Around Atlanta’s airport, Beltline-style trail network is on the drawing board

Earlier this year, the City of East Point raised eyebrows when plans emerged for an ambitious, 16-segment trail that would link together major job centers, schools, parks, and the city’s downtown.

Well, multi-use-trail dreams in this part of town just got a whole lot more ambitious.

In the burgeoning “aerotropolis” around Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, a Beltline-like vision has emerged for a trail that would encircle the airport and connect with the patchwork of paths—both existing and future ones—in the south metro, the AJC reports.

The greenway concept is purely hypothetical at this point, and it might sound far-fetched, but it has the backing of officials from Hapeville to Clayton County who foresee it as a mean of increasing connectivity and providing alternate transportation routes.

What’s more, a $200,000 “AeroATL Greenway study” to determine how this web of trials could be developed within five years is now a go.

The Atlanta Regional Commission is footing the bulk of the bill ($160,000), with the rest coming from aerotropolis groups and cities (Hapeville, College Park, East Point, and Forest Park), plus Fulton and Clayton counties and the airport itself, the newspaper reports.

The study—conducted by Atlanta-based firm Sizemore Group—will take place over the next year, the newspaper reports. (See a map of the proposal here.)

One Sizemore Group official told the AJC the “south side of Atlanta has not gotten enough love,” and that a trail system would allow more people to ride bikes to work and transit connections. Especially if it’s linked to greenway plans already in the works, such as Clayton County’s trail master plan and the East Point PATH.

At last check, construction on the East Point PATH’s first segment was set to begin in the third quarter of this year. The goal is to complete nearly 10 miles of multi-use trails there in the next five years.

• Trail network pitched for south Atlanta ‘aerotropolis’ [AJC; subscriber]
• East Point’s ambitious PATH trail plans, in renderings [Curbed Atlanta]