Mayor Andre Dickens appeared at the MARTA Board of Directors meeting on March 13 to reject the findings of a new spending audit and reprioritize extending the Downtown streetcar to the Atlanta Beltline.
The new audit of the More MARTA capital fund program claims the transit agency only owes $865,630 rather than the $70 million figure in last year’s audit from the City of Atlanta.
The city claimed last year that MARTA overshot its operational budget by $70 million for expansion projects funded by a city sales tax. The city hired accounting firm Mauldin & Jenkins to conduct the audit.
However, the new assessment by KPMG said MARTA only owes the More MARTA capital fund $865,630 as of June 30, 2022.
Dickens rejected the findings of the KPMG report while admitting the city had only had the document in hand for 36 hours.
“What KPMG did was not an audit. It was a review of the allocation process for More MARTA,” Dickens said. “I know it, KPMG knows it, and so does this administration of MARTA. So I reject the financial conclusion in this report and stand by the findings of the original audit.”
Dickens called the “so-called audit” a “slap in the face” to Atlanta taxpayers who are providing the funding through the sales tax. He urged the board to work with the city and stakeholders to resolve differences and move forward.
Dickens also denied that the city was holding up permits to begin work on the renovations of the Five Points Station. He said the permitting process was not connected to the audit issue.
“We are not holding up permits for the Five Points Station project,” Dickens said. “We want this project to move forward and start ASAP. Anyone who has told you that we are holding up any permits is simply lying to you.”
The city’s Chief Operating Officer, LaChandra Burks, said the demolition permit to remove the canopy at the Five Points Station, which is the first phase of the renovation plan, was issued on Thursday.
Dickens also walked back his support for extending the Downtown streetcar along the Eastside Trail and instead voiced support for an extension to the southern portion of the Beltline trail and the transit-oriented development planned for Murphy Crossing.
Later on Thursday, the city issued a press release clarifying its intentions for the streetcar extension, which still includes extending the streetcar to the Eastside Trail as part of “Phase 1 of streetcar/light rail construction.” From the press release:
- Finally connecting Downtown to the Beltline via the Streetcar East Extension via the Streetcar East Extension at grade at Irwin St NE in Phase I of streetcar/light rail construction.
- Advancing the Streetcar West Extension to connect Downtown to AUC and/or Georgia Tech in Phase II.
- Utilizing dedicated ROW [right of way] on the Southside Trail to connect Southwest and Southeast Atlanta with world-class streetcar/light-rail service.
- Accelerating the construction of previous release announced infill stations.
“While heavily debated current public transit plans call for extending the Atlanta Streetcar onto the Eastside Beltline, the Dickens Administration on Thursday said it would reprioritize BeltLine rail construction on the Southside corridor,” Chief Policy Officer and Senior Advisor to the Mayor Courtney English said in the press release. “The City said it also wants to concentrate resources on improving services on the existing streetcar and have it eventually serve the southside portion of the Beltline, connecting to Murphy Crossing.”
Last year, Dickens announced his support for new MARTA infill stations including Murphy Crossing, Krog Street/Hulsey Yard between King Memorial and Inman Park/Reynoldstown, Joseph E. Boone between Ashby and Bankhead, and Armour Yards in Buckhead between Arts Center and Lindbergh.
“I’m a fan of light rail, I always have been, it’s been my interest in it since the very beginning,” Dickens said. “The hope is that one day rail can be put on the Beltline. The short term look at this is: How do we start this process?”
Dickens said he believed the future of the Beltline is going to be multimodal with both light rail and other forms of transit.
Advocacy organization Better Atlanta Transit, which has been an opponent of extending the streetcar to the Eastside Trail, called Dickens’ announcement a “courageous decision.”
“Congratulations to Mayor Dickens for making the wise and courageous decision to defund the expensive, unnecessary and inequitable Streetcar Extension East,” Better Atlanta Transit President Walte Brown said in the statement. “It’s clear that the $3 billion Beltline rail loop would do nothing to address Atlanta’s actual transit needs and that it would detract from the enormous success of the Beltline.”
“The Streetcar Extension would have gobbled up hundreds of millions of precious More MARTA dollars for a rail stub serving primarily wealthy Eastside neighborhoods,” Brown continued. “That money will be better spent on transit TO the Beltline, such as the mayor’s proposed infill stations, and on transit that serves ridership demand in less well-healed neighborhoods, such as the Hollowell Parkway-North Avenue bus rapid transit line.”
Matthew Rao, chairman of the Beltline Rail Now group, said the city’s goal to bring more equity to the Beltline will not be aided by delaying rail on the Eastside Trail.
“The opportunity that exists on one side of that line does not exist on the other today, and delaying connection to the Eastside Trail with a thought of one day connecting the southwest side will not help move the equity needle, not in the short term nor in the long-term,” Rao said in a statement. “The Peachtree Center MARTA station that exists now and can get you to the Beltline in 15 minutes if we adopt reasonable fixes to the Downtown streetcar.”
Rao said to start over again would waste progress and millions of dollars and delay rail transit on the Beltline by a decade.
“It not only represents a delay but also a fabulous waste of money – and a delay in the point when people can access the thousands of jobs, the recreational and health and shopping opportunities that already exist, and are only growing more rapidly in that corridor,” Rao said.
Rao said the city has collected nearly $700 million in taxes over eight years and “it’s time to show progress today and not someday, halfway into the 40-year program.”
This story was updated to include clarifications from the City of Atlanta on its vision for extending the Atlanta Streetcar to the Atlanta Beltline trail.