Fresh Loaf

Atlanta City Councilwoman Anne Fauver recently voted against a study to help make the Peachtree Streetcar project eligible for federal stimulus funding. She says the Beltline is better positioned for federal funds, questions the streetcar’s scope, and wonders who will maintain the estimated $120 million project if it’s built.

On July 20, the Midtown and Downtown business associations offered the City a $600,000 grant to do a feasibility study on a streetcar line along Atlanta’s famed Peachtree Street and to prepare the City’s application for $300 million of stimulus money.

I voted against the legislation to accept the grant. It passed 11-3 so the feasibility study and the application for Federal money will be done. My position is based on the following:

The Franklin Administration asked for the legislation to be fast-tracked. Council had not had a work session or public hearing on the project. We never specifically endorsed the Streetcar proposal. The Streetcar is not THE top priority in Connect Atlanta, the City’s first comprehensive transportation plan either.

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The Atlanta City Council yesterday approved a deal that could once again see streetcars running along Peachtree.

The Midtown Alliance and Central Atlanta Progress have offered up to $600,000 for MARTA to study the streetcar project, which last year was placed on hold after the city realized its budget woes.

Yesterday’s deal also allows officials to determine if the project could compete for up to $300 million in federal transportation stimulus cash. According to City Council President Lisa Borders’ mayoral campaign website, streetcars could become a reality in five years.

The $1 billion streetcar project, which includes new parks and streetscapes along the streetcar route, proposes connecting Fort McPherson to Buckhead. The first phase eyed for implementation — estimated at $120 million before the market tanked — would connect Midtown to downtown and include an east-west tourist loop stretching from the King Center to Centennial Olympic Park.

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1. Atlanta’s doin’ it and lovin’ it, says Trojan study (We’re No. 1 in the nation for sexual satisfaction and No. 2 for frequency of sex. Yeah, right.)

2. Washington City Paper’s Marion Barry story = gold (Speaking of surprising sex stories, the City Paper’s doozie on former mayor Barry was such a hit it crashed the paper’s website. What do you expect from the headline: “He put me out in Denver ’cause I wouldn’t suck his dick”?)

3. Filthy Rich: Best of Atlanta 2009 kicks off today (There are 18 days left to vote for the city’s best bands, restaurants, galleries, music venues, artists, shops and cultural attractions.)

4. Peachtree Streetcar vision isn’t dead yet (But it ain’t exactly called desire.)

5. GDOT, Beltline strike deal on vital track segments (City now controls roughly half of the right of way along the Beltline’s 22-mile loop.)

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A couple of years ago, it really seemed like the Peachtree Streetcar was gonna happen.

The studies were completed and it seemed like everything was in place to connect Fort McPherson and Buckhead with a nearly $1 billion street-level transit system.

The first phase of that vision — 10 miles of track from Woodruff Arts Center to Memorial Drive, with a downtown tourist loop — was nearly ready to go. All the initiative needed was a special tax district along Atlanta’s most famous corridor, a Legislature-approved parking tax, and everyone to exercise patience during construction.

But then the city reported its shortfall and the economy cratered. The streetcar concept was placed on the backburner, where’s it sat for months. Ask any transit wonk at panel discussions or community meetings about the project, and they’d tell you that the vision was there but the money was not.

Maria Saporta reports however that the City of Atlanta, MARTA, Midtown Alliance and Central Atlanta Progress are coming together to apply for federal transportation dollars to fund some of the project.

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SPY VS. PIE: The AP reports that Julia Child left a career as a WWII-era spy to become a chef; Child is one of several well-known Americans whose previously secret spy career was revealed this morning, as the personnel files of the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services were declassified.

SHOOTING: The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party is dead after a recently fired Target employee mysteriously drove more than 30 miles to Little Rock and shot him.

LANIER: Georgia officials asked SCOTUS this morning to overturn a February appeals-court ruling requiring congressional approval for the state to take more water from Lake Lanier to quench Atlanta’s growing thirst.

STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE: The NYT reports on the resurgent popularity of streetcars in at least 40 U.S. downtowns such as Cincinnati, New Orleans, Houston and Charlotte. Not mentioned: Atlanta’s distant visions for the Beltline and Peachtree Street streetcar.

SACS: The accrediting agency is in Clayton County today, part of its review to determine whether the school system will be the first since 1969 to have its accreditation revoked.

SCRATCH PAPER: Cox Newspapers is selling all but three of its newspapers.

RESCUE 911: The recent death of a Johns Creek woman highlights problems in the Fulton County emergency services, as the 911 operator who sent emergency crews 30 miles in the wrong direction had a long history of such routing mistakes. She also repeatedly was disciplined for sleeping on the job, chronic tardiness and fighting with co-workers, and records show her behavior wasn’t uncommon in the department.

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The push to make the Peachtree streetcar a reality continued its monthlong PR campaign Wednesday night just blocks from the very thoroughfare it promises to transform. A group of nearly 70 residents, business owners and students gathered around tables in one of AT&T’s mid-rise buildings on West Peachtree Street to not only hear details about the transit project, but lob criticisms as well.

Although most in attendance support the idea — even jokingly begging planners to start laying down track immediately — the biggest hurdle the effort must overcome is the funding strategy project leaders say will cover 75 percent of the $190 million cost.

That strategy — a tax hike on commercial and multifamily residential properties along the streetcar’s route — raises questions about how willing property owners will be to pay for the people mover.

