Cue the confetti! Again. After years of planning, the Atlanta Streetcar opened December 2014 and advertised as “free” for the first three months. Fast forward to April 2015 and the Atlanta Streetcar is still free — for the rest of the year.
One question remains: Why is a $92.65 million project still free? Extending the time period during a promotional period may in fact suggest the streetcar isn’t doing as well as the city had hoped. The streetcar isn’t just owned by the City of Atlanta. Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) also collaborates with the city, according to the Atlanta Streetcar Fact Sheet. So really, are local residents and tourists riding the streetcar?
We know the transit system has made its presence known through various construction sites appearing in the downtown area for the last two years. Now there’s no way you can miss the 80-foot-long vehicle.
Despite various advertising efforts (student faces plastered on posters can be seen on the windshield of the streetcar with the slogan “Be Streetcar Smart”), nobody is fighting over seats to ride on our city’s newest transportation system.
Another approach to increase riders and awareness of businesses surrounding the transit’s stops, was seen in January with the first official “Atlanta Streetcar Adventure.” The event brought 1,100 participants, according to Atlanta Bar Tours’ website. But how many of those participants use the streetcar to get around Atlanta on a normal basis?
StreetsBlog USA reported that approximately 18 percent fewer riders are using the streetcar than anticipated.
“In the first six weeks of operation, the streetcar carried 102,000 people. Project sponsors had predicted 124,000, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution,” StreetsBlog USA states.
For Georgia State students in the midst of our daily hustle-and-bustle, we didn’t need data numbers to confirm there was a low ridership rate. Thanks to the streetcar’s windows, we could see it for ourselves.
This leads us to the end of the streetcar’s “promotional” months (or year now). When all of the flashy advertisements and confetti sprinkled sidewalks in celebration has gone away, who’s left to clean up the “mess”?
The mess being millions of dollars worth of potentially wasted transit investments.
Furthermore, why weren’t we investing the same time, energy and funds into an older transit system many of our commuters use such as MARTA?
The city was home to a vast streetcar network until the late 1940s. That was until there were major budget cuts to the transit system. Almost 30 years later Atlanta introduced its first east line MARTA train in June 1979.
Yet it’s 2015 and we are back to a streetcar concept, which ultimately failed in the first place. Are we as a city doing the same exact thing and expecting different results?
All the while, we continue to push mass transit systems aside such as MARTA, which have been responsible for an estimated $2.6 billion in economic activity and supports approximately 24,000 jobs in metro Atlanta, according to MARTA’s website.
Yes, we understand there are various political hoops to jump through — not all counties want the train in their neighborhood due to possible crime or pollution. However, the possibility of expanding the streetcar only feeds into our already-difficult lifestyle of Atlanta city living.
First of all, the streetcar has caused obvious inconveniences: Loud construction, additional traffic, less bike-friendly roads..etcetera. Not to mention the various head injuries some Georgia State students incurred after getting their tires stuck in the tracks. A reporter from The Signal specifically asked how the Atlanta Streetcar Project Team was addressing health hazards during a public meeting at the Auburn Research Center last October and the response she got was, “We’re working on it.”
Second, why would Atlanta residents want to pay up to $3 to ride a streetcar around a 2.7-mile loop when walking the road is free? Even the city’s former streetcar extended out further than that!
As many students conveyed in The Signal’s report on the Atlanta Streetcar extension for free ridership this week, the streetcar is one-and-done service. You try it once — perhaps while it’s free — and then you move on. Basically, it’s only useful if you’re touring the city.
This doesn’t help our local residents or commuters who should be the prioritized population.
A free streetcar for another year may be a “good” thing for those who are still wanting to try it out. But it’s not really helping those of us who are left behind to clean up the mess and feed into the system.
