcar wins funding
Posted by Thomas Wheatley @thomaswheatley on Fri, Oct 15, 2010 at 4:10 PM
- Peachtree Streetcar
WASHINGTON — In a major coup for the city of Atlanta, the U.S. Department of Transportation has agreed to grant the city of Atlanta $47 million for the proposed downtown streetcar project, according to U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Atlanta.Mayor Kasim Reed in recent months had made several trips to Washington, D.C. to lobby for the project. The downtown streetcar line faced tough competition in a battle for a much smaller batch of funding. (Click here to download a PDF of the city's application — which includes specifics regarding its route, funding, operations and maintenance.)Lewis' office said he got confirmation of the award in a conversation with DOT Secretary Ray LaHood on Friday morning.
"In my conversation with Secretary LaHood this morning he reiterated his belief that it was a good and necessary project and one that deserved federal funding," Lewis said in a statement. "Not only does this project offer citizens and visitors to the downtown area another option for transportation, it will also provide green jobs and support economic development."
Updates galore and additional details can be found after the jump.
UPDATE, 1:39 p.m.: Councilman Kwanza Hall, who represents the diverse district that the streetcar will serve, learned the news via text while eating lunch at an Atlanta Medical Center board retreat on the Georgia coast.
"This is the start of something really, really big for our city," he tells CL. "And for generations to come."
As to where the city will find the remaining $9 million to build the project:
"I’m sure we can find some friends in the Atlanta community, our philanthropic partners, to help us close that gap as a team, a family and a city that loves to see ourselves grow."
UPDATE, 2:23 p.m.: Says Matt Ruppert, owner of Noni's Bar & Deli:
I think it’s fabulous. We just got those parking meters and it’s nice to think we’re giving a different mode of transportation a shot.UPDATE, 6: 18 p.m.: The city says it plans to ask City Council for cash to fill some of the funding gap. From the AJC:It’ll be nice to think that there’s potential for folks in downtown who want to hop on the trolley and have lunch on Edgewood and not have to worry about driving. I don’t know if folks can use the trolley late at night, but that would be a great use.
There are whispers of more restaurants coming on the street in the next year or so. It’s going to be that much different. We've seen a lot of progress in last two years and we’re going to see much more in the next year. And the activity we’ll see on the street will merit the trolley access.
A $47 million award for the streetcar project is less than the $56 million Atlanta applied for in August. Making the project finance work will depend on the city council's approval of an extra $5.6 million or so toward the project, [Atlanta Deputy Operating Officer Luz] Borrero said. In addition, about $2 million will be shifted to streetcar-related projects. Borrero said that the shifted money was originally budgeted for transportation-related projects within the same corridor, so no area would lose out on project money.Borrero said the city pared down its request in recent days in talks with federal officials. She said the city council, which approved funds for the original application, had not yet considered the request for additional money.
"We did not know what degree of success this proposed approach would have, but we knew that if we were successful as we have been that we would have an opportunity to demonstrate to the members of the the city council that leveraging a $45 million investment against a smaller increase in our local match would be definitely a worthwhile and absolutely outstanding opportunity," Borrero said.
Comments (32)
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the beltline is a much more important transportation and development project which is also severely lacking in funding.. I know Kasim Reed is a big supporter of the beltline and knows it needs the funds, so we can only hope they will tie the proposed street car project into the beltline by connecting the line past the MLK historic district into the planned beltline corridor. Dont mess this up guys - and honestly there is no need for a street car line that runs ONE BLOCK NORTH AND PARALLEL to the existing marta line!!!! a better plan would be to run the street car from centenial/cnn up through and across downtown and up ponce..
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What a waste of money. MARTA already covers those locations and is little more than a block away.
What a waste of money. MARTA already covers those locations and is little more than a block away.
The Beltline is important and I love the project, but I don't think it's more important than this streetcar line in regard to transit. The Beltline path does not pass through one of Atlanta's major jobs centers or a major college campus. And it does not connect well to any existing MARTA train stations.
This streetcar route does all these things and also goes near convention and tourist site. Some day this line, along with existing MARTA lines and the Beltline, will form an incredible network of alternative transit routes for this city. So exciting.
Welcome (once again) to the world of street-grade rail transit, Atlanta!
please tell me this street car will at least take tourists from centennial park down edgewood to little five points, otherwise i don't see the point.
Yay! No longer will I have to make the terrible 1.3 mile trek from the MLK Center to Centennial Park!! I'm sure the other 4 people who will actually use this streetcar are just as happy as I am !!
