Happy Autumn, Beltlandia! As the weather improves drastically from the endless heat of summer, my leisurely sojourns through the city have experienced an uptick. And what better way to celebrate Fall than to try out Cafe + Velo, Atlanta’s latest coffee shop off Edgewood Avenue! Cafe + Velo is geared towards cycle enthusiasts, a refreshingly new focus for Atlanta coffeehouses. A bike rack sits just outside the cafe, ready to accommodate about ten bikes comfortably. I mostly travel by car or … [Read more...]
Give the Atlanta Streetcar Wings
I’ve been for streetcars on the BeltLine from the get-go, but only because they will run in dedicated guideways. Remove them from that context and run them through our city streets and they’re just another bus stuck in traffic. That a number of the planned 50 miles of streetcar lines will be integrated into already crowded city streets prompts this, my third post in an “upgrade the streetcar” theme. In my last post on the subject, I proposed some upgrades to the hundred-year-old technology … [Read more...]
P3 Could Fast Track Streetcars on the BeltLine
Atlanta’s very first electric streetcar was an entirely private venture. Joel Hurt owned some dirt outside the city that he developed into Inman Park, Atlanta’s first planned subdivision. In 1886 Hurt connected Inman Park to his Equitable Building, Atlanta’s first downtown skyscraper, with a streetcar that ran east and west on Edgewood Avenue. The Atlanta and Edgewood Street Railway Company would claim yet another first as America’s first profitable streetcar line. The era of the … [Read more...]