Shaping safer streets: Propel ATL's advocacy in 2024

Each year we release our annual policy & infrastructure recommendations – what our advocacy efforts will focus on in the year ahead. Here’s what was accomplished through work on the goals in our 2024 agenda and on other issues that arose during the year.

⚠️Boost Atlanta Department of Transportation (ATLDOT) funding to match peer cities

This was the second year in a row that Mayor Andre Dickens’s administration rebuffed calls to increase the Atlanta Department of Transportation budget to better meet community needs.

In 2023, the administration cut the ATLDOT operating budget by more than 12%, reducing operating funds to $50.3 million. City Council added $13 million back into the budget but earmarked it for capital projects. ATLDOT didn’t make use of the funds – because they didn’t have enough personnel to do so and had too large a project backlog. 

And in 2024, Mayor Dickens’ budget included just a 2% increase for ATLDOT operating funds, which didn’t even keep up with inflation. 

 

⚠️Ramp up "Moving Atlanta Forward" and other long-overdue projects

At the end of 2024, just five Moving Atlanta Forward transportation projects had been completed by ATLDOT. 

One was on a corridor we’ve long advocated for: DeKalb Avenue.  

DeKalb Ave: phase 1 “safety improvements” project was finally completed, two years after the ribbon cutting. The project included sidewalk repairs, new ADA curb ramps, three segments of bike/scoot lanes (two physically separated with posts and armadillos), and new signalized pedestrian crossings. 

 

⛅Connect & protect the bike/LIT lane network

Our advocacy for bike/scoot lanes built on the Downtown network we successfully advocated for in 2023. Focus streets included Forsyth St and Memorial Drive. Read on for the improvements added to existing bike/scoot lanes as well as two new facilities.

Forsyth Street 

The Atlanta Downtown Improvement District (ADID) and ATLDOT started construction on a safer street project that added a bike/scoot lane between Memorial Drive and Marietta Street. The project resurfaced Forsyth between Memorial Drive and Peachtree Street, upgraded ADA ramps, lowered the posted speed limit to 25 mph, installed other traffic calming measures in keeping with the City of Atlanta’s Vision Zero goals, and added bike/scoot lanes between Memorial Drive and Marietta Street, separated from car traffic by concrete “wheelstops” and bollards.

Memorial Drive

We advocated for a safer Memorial Drive for years. In summer 2024 we celebrated work starting on a separated two-way bike/scoot lane between Pearl Street in Reynoldstown and Trinity Avenue downtown. Despite the joy of seeing a highly useful new section of the bike/scoot network installed, the project did have some challenges, with permitting issues delaying the project’s completion date. 

Edgewood Avenue

ADID and ATLDOT added flexposts to the bike lane between Fort Street and Park Place. While not a cure-all, the posts better delineate the bike lane and will hopefully reduce drivers parking there. 

 

Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard

ATLDOT, Beltline, and GDOT upgraded the bike lanes and installed ADA ramps. 

Howell Mill

ATLDOT made significant projects on its Complete Streets project with the Upper Westside CID. Originally funded in 2016, this corridor got much closer to the finish line. 

Campbellton Road Rapid Transit project

MARTA shared its 30% design, which included bus lanes with physical separation, but only a line of paint separating the traditional bike lanes from car traffic on this High-Injury Network street. ATLDOT provided feedback calling for a fully separated multi-use trail to replace the painted bike lane. We have been advocating for this design to MARTA for several years and will keep pushing for Campbellton Road to be transformed through MARTA’s project into a corridor safe for people to traverse outside of cars.

10th Street

The Midtown Bike Lane Barrier Mural Project added vibrantly colored protection to replace the flexposts perennially destroyed by drivers. A local artist, Jonesy, was selected by the Atlanta Department of Transportation, in partnership with the City of Atlanta Mayor's Office of Cultural Affairs. 

 

🏆Push the City of Atlanta to officially adopt and implement its Vision Zero Action Plan

In April 2024, ATLDOT released its Action Plan for Vision Zero, a roadmap for ending traffic fatalities in our city. This is a success worth celebrating and a direct result of years of campaigning by Propel ATL to eliminate traffic deaths and serious injuries. We’ve seen the damage and life-altering outcomes crashes inflict. Many of us have been affected personally or lost someone we loved to traffic violence. 

The city’s adoption and implementation of its Vision Zero plan marks the fulfillment of one of Propel ATL’s chief goals of 2024. During the year, three initiatives from the plan were approved: No Turn on Red, Leading Pedestrian Intervals, and an amendment to the World Cup Bond for repaving projects requiring safety improvements and bike lanes be installed on affected streets as well. 