Ray Christman, a former president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, is leading the project and says that after taxes, the owner of a $300,000 condo would really be paying $108-$252 a year, or 30 cents-69 cents a day. He also said project planners would push for an incentive program in which residents along the streetcar route could ride for free.

Streetcar advocates have been priming Atlanta City Council to consider the project early in March. The Council would have to approve that the tax district be drawn along the streetcar route. The General Assembly would have to pass legislation enabling the city to impose a parking tax. Christman says the state has “other issues more pressing” on its agenda at this moment, and the project’s advocates are not lobbying for such a move during the current legislative session.

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Early this week, Gov. Perdue used his veto pen to erase a $40 million state grant to the Peachtree corridor project — the proposal to overhaul Atlanta’s signature street into a world-class thoroughfare with streetcars.

While Councilwoman Clair Muller, chairwoman of Atlanta City Council’s Transportation Committee, is “disappointed” by this particular episode of Sonny Did, she says it’s not a crippling setback for the project.

For starters, she explains, the city hasn’t yet settled on exactly what kind of public transit it needs for the corridor, which would stretch from the Buckhead malls through downtown and south to Fort McPherson. Streetcars were favored by the mayor’s Peachtree Corridor Task Force, but Muller says the city hasn’t yet committed to that recommendation and may still consider “rubber-wheeled trolleys” — less expensive than streetcars, but more appealing than MARTA buses.

The city also hasn’t figured out exactly what kind of funding mechanism to use for the project — perhaps a special tax district — Muller notes. Until such decisions get finalized, Muller says, state grants amount to seed money and may be a bit premature.

Undeterred by the governor’s veto, Mayor Franklin named a new “Peachtree Corridor Partnership” charged with figuring out the details of the corridor project, which is estimated to cost $1 billion.

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I spent a wonderful week in Dublin, Ireland, and one of the more interesting experiences was riding on the LUAS (Irish for “speed”) tram the city debuted in 2004.

The two tram lines, which run every four minutes down the center of Dublin, are clean and efficient and relatively inexpensive to ride (1.25 euros). Most importantly, they actually go places people want to go on streets that are dedicated to the tram – they even have to obey traffic signals.

The system – which totals a modest 23 kilometers — cost 700 million euros, which was three times the original cost estimate. But it still seems like a steal. In 2005, the tram carried 22 million passengers; in 2006, that rose to 26 million — an average of 80,000 passengers a day. By comparison, MARTA trains had 69.2 million passengers in 2006 and 47.6 miles of tracks.

The trams run on electricity, and give an idea of what could be in Atlanta with the Peachtree Street streetcar system proposed by Mayor Shirley Franklin and for the Beltline.

On the flight over, I read the April 16 issue of the New Yorker, which featured a story on “the soul of the commuter” and a long section on Atlanta.

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For some strange reason people in this metro love to brag about how scared MARTA makes them. I suspect many of these people are the same ones with “No Fear” stickers on their trucks.

– Joe Winter at Joeventures.com, quoting a regular MARTA user. Joe has blogged extensively about the Peachtree Street streetcar proposal. He serves on the board of Citizens For Progressive Transit.

South Carolina’s beating us up and taking our lunch money. Not because they’re better, but because they’re thinking more progressively.

– Button Gwinnett at Liberal Lucidity, on how biofuels are far more widely available to consumers in South Carolina than they are in Georgia. According to environmental attorney Scott Hitch, there are 50 retail outlets for biofuels in South Carolina, but only three in Georgia.

Incidentally, I’ve shopped at two of the three in Georgia. Refuel Biodiesel sells biodiesel made from recycled cooking oil and is located in Cabbagetown.

S.A. White is adjacent to Dobbins AFB and sells biodiesel made from rendered chicken fat.

I think he was surprised that I recognized him, considering my line of work. He was even more surprised that I didn’t recognize his dinner companion.

“Would you like to meet Bob Gibson?” he asked, not knowing I was a huge baseball fan. It was cordial and brief, but it meant a lot to me.

– ATLMalcontent fondly remembers meeting journalist David Halberstam while working as a parking valet. Halberstam died Monday in a car accident.

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First he tried to block the Beltline, the wildly popular urban-renewal project that eventually will put a loop of light rail, parks and trails around intown Atlanta.

Now John Sherman has it out for the proposed Peachtree Street streetcar, the pros and cons of which I wrote about earlier this month. And he’s using the same argument — namely that taxpayers, not the government, should be the ones to green-light the project — this time around.

I described the following scenario in the April 4 article, meaning I should have seen Sherman’s streetcar antipathy coming:

Of course, the streetcar does face some significant hurdles. As currently proposed, the project would be funded in large part with a new tax on property owners in the corridor — a concept that could meet opposition.

Then the AJC reported last week that the opposition, headed by Sherman, had surfaced:

John Sherman, president of the Fulton County Taxpayers Association, says it would be unfair to tax the property owners along the Peachtree corridor to help pay for the $1 billion project without a referendum.

“It’s taxation without representation,” he said. “It’s why we revolted against England.”

Back in March, when I talked to Sherman about his issues with the Beltline, he said he had nothing against the Beltline itself — only that property owners should be the ones approving the $1.7 billion in future tax revenue that will help fund it. (The other half of the Beltline’s cost would come from private donations and federal funds.)

“Greater transparency is needed, and less hype,” he told me. “I think the taxpayers should have some kind of voice in this.”

Some think Sherman is a rabble rouser who’s standing up against worthy and well-supported causes in order to make a name for himself. If so, at least he’s consistent.

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