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Community Corner

Beltline Seeks Input on Transit Segments

Short "connective tissue" segments are proposed for a 2012 referendum that would allocate a one-percent sales tax increase for transportation projects.

Midtown resident Angel Poventud, a CSX train conductor and longtime advocate of the Atlanta Beltline, has been leading unofficial walking tours of the developing 22-mile transit loop around the city.

The first few walks he led last year, about 40 people showed up. Then 150. On a recent Saturday in February, 459 people turned out to take Poventud’s tour.

How can one person possibly lead hundreds of people on a walk?

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“It’s remarkably easy,” Poventud said, breezily. “A friend lent me a bullhorn.”

It also helped that people broke themselves into manageable groups and that local merchants prepared for the larger-than-usual masses of hungry walkers -- Paris On Ponce offered extra lemonade and cookies, and Parish tripled its stock of pastries.

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Atlanta Beltline is taking a similar small group, community-assisted approach with its latest phase of planning -- minus the bullhorn. Until the end of the month, the organization is hosting neighborhood meetings around the city to solicit public opinion on four proposed transit segments, which could receive tax-generated funding and expedite the Beltline's growth.

The first meeting is Monday, March 7, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at McCrae Auditorium in Piedmont Hospital. Other meetings will take place this month

Atlanta Beltline unveiled the segments at a citywide meeting on Feb. 17. The four short segments of light rail and streetcar lines have been designed to act as “connective tissue” with MARTA, said Brian Leary, president of Atlanta Beltline, Inc.

One or more of the segments will be submitted to the Department of Transportation at the end of March. If approved, they enter a pool of other Transportation Investment Act proposals that goes up for a referendum vote in the 10-county Atlanta metro area in 2012. If the referendum passes, a one-percent sales tax increase would take effect in 2013.

See the full proposal slideshow with maps here.

It may sound like a convoluted process, but it would be a lightning blip in the Beltline’s turtle-paced and awesomely complex 25-year timeline. As Leary told a crowd of residents on Feb. 17,  “Atlanta doesn’t want to wait 25 years.”

The segments compete with and complement other proposed referendum projects, including road construction and public transit, according to Nate Conable, the Beltline’s director of transit and transportation. So, public input is vital to refine and prioritize, he said, and to make sure the Beltline pragmatically puts its “best foot forward.”

“If we can only submit one or two, which would they choose?” he said.

The segments, as proposed, are concentrated north of I-20. That disappointed some residents at the Feb. 17 meeting, where attendees counted off into small roundtable discussion groups.

“It’s making us go north, again,” one southwest Atlanta resident complained. Another said the south side is “starving” for public transit and “mind-bending” to access with MARTA.

But Conable argued that other sources of money, such as tax allocation district funding, make more sense for Beltline development in south Atlanta. In developing the proposed segments, the Beltline has tried to balance what it calls “city shaping” and “city serving” -- that is, a segment’s capacity to serve existing transit needs versus its ability to snowball new development.

Two segments along North Avenue, linking the east and west sides of the Beltline to the North Avenue MARTA station, were favorites at the February meeting.

Poventud said he’s in favor of “anything that creates a better east-west connection.” Whether or not it will happen soon, he isn’t so sure.

“The word on the street is that when this comes up, it does not pass the first time,” he said of the Transportation Investment Act referendum. But, he added, “I’m an optimistic person and I’m in it for the long haul.”

Even if the segment proposal doesn't pass in 2012, he's encouraged that the Beltline is laying groundwork and listening to Atlantans.

“It’s the next step," he said. "We’re making plans."

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