City is pushing for improved pedestrian, bike connectivity in SW Atlanta, ‘Airport City’

City officials are taking a close look at how to best boost pedestrian and bicycle connectivity on and around some of Atlanta’s most chronically dangerous streets.

The City of Atlanta announced Tuesday a feasibility study is moving forward “to plan and improve pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure and 1.4-mile connectivity trails linking the commercial corridors between Campbellton Road and Cascade Heights,” according to a press release.

Campbellton Road and Cascade Heights’s Cascade Road are both part of Atlanta’s High-Injury Network, a list of city streets with disproportionately higher rates of accidents and fatalities.

“This initiative will begin the process of connecting the City of Atlanta to surrounding cities and the world’s busiest airport by way of greenway,” District 11 Councilwoman Marci Collier Overstreet, who introduced the legislation, stated in the release.

The move comes on the heels of Atlanta City Council’s adoption of a resolution that makes the city a participating jurisdiction in the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Livable Centers Initiative feasibility study grant for the development of the Aerotropolis Greenway.

The Atlanta Aerotropolis Alliance—or AeroATL, for short—was formed in 2015 in an effort to enliven the neighborhoods wrapped around the world’s busiest airport, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International.

The Greenway project is expected to one day create a web of some 200 miles of multi-use trails around the airport.

The feasibility study will assess, among other things, how to create one of the “model miles” for the Greenway, connecting the Cascade Business District with Campbellton Road and its planned light rail transit line outlined in the More MARTA program.

City of Atlanta