Atlanta’s Transit Past, Present, and Future

An article in Atlanta Magazine by Rachel Garbus reminds readers that Atlanta once had a thriving public transportation system. “For the first half of the twentieth century, Atlanta’s public transportation system rivaled even that of bigger Northern cities like Baltimore and Pittsburgh. By 1928, the city’s streetcar system was so extensive, you could hop on in East Point and ride up to North Druid Hills, only changing trains once.”

The article includes historic photos of the city’s former electric streetcar system and explains how the system grew, then declined. At first, the (segregated) streetcars were operated by private companies. “Georgia officials mostly ignored public transit, pouring public dollars into highways instead. By the time MARTA took over transit as a public agency in 1972, the car had already won the fight for metro Atlanta.”

Now, traces of this history remain as opposition to public transit projects face opposition from “transit skeptics who think it’s a waste of taxpayer money to homeowners concerned about outsiders coming to their neighborhoods.”

Nicholas Bloom, author of The Great American Transit Disaster, says Atlanta may never reach world-class transit city status — “there’s been too much development to reverse engineer a public transit system” — “but he sees many opportunities to get people out of the cars into other modes of transportation.”