"Transportation Mayor or Folding Chair Mayor" -- Which is it Mayor Dickens?
Andre Dickens wants to be the transportation mayor, and was inching that way with his MARTA infill station announcement and support of the Streetcar East Extension, the first project that puts rail on the BeltLine. But his coming off that support of BeltLine light rail in comments in a recent interview has him looking more like “the folding chair” mayor.
Why can’t this city’s leadership finish what it starts? Light rail has come back as the preferred mode of BeltLine transit in numerous public studies conducted by MARTA and Atlanta BeltLine Inc. (ABI) over the last 20 years, most recently in 2019. And certainly the mayor knows some of the prospective alternatives to rail he mentioned in his recent comments aren’t realistic. Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)? This would involve paving a road next to the recreation trail and wouldn’t fit in the narrow BeltLine corridor. Autonomous pods? Unproven technology and limited capacity make them a poor choice as mass transportation calls for a mode that can move thousands of people a day. Light rail, meanwhile, grows in capacity as ridership does, and preserves more of the BeltLine greenway that is so cherished. Doing nothing? That would be a colossal missed opportunity – 22 miles of dedicated right of way with zero connectivity to the 45 neighborhoods it rings. Why build four infill stations for at least 1.5 billion dollars to connect them to a trail only and not to circulate riders directly to and from them? We think you understand the right thing to do AND the stakes of not doing it.
And what about wasting the city’s resources? Is Mayor Dickens willing to walk on the 12 million* dollar contract MARTA entered into with design firm HDR to oversee the Streetcar East light rail build-out? And the three million spent in 2021 and 2022 to bring the project to 30% design? And how about the millions of dollars spent on engineering and design that happened over five years to get the corridor to 30 percent design? Just walk away on that expenditure after getting so close?
The existing downtown streetcar falls short of expectations for many reasons. One of the most important is that it stops short of connecting a major transit hub to a major activity center. Streetcar East will fix that, and in doing so connect anyone who can access the Peachtree Center MARTA Station with the Eastside corridor up to Ponce City Market, and connect those along the route in reverse and to the rest of the city that MARTA reaches. Connecting people to opportunity and upward social mobility, Mr. Mayor, is what you are about, right?
C’mon Mayor Dickens. This city is so close to doing something big. Something you and many others have consistently supported since you were in public office. BeltLine light rail gives the city a hub and spoke system, working in concert with the infill stations and crosstown BRT you announced last week, to create a transportation network that would be the envy of cities everywhere.
Finish the job Mr. Mayor. It’s not too late for you to be our transportation mayor.
*The MARTA Board unanimously approved 11.5 million dollars for HDR on July 13, 2023, but added scope not in the original contract, via a motion introduced by Board Chair Thomas Worthy, which added studying essential fixes to the existing streetcar operations to their scope of work.
