Beltline Demolition

Posted in Uncategorized by chamblee54 on December 17, 2009

There is a video up at a local blog about the beltline. PG was hiking on a section of this project on Veterans Day, when apparently demolition got started.
The hikers took a break in a restaurant near Inman Park. The word was that the next section of track was going to be overgrown with kudzu and briers. When the boots hit the ground, they found the tracks to be cleared of greenery. A little ways down the path, there was a bobcat clearing out the shrubs.
The beltline is a series of abandoned railroad lines around the core of Atlanta. The plan is to take up the old track and ties, and build hike/bike paths in their place. Eventually, a trolley may run through some of these corridors. There are details yet to be worked out, but the plan is going into action.
Even if it is not a complete unbroken loop, the separate sections would help add life to the city. One of the obstacles to hiking and biking in Atlanta is the hills. The paths in the beltline corridor would all be at one level.
One thing that no one seems to know is the graffiti in the beltline corridor now. Under bridges is usually a fertile ground for guerrilla spraypainters. The land under the Freedom Parkway is especially loaded with concrete imagery. In an ironic touch, where the beltline goes under I 20 is almost devoid of graffiti.
On the Armistice Day hike, there were some urban campers under the Edgewood Avenue bridge. They had been hitching rides on freight trains. When PG was a kid, he was warned about the “hoboes” around the Southern Railroad lines in Brookhaven. The people PG met in November did not bite.
This Saturday, December 19, there is going to be a hike on this part of the beltline property. Starting at 10 am, the crowd will meet behind the Amsterdam Walk shopping center. More details are available here. It is probably going to be muddy.