Fresh off the last year’s raves its work on Manhattan’s High Line linear park on an abandoned elevated railroad, New York’s James Corner Field Operations has been hired to design Atlanta’s Beltline. Beltline officials announced today that James Corner will join with the Atlanta office of Perkins + Will, which happens to employ Beltline visionary Ryan [...]

Column by U.S. Rep. John Lewis: Because of its investment in transportation, Georgia was a leader in our region 20 years ago, but today it has fallen behind because it has not advanced a comprehensive statewide and regional transportation plan. Lately, Georgia has not demonstrated that it understands transportation’s potential to create jobs, heighten commercial advantages [...]

Gov. Perdue’s proposed $300 million bond plan for transportation would do little to help metro commuters and even less to give Atlantans alternatives to the automobile. According to this morning’s Atlanta Business Chronicle article breaking down, the plan’s mainly about moving freight through Georgia: … the most expensive project on the governor’s list would spend $121 million [...]

Here’s a provocative argument that draws a link between the issue of climate change and sprawling metro areas like Atlanta. In an interview with Grist, prominent environmental editor Alex Steffen argues that environmental groups are largely ignoring a key battle line in the debate over climate change. Cities sit on one side of that divide and [...]

In a larger piece on taxes, the AJC’s Jay Bookman, offers convincing real-world evidence that Portland’s approach to transit and growth is working better than Atlanta’s: Wendell Cox, a highway advocate and a favorite transportation consultant for Georgia conservatives, argued in the Atlanta Constitution back in 1999 that the Georgia model would prevail. In fact, [...]

Georgia’s failure to obtain anything but crumbs out of $8 billion in high-speed rail grants gives an economic development edge to North Carolina, a state to which we’re often compared. The Tar Heel state grabbed a $545 million portion of the pie, which could eventually lead to high-speed service that links up to Washington, D.C., and [...]

It’s kind of hard to be surprised at a report this evening that the Obama administration has decided to grant only a tiny fraction of $8 billion in high-speed rail stimulus money to Georgia. Georgia legislators have, after all, failed to use previous federal grants for commuter rail and before that for a multimodal station in [...]

The AJC transportation Ariel Hart reporter cites three recent developments as hopeful signs that the metro area finally could be moving toward “regional mass transit, tolerable traffic and less sprawl.” Those three developments: • Gov. Sonny Perdue’s proposal to allow regions to vote whether to add a penny sales tax for transit, roads and other [...]

MARTA’s holding public hearings Monday in Atlanta and Decatur on proposed changes to bus routes 1, 18 and 155. The one-hour meetings start at 7 p.m. and will be held concurrently in the Atlanta City Hall Council Chamber (55 Trinity Ave., Atlanta 30303) and the Decatur City Hall City Commission Room (509 N. McDonough St., Decatur [...]

Atlanta-based United Parcel Service has placed 245 new compressed natural gas trucks in service — the majority in Denver and the rest in four California markets. More in the Atlanta Business Chronicle.