Good news. Let's keep in mind this is just the beginning; this line should (and, I think, will) extend west along Marietta Street alongside the Ga. Tech campus and the West Side district, and east either toward Little 5, or down to Grant Park.
@Darin I don't deny that this will be beneficial, but I don't believe it is necessary either and there are much better ways to plan a street car project for Atlanta. Connecting Ga Tech, Piedmont Park, Atlantic Station or the Virgina Highlands areas with the downtown district would all be extremely popular and beneficial in my opinion, since these areas are currently outside the reach of the marta line, unlike this proposed plan which runs very close to an existing transit line
People need to see the big picture on this--it isn't proposed as the ONLY new transit program coming to Atlanta, but one of several that creates a network of transit options throughout the city's neighborhoods. Even if it may not seem like the highest priority of the various proposals, it's getting the funding so we should consider it the first step in bringing all of these alternatives to Atlanta. Whining about how the money could be better spent elsewhere, once it's already been awarded based on this specific proposal, is counter-productive.
Didn't Atlanta already have streetcars?
I remember my grandparents telling me about them from back before WWII. I think they got ditched when everyone got cars and moved to the suburbs (Grant Park and later Decatur).
What about electric bus service instead?
forj: I dont know how Ga Tech, Piedmont Park or Atlantic Station are "outside the reach of the marta line." North Avenue station is on one side of GT, midtown station is on the other side of GT and has the free Tech Trolley connecting all parts of the campus directly to the Midtown marta station. Piedmont Park is a couple of blocks from the Midtown station, and Atlantic Station has a free trolley connecting it to Arts Center.
@ethix: you do make a valid point in that the places I listed are fairly close to Marta and/or accessible, aside from virginia highlands, but so is everything within this proposed corridor. I guess I just really like the idea of the beltline and a Ponce street car - I think this is great news though in general - any project that helps to bring tourists and progress to Atlanta is a good thing. Crossing my fingers that more funding will come down the line to support the beltline and other transit projects in the near future to supplement this project.
thoughts on future light rail/street car potential for atlanta:
continue this proposed corridor past the Ga Dome, going through the Atlanta University Center (morris brown, spelman, clark atlanta, morehouse), south to West End mall and Marta station, then east to Turner Field and on to Grant Park/Zoo Atlanta.. could just complete the circle by connecting back up to the MLK site from there. THAT would make for some amazing transit alternatives - then connect with the beltline of course along the way.. the opportunities and options are almost endless really. The level of connectivity that cities like New York have between neighborhoods is exactly what atlanta needs
Sarawara speaks of the truth. This streetcar line is only one part of a bigger plan of transit connectivity for the city. It will all take many years to complete. Yes, multiple plans have been competing for funding, but just because this route won funding before others doesn't mean it's the only one that will be built.
Eventually we'll have Beltline transit, a multimodal station, added bicycle lanes and more.
I agree, the Streetcar is a much more sensible idea, connecting places downtown and potentially reducing traffic. It's a beginning and maybe a potential foot in the door for access to federal transportation funds that were recently denied to Ga.. The Beltline is a circle around the city, while touted as some sort of transportation savior, it really doesn't connect to a great deal of places just goes in a circle and will cost an incredible sum to build.
Streetcars are a terrible idea. Besides the meager bang for the buck, they tangle traffic on downtown roads that are only a few decades removed from tearing out all the streetcar rails from the first go-round. Jeez, it's a nineteenth century idea, obsolete once autos and buses were invented. Streetcars only make sense in a town with extensive tourist areas and development, you know, what we ain't got. Only the construction firms with the connections to get the work will benefit. The millions used for this unneeded boondoggle should go instead to extending MARTA rails.
So Atlanta doesn't have an extensive tourist area downtown? Geez..that's news to me. Also, keep in mind that the car was invented in the same era as the electric trolley, and you aren't saying that invention's outmoded..
What I like is that the money goes directly to the city and not through the state, otherwise it would be siphoned off by the DOT to something else
There is some very creative writing in the application. Who honestly believes that traffic accidents will go down? Or that the city will actually put in more sidewalks (since we can't maintain what we have now)?
I feel sorry for anyone who commutes from East Atlanta or Southeast Atlanta, because I see a traffic clusterfuck in their future trying to get to their office buildings.
Wow. Am really disappointed in many of these posts. The federal government awards the city $47 million, as part of a $72 million project to connect Auburn and Edgewood Avenues to Peachtree Street and Centennial Olympic Park--after a century of segregation and the Downtown Connector consciously kept these major east-west streets from full participation in the life of downtown--and folks are unhappy! I guess we should return to the way things used to be, when Atlanta's major public works projects were funded ENTIRELY by property tax increases and sales taxes. Or maybe commenters would just prefer to return to a time, circa pre-1865, when folks on Auburn and Edgewood "knew their place..."?
