Atlanta received $2.8M in federal funds to expand the Atlanta Streetcar system, connecting light rail to the Georgia State campus, the Atlanta University Center and the Atlanta Westside Beltline.
The Atlanta Streetcar Downtown Crosstown Extension project is a partnership with MARTA, which owns the streetcar, and the Atlanta Beltline. The money will also be used for an engineering investigation for eastern expansion onto Ponce de Leon Avenue.
The city’s economic agency, Invest Atlanta, is also putting up $700,000 for the engineering and design work.
All told, $3.5 million will go into the project, which is expected to begin by 2025.
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The funds come six months after the MARTA Board of Directors approved a timeline for the agency's $2.7 billion expansion in Atlanta. MARTA approved the project expansion list in 2018.
The transit agency plans 29 miles of smaller and less expensive light rail in Atlanta. In addition to the planned expansions onto the Atlanta Beltline, MARTA will add light rail service along Campbellton Road between Oakland City Station and Greenbriar Mall.
MARTA will also add four miles of light rail from Lindbergh Station to a new train station near Emory along the Clifton Corridor.
The full light-rail system would not be completed until after 2040.
In 2018, MARTA took over the Atlanta Streetcar, which has been operating since 2014 and running on a 2.7-mile loop. It connects Centennial Olympic Park area to the Martin Luther King Jr. National Historic Site, with 12 stops along the route between the two attractions.
— Staff writer David Wickert contributed to this report.
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