Letter to Editor: Canceling Eastside light rail is waste of time, precious money Josh Green Mon, 04/14/2025 - 08:24
Perhaps it seems like longer ago, but only a month has passed since Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens revealed that city leaders were shifting focus away from building light rail on the Beltline’s Eastside Trail after years of planning for an estimated $230-million Atlanta Streetcar extension there.
Eric Goldberg, an Inman Park resident and transit enthusiast, was dismayed by that decision.
Goldberg fears the pivot toward building out rail in other, less densely populated parts of the city will set transit progress back by years, while Atlantans see no tangible proof that tax dollars are being wisely spent. The following Letter to the Editor has been lightly edited for clarity and length.
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Dear Editor:
Mayor Andre Dickens’ recent decision to backtrack on building light rail on the Eastside Trail of the Beltline is the equivalent of a football team about to go in for a score from the one-yard line then abruptly forfeiting.
MARTA executed a $13-million contract with design and engineering firm HDR in June 2023 to shepherd Streetcar East through final design.
Construction was set to start on the project—2.3 miles of rail connecting the existing downtown streetcar to the Beltline, then extending onto the Eastside Trail from Irwin Street to Ponce City Market—in 2025.
Timeline for completion: 2028.
In the 10 years leading up to final design, tens of millions of dollars were spent readying the project for construction start through rail-corridor design and engineering studies.
All told, that’s $20 million-plus invested, conservatively, the Dickens administration is walking away from in spent infrastructure dollars necessary to get a light-rail project ready for the building phase. Money MARTA will never get back.
Dickens says he’d prefer to start light-rail construction on a four-mile stretch of the Southside Beltline. No one would argue light rail shouldn’t be built on the Southside Beltline.
Transit-rich future for the Beltline's Southside Trail? Atlanta BeltLine Inc.
But if the goal is to show progress and get the project started, implementing Beltline rail in phases (similar to how the recreation trail has been rolled out), then Atlantans shouldn’t hold their breath about Beltline light rail being built anytime soon.
Before light rail can be built on the Southside Trail, the same engineering and design process that occurred on the Eastside Trail to pave the way for construction must happen on the Southside rail corridor. That was an eight-year process on the Eastside Trail.
So when Dickens projects rail construction will start on the Southside Beltline rail in 2029, he’s either not being honest or is ill-informed.
Why not start construction as planned on an Eastside Trail that’s shovel-ready and paid for by the More MARTA tax Atlantans approved in 2016? (Remember, $230 million of the More MARTA pot of money had been set aside for Streetcar East.)
Meanwhile, the necessary design and engineering studies on the Southside Trail could happen simultaneously, readying that stretch for construction as soon as possible.
Perhaps it has something to do with the pressure the mayor felt from a politically connected Eastside interest group that lobbied to stop the project, alongside a handful of developers and business owners concerned about short-term disruption.
And while the mayor says his decision to start on the Southside is driven by equity, it’s not equitable if no rail is built over the last four years of his term.
It’s not equitable if residents from other parts of the city aren’t able to use transit to access the Eastside Trail, the densest section of the Beltline and an opportunity zone that’s chockablock with jobs, entertainment, and schools.
Since rail won’t be built on the Southside Trail anytime soon, isn’t the mayor just punting on Beltline rail overall?
Former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, a Dickens confidante who aided in his rise from little-known councilman to mayor, once said politicians’ favorite projects are the ones with 10-year timelines. Why? Because the politician rolling out the plan to be completed in 10 years needn’t be there to see it through.
Financing Beltline rail is another area in which the mayor’s calculations seem overly rosy. Dickens recently told the Atlanta Press Club he hopes to extend the Beltline Tax Allocation District to pay for transit and affordable housing along the Beltline beyond 2030 when the current TAD expires.
But as hard as it was in the recent past to get Atlanta Public Schools and Fulton County to agree to the TAD (and stay in it), it’s awfully presumptuous to think they’ll agree to extending it.
And what of the $230 million in More MARTA money that had been earmarked for Eastside Trail light rail that Dickens said he’d like to apply to Southside rail construction? It’s not clear he’ll be able to use that money on Southside rail without a referendum.
Where does this leave transit-starved Atlantans who’ve been waiting for Beltline rail since 2016? With some promises, but in the wake of Dickens pulling the plug on Streetcar East, not much else.
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Streetcar East Extension project Streetcar East MARTA Beltline Atlanta BeltLine Andre Dickens Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens Atlanta Light Rail Light Rail More MARTA More MARTA Atlanta Program Eastside Trail Southside Trail Letter to the Editor Letters to Editor Letters to the Editor Opinion HDR HDR Architecture
Subtitle Following years of design, pivot to Southside Trail leaves “transit-starved Atlantans” wanting, writer asserts
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