To Expand Transit on the Cheap, Cities Explore Infill Stations
In Atlanta, DC, and the Bay Area, transit agencies are building new stops on existing lines to reach neighborhoods that 1960s planners intentionally skipped.
Atlanta’s MARTA trains don’t stop at the city’s hottest new neighborhoods around the BeltLine. That may soon change.
Photographer: Alex Tai/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
Few places in the US embody the urban planning ideal of “infill development” as vividly as the neighborhoods surrounding the Atlanta BeltLine, the linear park project that is gradually transforming a freight-rail-corridor into a recreational trail that encircles the city.
Near Krog Street, on the east side of the city, former industrial areas now host apartment buildings and ground-floor restaurants filled with new residents lured by the nearby walking and biking amenities. But high-quality transit is still missing from the picture. Though the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority tracks fly directly overhead, this part of the BeltLine is inconveniently located halfway between the rapid transit system’s stations, roughly three quarters of a mile away in either direction.