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The City of Atlanta recently proposed borrowing $120 Million for transportation preparations for the 2026 World Cup games in Atlanta. We're excited for the World Cup to come to Atlanta and we want to be ready. But Mayor Andre Dickens' proposed funding would mostly be to "resurface" streets–patch the surface and put the rest back the way it is.
Instead, let’s rally to make streets safer and more accessible to everyday Atlantans!
We're calling on Atlanta City Council and Mayor Andre Dickens to spend taxpayer dollars wisely by focusing on making it easier to walk, bike, scoot, and ride transit in Downtown Atlanta for the games and beyond. On October 7th, Atlanta City Council voted to temporarily "hold" the legislation, delaying it for two weeks. We're asking for the City to ensure any projects prioritize safety improvements and infrastructure for people walking, biking/scooting, and riding transit and commit to building planned infrastructure projects on any streets that get resurfaced. This will ensure the World Cup games contribute to an Atlanta that is more sustainable, accessible, equitable, and healthy, not more congested, polluted, and exclusive.
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More on the issue
Most people coming to Atlanta for a major event like the World Cup will use public transportation, walking, biking, and scooting to get around. Yet the $120 Million project list includes just $5 Million for sidewalks and ADA ramps. That amount of money doesn’t go far — 2.89 miles of sidewalks and 82 ADA ramps. This in a City under a consent decree for ADA violations that recently settled an ADA lawsuit. What’s more, there are no plans to include planned bike/scoot lanes, despite overlapping with plans to provided safe spaces for people to bike and scoot. For example, there was a “quick-build” project on Whitehall St SW approved and funded by City Council in 2015 but never built.
Our vision for Atlanta is a city everyone can get around safely, easily, and sustainably. To create that city, we need our leaders to put people first when it comes to our streets. One of the core strategies in Atlanta’s Strategic Transportation Plan adopted in 2019 is to “take every opportunity to make streets safer.” The plan recommends incorporating tools to prevent crashes into repaving projects, to prioritize safety. You might remember this was an issue with repaving projects in 2023 when we asked for your help to incorporate bicycle, pedestrian, and transit improvements into the City of Atlanta repaving projects (read more about that effort here).
The Atlanta Department of Transportation has a massive backlog of incomplete projects. When the legislation was first introduced, Councilmembers raised important concerns about the City’s bandwidth to take on a new set of projects when there’s a long backlog of taxpayer-funded promises dating back to 2015, 2016, and 2022. The legislation, 24-O-1483, doesn't even include a project list, just big buckets of money!
Suppose the City of Atlanta pushes forward with repaving streets without making the improvements residents have repeatedly asked and voted for in the name of getting ready for visitors. It will be a missed opportunity to do things right – not only for our guests, but for Atlantans trying to get around the city every day.
Recommendations
The bond legislation did not include information about what projects it would fund, but we were able to learn more about the proposal from a presentation shared on X. We used that information and worked with our Safe Streets & Transit Coalition to come up with recommendations to improve the project list.
This google map includes 3 categories (click on an image for details)
- PURPLE | City's proposed streets for "resurfacing": click on the corridor to see how it overlaps with existing plans to add bike/scoot lanes to the network and for crash data
- BLUE | Proposed changes to those projects
- ORANGE | Proposed additions to fill in gaps in the network
In addition to the recommended street improvements shown above, we are recommending the bond be used to invest in
- crosswalks on streets not being resurfaced
- a new City bike share program that emphasizes equity, access, and affordability
- transit station area and placemaking enhancements
- bus lanes (pending MARTA's bus network redesign being adopted in time)
We also recommend that the City hire consultants to plan and manage this program so as not to hold up any other promised ATLDOT projects.
