Day 2 for the Atlanta’s $98 million streetcar line was a lot like Day 1 — only less so.
The three shiny blue cars were not as crowded as on their inaugural day and were still mostly peopled with metro area residents curious and pleased with the city’s latest venture in public transportation.
“I was expecting more of a crowd,” said Dekarri Earley, an Atlanta resident who parked at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and rode the car with her father and her two sons to Centennial Olympic Park.
City leaders are counting on the streetcar to reinvigorate downtown, broaden the area’s appeal to tourists and spur new development.
It is way too early to gauge the success or failure of that plan, but the city counted 2,144 riders on the streetcar line for its inaugural day Tuesday. However, on one of the busiest nights of the year downtown, street closings for New Year’s Eve festivities meant streetcar service came to an end Wednesday at 6 p.m.
The streetcar’s 2.7 mile loop passes through the heart of downtown, connecting attractions like the King Center and the Sweet Auburn Curb Market with more distant venues like the Georgia Aquarium and the Georgia World Congress Center. With a cluster of hotels located near the center of the route, the streetcar targets tourists, but few seemed to have discovered it so far.
When the Peach Bowl ended Wednesday afternoon, football fans streaming out of the Georgia Dome largely ignored a nearby streetcar. In fact, it was at a standstill for several minutes because of auto and foot traffic around the Centennial Olympic Park.
The streetcar runs on rails embedded in the city’s streets, but it can only move as fast as the non-rail traffic allows.
“It’s a nice ride, but it was a long wait,” said Len Sinclair, a midtown resident who rode the MARTA train downtown to catch the streetcar to the Sweet Auburn market. “We could’ve walked it faster, but it was neat.”
William Holifield, a supervisor at the Residence Inn by Marriott Downtown, said his guests were curious.
“They ask, ‘What is that big blue thing?’” he said. Holifield said hotels in the area are assisting their guests with route information and other helpful facts about the service, including that it is free to ride for the first three months. The Ellis Hotel — which has a stop right across the street from its front entrance — sports a banner welcoming the streetcar.
University of Mississippi freshmen Ally Elliot and Leigh Davis were staying at The Ellis for the Peach Bowl and New Year’s festivities, but they weren’t riding the streetcar.
“We’re using Uber,” Davis said, referring to the popular app-based ride service. “If we were going downtown, we’d probably use it, but we’re going farther out.”
Jason Weir, who works at The Letterbox, a coffee and gift shop downtown, said merchants were disappointed when delays in the streetcar start-up date meant they lost the summer tourist season. But he expects to see some benefits soon, beginning with events at AmericasMart in January.
“In the future, it will be great,” he said.
Some brave tourists did find their way aboard Wednesday. William and Tara Grall, from Iuka, Miss., boarded the streetcar after the Peach Bowl and gave it high marks.
“We’ve done the ‘L’ in Chicago, the Metro in DC. This is pretty neat,” Tara Grall said.
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