Why I’m not writing a “fix the Atlanta Streetcar” post this year

Darin Givens
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

For the previous three years, I’ve written long posts about the sad land use around the Atlanta Streetcar in an attempt. to get people thinking about the mismatch between transit capacity and the density of active uses next to the track.

I went for walk around the route today to scope out another post and decided to scrap it. So little has changed, it’s not worth it. One empty space became student housing, but GSU students aren’t really riding the streetcar. The other dead spaces are all still there.

In the image above, which I created over two years ago, you can see all the parking facilities surrounding part of the streetcar route. Nothing has changed. They’re all still there. In fact, instead of developing on parking lots, someone has proposed tearing down two old buildings in this mapped area to create a free-standing Jimmy Buffet’s Margaritaville restaurant.

It’s not enough to add good new things if you don’t address the bad things all around. It’s like planting a tree in a junk pile. That’s not going to be a healthy tree.

Incidentally I rode the streetcar today. Sweet, smooth ride as always. It got me from home to lunch nicely, with AC, fast wifi and nice seating. There were four other people in the car.

Here’s the archive of previous posts:

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Darin Givens

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ThreadATL co-founder: http://threadatl.org || Advocacy for good urbanism in Atlanta || atlurbanist -at- gmail.com

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