 

No Turn on Red

In February 2024, Atlanta City Council approved legislation prohibiting drivers from turning right on red in three neighborhoods: Downtown, Midtown, and Castleberry Hill. This legislation was a win for safer streets, and the right response to our city’s unnecessary and growing epidemic of vehicle injuries and fatalities.

How Atlanta Passed Its Right-On-Red Ban — Streetsblog USA, by Rebecca Serna and Jason Dozier

 

Leading Pedestrian Intervals 

ATLDOT added more leading pedestrian intervals or “LPIs” to the city’s intersections in 2024. By the end of the year, over 220 traffic signals will receive this simple safety treatment, in addition to the 149 LPIs already in place. 

 

Repaving projects: safety amendment to $120M World Cup Bond

In October 2024, Atlanta City Council approved a $120 Million bond request from the Mayor's Office. Thanks to advocacy efforts led by Propel ATL, the Safe Streets & Transit Coalition, and Atlanta advocates, Councilmembers Matt Westmoreland and Jason Dozier were able to get City Council to approved amendment to the bond that required safe streets, bicycle, and pedestrian safety improvements be made to any streets being resurfaced. 

 

⛅Advocate for frequent and reliable bus service in MARTA redesign: in progress

In 2021, MARTA announced it would update the bus network to reflect the changing reality of where residents live and want to go. The pandemic and its aftermath delayed those efforts. Today, riders still report buses that don’t arrive due to trip cancellations or get stuck in traffic, causing them to miss work and appointments.

In 2024, the MARTA board voted to prioritize more frequent bus routes to minimize wait times to serve more riders. The proposed network also includes more direct routes, on-demand ride service for areas where an existing route may have been cut, and better timing for bus connections. MARTA released a draft of the redesigned bus network to the public in summer 2024. 

We were pleased to see detailed reporting on the impact it would have on improving equity and giving more Atlantans greater access to opportunity and sustainable transportation. In 2025, we’ll keep advocating for more frequent, reliable bus service—ideally, every 15 minutes—fewer canceled trips, and reliable information on bus locations and arrival times. 

 

🏆Make e-bikes more affordable  

Our 2023 agenda called for making e-bikes more affordable for more Atlantans. In 2024, the program launched. The product of years of advocacy by Propel ATL, the e-bike rebate program was funded by the City of Atlanta to provide rebates to people purchasing e-bikes. 

Three-quarters of the funds were set aside for people earning 80% or less of the Atlanta region’s median household income. The program is a partnership of Propel ATL, The Atlanta Regional Commission, and the City of Atlanta. Propel ATL’s role shifted in 2024 from advocacy to implementation, providing bike safety classes, helping organize bike rodeos where applicants could test ride bikes during Atlanta Streets Alive, and conducting neighborhood outreach to spread word about the program and encourage people who would qualify for the larger income-based rebates to apply. 



🏆Keep Five Points open for pedestrians, ADA, and bus riders

In May 2024, our coalition of local leaders, mobility advocates, and transit activists launched a campaign to keep the Five Points MARTA station open to people walking, using wheelchairs and mobility devices, and riding the bus during MARTA's Five Points transformation project. MARTA's construction plan would have posed a significant threat to the utility of our transit system’s central hub, with potential shutdowns lasting anywhere from 1-and-a-half to 4 years. This would have disproportionately impacted Black and Brown Atlantans, low-income riders, and people with disabilities, along with everyone who relies on transit in our region. 

On July 5, 2024, we received the good news: MARTA announced it would pause the project, four weeks after our coalition's letter and three weeks following Mayor Dickens’ request to wait for the audit of the More MARTA funding program to be completed. This was a win for accessibility, for transit riders, and for our city’s commitment to sustainable transportation. Subsequently, the City of Atlanta worked with MARTA to come up with a new construction plan that will maintain pedestrian and ADA access. 



🏆Extend Micromobility Hours

Many Atlantans rely on shared e-scooters and bikes to travel at night due to other kinds of safety concerns, or because of the lack of frequent and reliable transit service. In 2019, Mayor Keisha Bottoms instituted a 9 PM curfew, at which point workers who relied on these devices after 9 PM called for longer hours. In 2022, hours were extended to midnight. 

In 2024 we campaigned successfully to extend the hours for shared dockless devices in Atlanta to more closely match the times when people working in the hospitality industry’s shifts end, getting hours extended to 2 AM. (Before the 2019 curfew, shared dockless devices operated 24/7 in Atlanta.) Together, we will keep pushing for more protected lanes and transit, to make these forms of transportation safer and more prevalent.

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