Topline: The third time’s the charm — unless the first two times were already perfect.
Atlanta residents already had two options for traveling between Centennial Olympic Park and the Martin Luther King Jr. Center. They could walk or take the subway.
Yet in 2010, the government spent $72 million to add streetcar service to the exact same 2.6-mile path. The money would be worth $104 million today.
That’s according to the “Wastebook” reporting published by the late U.S. Senator Dr. Tom Coburn. For years, these reports shined a white-hot spotlight on federal frauds and taxpayer abuses.
Coburn, the legendary U.S. Senator from Oklahoma, earned the nickname “Dr. No” by stopping thousands of pork-barrel projects using the Senate rules. Projects that he couldn’t stop, Coburn included in his oversight reports.
Coburn’s Wastebook 2010 included 100 examples of outrageous spending worth more than $11.5 billion, including Atlanta’s unneeded transport system.
Key facts: The project was paid for with $47.6 million of federal stimulus funds and $24.4 million from the City of Atlanta.
It’s unclear what encouraged federal officials to pick Atlanta’s grant application out of hundreds of others. City planners reviewed 40 proposed mass transit projects and ranked the streetcars dead last in half of the categories that measure impact. Not to mention that a trolley line and bus service in the same area had already been closed due to low demand.
The $72 million would have been nearly enough to clear the backlog of needed sidewalk repairs for the entire city of Atlanta, according to budget documents from the time. It also could have fixed the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s $69 million budget deficit, which forced it to increase train wait times by five minutes.
The city claimed the streetcars would pay for themselves by raising property values in the area. Opponents interviewed by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the project a “government trainwreck” and an “expensive downtown pipe dream.”
Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com.
Summary: Today, Atlanta’s tourism website notes that most destinations near the streetcar are walkable, but it’s still fun to “hop on and off when something strikes your fancy.” That’s not enough to justify millions of dollars in spending.
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