Cox head honcho blasts Beltline rail as ‘pollutive, antiquated’ concept

Despite backroom decisions a year ago that effectively ended progress on years-long efforts to bring light rail to the Atlanta Beltline’s Eastside Trail, transit advocates have remained adamant that a fixed system on rails is the best path forward. 

As one example, transit advocacy group Beltline Rail Now issued a letter in October demanding the city move the full Eastside streetcar extension forward, while also commissioning finalized plans for the Southside Beltline’s segment and committing to funding the full 22-mile loop. Speaking with Atlanta Community Press Collective that same month, Beltline visionary Ryan Gravel extolled the virtues of a fixed-rail system, noting: “It’s safer for pedestrians and bicyclists, and other people. It is more permeable in the ground, and it can be a grass track. It feels like a park, just with a train going through.”

But now, a naysayer in a considerably high place—as Atlanta power structures go—has a different take entirely. 

In an op-ed published today on AJC.com, Alex Taylor, the chairman and CEO of Cox Enterprises, blasts Beltline rail as a “pollutive, antiquated” concept that threatens to wreck many attributes of the world-renowned, urban-reclamation project today. Taylor is also a board member with the trail-building PATH Foundation and major philanthropists James M. Cox Foundation.

Based in Sandy Springs, Cox, the AJC’s parent company and a global conglomerate, was founded in 1898 and today counts north of 50,000 employees and $23 billion in total revenue, according to Forbes. It was also an early investor in the Beltline, pumping money into Eastside Trail construction.

Taylor’s letter, titled “Future of Atlanta Beltline hangs in the balance. Trains are not the answer,” posits that the city has reached a crucial junction, akin to the outset of the 1996 Olympics, Ted Turner’s launch of CNN, and the opening of Atlanta’s airport, the world’s busiest. He calls the Beltline “the most ambitious redevelopment project ever conceived in Atlanta, or any major American city,” and notes its completion is on the horizon. 

But adding rail transit to what the Beltline has become runs the risk “of screwing it up” with an “antiquated view of transit and mobility” and a system that operates with “more than $3 billion of concrete and steel,” in Taylor’s estimation.   

Taylor points to “a revolution in mobility, electrification, and the need for environmental stewardship” and says the need for the Beltline’s original combination of trails and rails has changed over the past 27 years, since Gravel originally conceptualized it. 

Given Atlanta Regional Commission estimates that Beltline transit, by the year 2050, would count 21,200 boardings per workday, Taylor does the following math: 

“… we could create an autonomous electric vehicle network of charging stations for $50 million to 100 million, buy 1,000 Rivians (or your favorite EV, depending on your flavor) for $50 million to $100 million, create jobs for all those drivers and subsidize the transport for all those passengers for a grand total of $300 million. That’s more than a 90 percent discount to rail and a dramatic passenger enhancement.”

Livability, health, and wellness would be marred by what Taylor estimates to be 5 billion pounds of carbon-spewing concrete for Beltline rail. EVs would cut the carbon footprint by up to three times per passenger, he posits. 

That MARTA would operate the Beltline light-rail transit system would leave “more than a few question marks,” according to Taylor. He points to Jacksonville’s $65-million autonomous vehicle system as a “great success,” noting: “It is where the industry is headed.”

Feel free, dear Atlantans, to offer rebuttals in the comments section. 

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