Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The Atlanta Beltline project isn’t going away. Project staff want to make that clear. Sure, last week, Atlanta turned down — by a wide margin — a major transportation spending package that would have awarded $600 million to the Beltline project. But this project – an innovative transit and trails corridor that will circle Atlanta’s central city — has seen big setbacks before, says Ethan Davidson, the Beltline’s spokesman.

The Atlanta Beltline, a planned ring of trails and transit circling the central city, won't be stopped by the failure of last week's transportation referendum -- just delayed, says a spokesperson. Photo: Beltline.org

For roughly five years, Atlanta Beltline, Inc., the group charged with moving the project forward, has been collecting revenues from a special tax district that was conceived as the primary funding source. And the vision for an “emerald necklace” for urban Atlanta, first envisioned by a Georgia Tech grad student, is already starting to be realized, Davidson says.

Using revenues from the special tax district, plus money borrowed against future revenues, the group has already secured much of the right-of-way for the rail corridor: roughly 10 miles. In addition, 11 miles of trails, out of the planned 33, have been constructed, and many of them are open to the public. Between the tax revenues, bonding, a handful of government grants and some assorted private donations, more than $337 million has been raised.

True, that amount is shy of the $427 million they had hoped to raise by this time, said Davidson, but not bad considering the housing market crash that took place in the intervening years.

In addition to trail development, the Atlanta Beltline group is currently focused on establishing the right land use conditions for walkable, transit-oriented development, Davidson said. The Beltline group has plans to build some 4,500 affordable housing units around the corridor. About 120 of those have been built or are under construction.

Read more…

Left: A rally in support of Atlanta's transportation referendum yesterday. Right: A rally in opposition. Photo: AJC

It was fitting that yesterday, the eve of the Atlanta region’s historic transportation vote, the Georgia NAACP filed a civil rights suit against the state Department of Transportation alleging discrimination in contracting. Meanwhile, the head of the DeKalb County NAACP has come out against the T-SPLOST tax proposal, saying it will hurt minority-owned businesses. He even took a shot at Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, a dogged supporter of the referendum, saying “certain blacks” had been duped into supporting the tax proposal.

The proposed one-cent sales tax to support $7 billion in road and transit projects has drawn opposition from some seemingly unlikely places. Considering that this spending package represents a significant investment in rail and bus service for a region with notoriously poor transit options (the funds split fairly evenly been transit and road projects), the fact that the Sierra Club of Georgia is against it may surprise some. The group has been one of the biggest critics of the plan, saying the “haphazard” project list does not constitute a cohesive transportation strategy and is too heavy on roads. Add to that the opposition of some of the black leaders in urban DeKalb County, and tack on the Georgia Tea Party, which draws its strength from the farthest reaches of the exurbs.

This image, showing transit systems in global cities, has become a viral meme for the historic transportation campaign in Atlanta. A second, opposing meme, turning this one on its head, shows the maps with images of apples superimposed in front of Paris, London and New York City. An orange appeared in front of Atlanta.

Meanwhile, the spending measure enjoys overwhelming political and business support in Atlanta. Coke, Home Depot, Delta, UPS, Clear Channel, Turner Broadcasting, and Georgia Power Company have all given money to support the $8 million campaign for its passage.

Yesterday, Georgia’s Republican Governor Nathan Deal held a rally with Atlanta’s Democratic Mayor Kasim Reed, making a last-minute appeal to voters in the 10-county Atlanta region. Neither man was pulling any punches. Without this new tax, they said, metro Atlanta’s transportation system — and perhaps the whole regional economy — is headed in a bad direction.

If the referendum fails, “we simply don’t have the resources to ensure that Georgia has an adequate transportation network,” said Deal.

Reed dismissed the Sierra Club’s assertion that if voters turn down the package of 157 projects, a new, more transit-heavy list could be produced and passed quickly.

“It took four years to get a bill that you all could vote on,” said Reed. ”If we fail, nobody better come and ask me to do it again.”

Read more…