City gets $2.8M to link Streetcar to Beltline

All told, $3.5M will go into project, expected to begin by 2025.

Federal funds would also help expand Atlanta’s light rail system to Georgia State, Atlanta University Center.

The unpopular Atlanta Streetcar is getting nearly $3 million to expand to other parts of the city.

Atlanta received $2.8 million in federal funds to expand the Atlanta Streetcar system, connecting the 2.7-mile downtown loop to the Georgia State campus, the Atlanta University Center and the Atlanta Westside Beltline.

The Atlanta Streetcar Downtown Crosstown Extension project is a partnership with MARTA, which owns the streetcar, and the Atlanta Beltline. The money will also be used for an engineering investigation for eastern expansion onto Ponce de Leon Avenue.

The city’s economic agency, Invest Atlanta, is also putting up $700,000 for the engineering and design work.

All told, $3.5 million will go into the project, which is expected to begin by 2025.

The streetcar has been criticized for much of its existence for low ridership, which has seen a 47% decrease in the past year, according to Channel 2 Action News. The light rail system has had 568 riders per day this year,

down from 1,062 riders per day the previous year, Channel 2 reported.

In 2016, auditors identified 66 problems with the streetcar; many of them were resolved by mid-2017, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution previously reported.

The expansion funds come six months after the MARTA board of directors approved a timeline for the agency’s $2.7 billion expansion in Atlanta. MARTA approved a project expansion list in 2018 that calls for 29 miles of smaller and less expensive light rail in Atlanta.

In addition to the planned expansions onto the Atlanta Beltline, MARTA will add light rail service along Campbellton Road between Oakland City Station and Greenbriar Mall.

MARTA will also add four miles of light rail from Lindbergh Station to a new train station near Emory along the Clifton Corridor.

The full light-rail system would not be completed until after 2040.

In 2018, MARTA took over the Atlanta Streetcar from the city, which began operations in 2014. The streetcar route currently connects Centennial Olympic Park area to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, with 12 stops between the two attractions.