Beltline Rail Now Statement on ABI Transit Study
August 13, 2025
Cue the orchestra and play something dreamy because until the City breaks ground on the shovel-ready Eastside Trail, the only thing they seem able to build are slide decks. Slide decks that paint a beautiful picture of Atlanta’s transit future, but deliver none of it.
Image Atlanta Beltine, Inc., 2025
We applaud the designers and transit teams. They’ve done an impeccable job planning the future of rail in Atlanta. But as the saga of the Eastside Trail makes clear, data and design don’t stand a chance against the Beltline politics of big-money developers who lobbied to kill rail.
We want to believe these latest plans are real. We want to believe they’ll become more than a PowerPoint fantasy. But how are we supposed to get swept up in the vision when Mayor Dickens just announced his intention to scuttle the first phase of Beltline rail, the part that’s shovel-ready, fully funded, and could be in service by 2028?
The design is nearly complete. We’ve already spent $13 million on engineering. The money exists right now. And yet, we’re told to wait.
What we saw last night was a real plan for all 22 miles of Beltline rail and its east-west crosstown connectors. It includes cost estimates, infrastructure needs, and confirms that the Northwest segment should follow the Beltline corridor. It’s thoughtful. It’s ambitious. And it’s exactly what this city needs.
And let’s be clear: this is a light rail plan. Not buses. Not pods. Not gondolas. Not a high-speed parallel cycle track. It’s rail and that’s what the data has supported over and over again. Rail is the answer.
We’re calling on Mayor Dickens and his administration to step back up. Recommit to building the part of this system we can build now. Use the Beltline TAD and every available resource to fund the full design and engineering of this plan.
Let’s stop pretending we need another study. We need steel in the ground. We need tracks. We want to ride.
Image Atlanta Beltline, Inc., 2025
