I attended the public meeting on MARTA's Inner Core study on the Beltline alternative at the East Lake YMCA Tuesday evening. MARTA and MARTA's consulting team presented the four route alternatives and three mode alternatives, much as I'd described previously in my posting MARTA's Inner Core Study (click here to visit that article.
One interesting development which became obvious in the meetings is that the community strongly favors light rail or street car over Bus Rapid Transit, and suspects that MARTA and the consultants tilted the weighting factors to ensure that the outcome of the study favored BRT. MARTA vigorously denied this at the meeting. But one thing is certain. I don't remember hearing a single community voice raised in favor of the BRT option, and there were many comments made in favor of the rail options.
Another issue which was raised by Jay Varner, chair of the Transportation Committee of Reynoldstown's neighborhood association was the bypassing of Reynoldstown in an attempt to avoid the Hulsey rail yards. CSX has these yards on the market, and MARTA presented no plan for the contingency of the yards being sold and redeveloped. One thing which didn't escape notice is that the dogleg necessary to avoid the train yards precludes light rail from two of the four route options given a right angle turn at Moreland Avenue.
The Beltline discussions are unfolding rapidly. I'd urge residents of the neighborhoods in Atlanta to get actively involved in this process. There is no hardened plan with respect to either routes or modes, and we're going to be living with the decisions made at this stage for a very long time.