Beltline rail is an expensive and unwise distraction for Atlanta

I would make a terrible politician, and I may have again proved this to myself on Sept. 21.

I attended the Atlanta City Council meeting, for the first time since I moved to Atlanta 42 years ago, to highlight the economics of the proposed Beltline rail project using data included in the recently released Beltline Transit Study. Despite all the facts and figures I had with me, the Atlanta City Council unanimously passed a resolution endorsing the project.

It is normal that if you are planning to go out for dinner, you first set a per-person budget for what you are ready to spend and then look for choices. If your budget is $30 per person, you would not be looking at restaurants costing $120 per person.

The same principle should apply when deciding what kind of services the city should invest in: a limo ride every morning for every citizen at $50 each, or transit and buses costing the city $8 to $12 per ride. The first is inherently elitist, as it cannot be scaled up without making us bankrupt; the second is fair, equitable and extendable to more citizens in different corners of our city.

Making decisions based on data is probably one of the most widely accepted pieces of advice that we give and receive, so I have prepared the data that was missing at the City Council meeting.

The numbers used are drawn from the Beltline Transit Study, as well as operating cost data for MARTA from its annual NTD Data filings with the Federal Transit Administration. All data and calculations that follow can be readily traced and verified in the AJC.

Rail costs per rider far exceed those of a bus

In the transit study released on Sept. 3, the much-hyped rail on the Beltline is estimated to cost Atlantans $3.5 billion in capital needs and, as a standalone project, will have ridership at the level of 1.9 million rides per year.

Amortizing this capital cost over 50 years at a 4% interest rate, a more favorable calculation than the FTA allows, the capital cost alone per ride will be $86.

The operating cost of the Beltline Rail was, for unknown reasons, not provided in the study, but it can be extrapolated from MARTA’s Streetcar NTD filings.

The total operating costs for the 22-mile loop will exceed $66 million annually, or $35 per ride, since the Atlanta Streetcar operating costs are $6.3 million annually and the Beltline Rail is 10.5 times bigger.

In the transit study released on Sept. 3, the much-hyped rail on the Beltline is estimated to cost Atlantans $3.5 billion in capital needs and, as a standalone project, will have ridership at the level of 1.9 million rides per year.

Amortizing this capital cost over 50 years at a 4% interest rate, a more favorable calculation than the FTA allows, the capital cost alone per ride will be $86.

The operating cost of the Beltline Rail was, for unknown reasons, not provided in the study, but it can be extrapolated from MARTA’s Streetcar NTD filings.

The total operating costs for the 22-mile loop will exceed $66 million annually, or $35 per ride, since the Atlanta Streetcar operating costs are $6.3 million annually and the Beltline Rail is 10.5 times bigger.

Adding the capital cost allocation ($86) and operating cost allocations ($35) together, the total cost per ride on the Beltline rail will be $121. The equivalent cost of a ride on a new electric bus in Atlanta would be around $11, made up of $9.50 per ride of operating and $1.50 per ride of capital costs. This means that for every one ride provided on the rail, 10 other transit rides would have been effectively defunded, assuming there is always more demand for transit than budgets.

I hope that each city council member would take time to study the calculations and reflect if in retrospect, they can justify voting for a further study of a mode of transit that is tenfold more costly than the alternative.

Is this mission creep for MARTA?

The Atlanta Beltline surprisingly included a second major new rail project into the Beltline Rail Study. Under this idea, MARTA would spend $1.3 billion on new heavy-rail lines, over and above the $3.5 billion Beltline rail costs, to bring people to the Beltline. The assumption is that those riders would transfer to rail to complete their trip from A to B.

The study estimates that this heavy-rail extension could boost the ridership on the Beltline Rail to 4.2 million rides from the 1.9 million rides without it. There are numerous challenges with this line of thinking, including the fact that MARTA is an independent corporation responsible for transit throughout metro Atlanta, and pursuing such an extension may conflict with MARTA’s primary commitments and priorities.