Eastside Beltline rail advocates take aim at MARTA board

“To go behind our back after we all voted in favor of rail expansion and end it in a back-room meeting is unconscionable,” Midtown resident Evan Phillips said. “Every day we fail to get shovels in the ground building rail infrastructure is another day that we are not a world-class city.”

The project, which would extend the existing Atlanta Streetcar to the Eastside Trail and build light rail to Ponce City Market, was long planned as the first step toward eventually encircling the entire 22-mile Atlanta Beltline loop with light rail.

Design work was underway last year when Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens pulled his support, saying instead that he wanted to start construction on the Southside Trail, where he said transit needs are greater.

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

About two months after Dickens made that announcement, a committee made up of executives from the city, the Atlanta Beltline and MARTA voted to stop work on the Eastside project. The committee meetings are not open to the public, and their decision never went before the full MARTA board for vote. The decision was not made public until a January story by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Elected officials and advocates for and against the project said they weren’t aware of the decision and believed work was continuing.

Since the story published, officials with the agencies involved have pushed back on the characterization that the committee’s actions were secret.

Ahead of public comment at Thursday’s meeting, MARTA’s interim General Manager and CEO Jonathan Hunt said the suggestion that “MARTA, the city and the Atlanta Beltline are somehow colluding in secret to hide things from the public” could not be “further from the truth.” He said the actions taken by the group, called the program governance committee, were appropriate and did not need to come before the full MARTA board.

“While PGC meetings are not publicly attended, they are not secret, nor is the work that the PGC conducts secret,” Hunt said. “The decision-making process has been transparent.”

Board Chairwoman Jennifer Ide, who represents Atlanta, said MARTA is awaiting direction from the city on which projects to prioritize.

“There are a lot of moving pieces, but we don’t want to be spending money on projects that are not going to move forward or are going to move forward in a different direction,” Ide said.

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Another Atlanta representative on the board, Jacob Tzegaegbe, said he didn’t have a problem with the committee’s vote, but asked that the MARTA board receive regular updates on the committee’s discussions moving forward.

“That helps with giving the visibility,” Tzegaegbe said.

Ide agreed, and Hunt said he would give updates in the future.

“If this was an affirmative step forward, we would know about it by, you know, shovels in the ground or plans being announced,” Ide said. “But a different sort of decision, there’s not an outward sign of the decision being made.”

Atlanta City Council members have criticized a lack of transparency around the decision. Thursday’s meeting was the first time the MARTA board has met to hear public comment since the AJC story published.

The group Beltline Rail Now rallied supporters to attend. In addition to speaking in favor of the project, many spoke more broadly about expanded transit throughout the region. Four speakers supported the decision to stop work on the Streetcar East expansion project.

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

“It’s going to create a lot of destructiveness,” said Jay Miller, who lives near the Eastside Trail and supports Better Atlanta Transit, a group that is pushing for a “wheels and heels” approach on the Beltline instead of light rail.

“We don’t need that when there are other options available,” he said, urging the board to consider driverless shuttles like those being piloted by the ATL Airport Community Improvement Districts. MARTA has put $10 million toward the Glydways driverless vehicle pilot program.

Mike Green, a Better Atlanta Transit board member, said there’s limited money for transit projects and it should be used in parts of the city that need transit access more than the neighborhoods around the Eastside Trail.

But proponents of the project said the density around the Eastside Trail is precisely why the plans for light rail should proceed.

“It’s the densest alignment in the city of Atlanta that doesn’t have high-capacity transit,” said Kevin Porter, a Reynoldstown resident. “It just makes sense to be the easy first step. If we can’t take the easy first step to advance more transit in Atlanta, I find it hard to see what we’re going to do next that’s not as easy.”

Many speakers decried the slow pace of progress on More MARTA projects, of which the Streetcar East Extension was one. This is the 10th year since the half-penny sales tax was passed, and just one project, the Summerhill Rapid Bus line, is close to completion.

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Credit: Abbey Cutrer/AJC

Jason Lathbury, a downtown resident and the transportation committee chair for the Georgia Sierra Club, said the organization was happy to campaign for the sales tax and the transit expansion it was supposed to herald. Today, he said the group has grown frustrated and tired of the delays.

“We want to see things move forward,” Lathbury said. “We want to see y’all succeed.”

He and others also asked for more transparency around transit decisions.

“We pride ourselves on ‘the Atlanta Way’ but the Atlanta Way seems to be making promises in public and then breaking them behind closed doors,” said Steven Imle, an Old Fourth Ward resident. “Beltline rail has been planned and it is wanted, and above all, it is necessary.”