Fresh Loaf

Just received word about this public meeting. I apologize about the short notice.

Tonight, Neighborhood Planning Units D and G will hold a public meeting to weigh community input about Norfolk Southern and the city’s joint Hollywood Road bridge project. The meeting, which will be held in the Scott Elementary School cafeteria, is from 4:30 to 7:30 p.m.

The shipping company has plans to add an additional rail line into and out of its super-sized rail yard in Northwest Atlanta — considered one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the Southeast. To do so, the Hollywood Road bridge must be widened. New sidewalks and bicycle lanes are proposed as part of the project, which will take several months to complete. A detour route must also be created to handle vehicular traffic during the closing. Tonight’s meeting will touch on all of those subjects.

Word is some residents are also concerned about increased noise, truck traffic and air quality issues surrounding the railroad company’s expansion. If you have any concerns or input, tonight’s the night to speak your mind.

After the jump, the full press release from NPU D and G about the meeting.

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Man, the Beltline can be pretty confusing, huh? So can writing about transit agency disputes.

To put it plainly: The vision of a 22-mile loop of transit, parks and trails is now in jeopardy after the state Department of Transportation and AMTRAK unexpectedly announced they had their own heavy-rail plans for the project’s northeast section along Piedmont Park.

On Wednesday, members of the Beltline Network, a citizen group that supports the project, will meet for a special-called meeting to discuss how to keep the $2.8 billion “Emerald Necklace” — the largest public-works project of its kind in the country — on track.

Liz Coyle, chair of the Beltline Network, writes in an “urgent” e-mail sent yesterday to members (emphasis added for the more civic-minded Fresh Loaf readers who want to get involved):

I am calling a special meeting of the BeltLine Network on this Wednesday, January 28, at 4:30pm at Trees Atlanta, 225 Chester Avenue. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss and strategize a community response to a threat to BeltLine transit. I will provide more details as available at the meeting, but to summarize the situation and get right to the point, AMTRAK has begun condemnation proceedings on the NE Corridor of the BeltLine. This is in response to Norfolk Southern Railroad (NSR), Atlanta BeltLine, Inc. (ABI) and Atlanta Development Authority (ADA) pursuing rail abandonment on the Northeast Corridor (aka the “Decatur Belt”) with the federal Surface Transportation Board (STB), a necessary step to advancing light rail transit in the BeltLine corridor. Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) and AMTRAK have filed Motions to Stay the abandonment proceedings.

More on Coyle’s e-mail and the issues — and questions — surrounding this dispute after the jump.

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This one goes out to all the wonks in the audience.

The Atlanta Regional Commission released its 2008 Freight Mobility Report this afternoon, all 122 whopping pages of it. Lots of interesting aspects to it, including:

• The region is one of the top five logistics hubs in the country — pretty notable judging that we’re landlocked. Atlanta, Dallas and Chicago are the three largest inland distribution centers in the country.
• Lots of tractor trailer operators rarely — or don’t — use the heralded Georgia Navigator system.
• The bottlenecks you’d expect freight operators to gripe about — Spaghetti Junction, Peachtree Road, etc. — are terrible for moving goods and are getting worse. Oh, and Howell Mill Road sucks for truck drivers.
• Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport ranked 10th in the nation and 25th in the world for annual tonnage moved in 2005.
• Heads up, Metro Chamber: “It was noted during stakeholder interviews that shippers are starting to look outside the Atlanta metro region for distribution facilities due to congested conditions. As they do so, Atlanta will retain its competitiveness relative to other areas (such as Macon, Valdosta, Chattanooga and Charlotte) because the region’s advantages outweigh its disadvantages.”

Check it out here. Really thorough report. The ARC board voted today to adopt the recommendations of the report, which include increasing driver education, double-track the rail corridors between Atlanta and Chattanooga and Savannah and Memphis, and eliminate or reduce at-grade crossings at bottlenecks, among others. Lots of suggested infrastructure fixes listed in there, too.

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