Race? How the hell does this have anything to do with race? Black folk are separated from downtown because there's no streetcar? It must a terrible burden, that big chip on your shoulder.
You think 47 million dollars just falls from a big federal spigot in the sky? Thousands of households gave up their ten thousand or so in taxes so you could have your unneeded anachronism. We are going trillions into debt, spending money we don't have, on pork like this so people can feel good about themselves.
Google up some of the other streetcar projects around the country and see how it's working in other cities. It's only works it in a town where it makes sense and this ain't one of them.
anachronism: something or someone that is not in its correct historical or chronological time, esp. a thing or person that belongs to an earlier time: The sword is an anachronism in modern warfare.
Well, oydave, it almost makes sense. Congrats on trying to use big words. Using big words is your first step toward sounding intelligent. I can't wait until you turn 14 and your brain has developed enough for you to form a coherent sentence.
This street car project will only work if we have bikini-clad conductors. We can call it the 'titty trolley'.
I support this project 100%. As a resident of Auburn Ave, I see the number of tourists that walk from the hotel district (Peachtree St) to the MLK site (lower Auburn Ave) so the addition of a streetcar will help in the look of this area --which has always been overlooked by the city but holds a major tourist attraction (the King Center). I hope it sparks further retail development in the area. I support the Beltline as well but you have to start somewhere so why not start with a smaller project then work up to a larger project such as the Beltline. I can't wait to see what the finished project looks like in 24 months!
Another HUGE waste of working taxpayers hard earned cash, further rolling America into the exponentially growing snowball of bankruptcy. Five years after it was completed, someone while run the numbers and correctly conclude, it would have been cheaper to subsidize a private cab ride.
Coulda been used to hire 50 highly educated and talented teachers for 10 years at 100,000 per year with the requirement they work in schools that currently have crappy teachers.
What? How is this going to work when they can barely operate and fund MARTA? This is silly to me. Fix what you already have, then move on to the next one, because as it currently stands, public transportation sucks here big time.
I for one am extremely pleased with this news and surprised at all the negativity. Better public transportation is in my mind, the #1 thing that's holding Atlanta back from reaching its full potential as a true city.
After so much planning I'm happy to see something finally get built instead of being stuck on paper for decades of revisions. I will be first in line to ride the streetcar. I'll have myself a nice good day at the aquarium and ride it down to the Sweet Auburn Curb market for a Grindhouse Killer burger. Tourists were definitely in need of a better way to connect from the WCC/CNN at Centennial Park to the Sweet Auburn and the MLK Historic District. Can't wait!
Sad to say but you know it's a bad, ill thought out idea when John Lewis is featured in the first paragraph, followed by Ray LaHood and Kasim Reed. Is anyone writing in favor of this project not in the employ of Reed or Lewis? Really?
Didn't Marta cancel some of it's routes there because not enough people used it? Hello... if the demand isn't there, don't waste our taxpayer money!
@InkyStinky - Segregation, please. I'm in Gen. Y. We don't understand this silly concept of "race" that keeps getting thrown around. The old guard needs to stop throwing that card - when it's obsolete with younger generations. There are a veritable cornucopia of people that live in Edgewood/Auburn areas, because it's 2010, not 1960. People are just people - I'm prejudiced against stupidity in general. Wasting millions of tax dollars on something we don't need... utter stupidity.
I'm a strong supporter of MARTA, the beltline, streetcars, and mass transit in general. That said, this particular project is a huge disappointment.
It purports to serve the major tourist sites -- but for the Georgia Aquarium, World of Coca-Cola, and CNN Center the nearest stops are blocks away. Many of the large convention hotels are likewise under-served.
It's great to go eastward to the MLK Center -- but with parallel lines just one block apart on Auburn and Edgewood that's a big waste of costly track.
It would be far more cost-effective to construct a single-track system, where the track splits to 2-way at the stops and special crossover points.
Countless cities in Europe and Asia have stretched their limited funds with this approach. Why can't America learn from the real experts in streetcar planning?
Georgia Tech is already connected with its own trolley service. Anyone On Georgia Tech can use to trolly to get to MARTA and then use that to access places near this proposed streetcar line. I have personally used mass transit to get to nearby sites w/o the street car.
I'm sorry, I just don't get the point of this!
No good deed goes unpunished. What a nice, informative night at the Rialto, May 19. 2011. This is the history of Atlanta interweaving with the 21st century. If you love Atlanta then you gotta love the streetcar!
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