Rail in Atlanta

Inner rail loop

Ever notice the grade crossing on Lake Ave in Inman Park? How about the train trestle over Ponce by City Hall East? These are the same string of abondoned tracks. I've had the pipe-dream for ages to run some kind of train from Inman Park, by Ford Lofts and Midtown8/Highlander/Duprees to Piedmont Park using these tracks. A graduate thesis by Ryan Gravel, Mark Arnold and Sarah Edgens developed this idea and much more. This rail is actually part of an egg-shaped loop around the entire city of Atlanta and the right-of-way could be used for light rail and an extension to PATH to tie together lots of neighborhoods around town. Recently there have been a couple of articles about this idea:

Train Spotting

Atlanta was founded by railroads and there are still many opportunities to catch trains in action. Here's some research done by David Jaquay

Atlanta's old streetcar system

Up until the last car ran in 1948, Georgia Power (preceded by a number of other private companies) maintained a few hundred miles of track at road grade. When they finished the transition to track-less trolleys (buses running from suspended power), most of that rail infrastructure was ripped out or paved over. You can still see part of this rail embedded in the street in the middle of intersection of Clifton and Mclendon (the old Route 4: Georgia Ave-Inman Park). I'm sure there are others around town -- anybody know?

Here's what the official Georgia Power guides looked like in the 1940's and here's a scan of the map. Here's the streetcar layout from 1924 and here's a proposal to keep it from bleeding cash.

Transit Groups

There are a number of people working to bring better transit to Atlanta. Citizens for Progressive Transit (CPT)