Jane's Walk in Downtown Atlanta

I can't even remember how I found out about it; it might have been an email from the local Congress for the New Urbanism chapter, or maybe I saw it on Facebook.  CNU Atlanta, along with PEDS, was hosting a Jane's Walk on May 7.  I had never heard of Jane's Walk, but I had heard of Jane Jacobs, the influential author and advocate for livable cities.  (Just before I sat down to write this, I looked for my copy of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, but I couldn't find it; it is probably at the bottom of one of the large piles of books next to my bed.)  Jane Jacobs identified the things about cities and neighborhoods that makes them good places to be -- things like diversity of use, older buildings, small blocks, and population density.  The group behind Jane's Walks (more about them in a minute) have a nice overview of her life and her work on their website, or you can look at the graphic version from artist James Gulliver Hancock -- it's pretty much all there.

Jane Jacobs lived in New York City and later in Toronto.  After her death in 2006, friends and colleagues in Toronto started Jane's Walks to honor her ideas and her legacy.  What is a Jane's Walk?  Here's what is on the Jane's Walk website:

Jane’s Walks are free, locally organized walking tours, in which people get together to explore, talk about and celebrate their neighbourhoods. Where more traditional tours are a bit like walking lectures, a Jane’s Walk is more of a walking conversation. Leaders share their knowledge, but also encourage discussion and participation among the walkers.

Iain and I rode MARTA to Woodruff Park, where we met up with the group.  The walk's leader, Candler Vinson, was late (he was stuck on MARTA, someone announced) so there was some waiting around before we got started.  One woman had brought her copy of The Death and Life of Great American Cities.  It was worn with many Post-It notes marking pages.  Someone handed out a sheet with the Jane Jacobs graphic printed on it,  While we waited we checked out the concrete ping-pong table in the park.

Once Candler Vinson got there, we headed east on Auburn Avenue, and our first stop was across the street from the Atlanta Daily World Building.  One of our several enthusiastic narrators told the story of how the building -- damaged in the 2008 tornado -- was proposed for demolition by a developer.  That didn't happen and another developer purchased the building and renovated it for commercial use on the first floor and apartments above.  Somehow I did not take picture of it (I think it was in the shade) but there are photos at the link above.  There's now a coffee shop and a juice place on the first floor.  What I did take a picture of at this stop was the person with the microphone who I think is Darin Givens while Terry Kearns took a picture of the crowd.

We continued on to Piedmont where we stopped and talked about what we'd seen.  The thing that had struck me the most was how much of the area was taken up with parking decks.  There were more places to park, I think, than things to do once you got there.  Sally Flocks from PEDS talked about how all the four lane one way streets created more road capacity than almost any city needed.  At one point along our route the sidewalk was nearly completely blocked by a large sign for motorists telling them a lane was closed ahead.  And there was discussion about how Georgia State had been really good for downtown, by putting lots of students there (not so much for all the parking decks, though.)

On Ellis Street we stopped across the street from the newly renovated Atlanta Legal Aid building, now named for our neighbor Steve Gottlieb.  It's a beautiful building, but it's nearly completely surrounded by parking.

After that we crossed Peachtree and continued on Carnegie Way.  I think that is where I got this photo of the iconic Portman-style skybridges that sucked people off the street in a very non-Jane Jacobs kind of way.  On the Jane's Walk website, that's Jane Jacobs' Big Idea number 1, "eyes on the street."  The difference between a street that feels safe and a street that doesn't feel safe is people -- people going to and from work or school, out for a bite to eat, or out to shop, or to visit friends, and anything that diverts people from the street makes the street feel less safe, and if it feels less safe, people are even more likely to avoid it.

Our next stop was Walton Spring Park.  On Google Maps, the park is green, and there is some green there, with trees creating a pleasant shaded area on the sidewalks surrounding the park.  

The park itself, not so much.  It is a bare, unshaded granite plaza with benches that appeared to be used only by homeless people.

Looking at these pictures and remembering what it was like to be there that afternoon, one does have to wonder who thought this was a good idea.  Central Atlanta Progress and the City of Atlanta and some other people did this on purpose in 2008, to honor Andrew Young.  It seems like it might have been even more of an honor if they had designed a park that people actually wanted to be in.  

From there we headed southwest on Ted Turner Drive and then back southeast, but I am not sure what street this was on but I stopped to take a picture of it.

Our next stop was the Fairlie-Poplar District, which I have heard of for years but don't think I had ever visited.  It was very pleasant, with narrow shady streets, small buildings from the 19th and early 20th century, and several appealing-looking restaurants and bars at street level, with what appeared to be residential floors above.  Big Idea number 3 is "the generators of diversity" that help make the city "diverse, safe, social, convenient, and economically vibrant" -- mixed uses, aged buildings, small blocks, and population density.

From there we headed back southwest on Forsyth Street.  I think this is where I took this picture, where clearly the city is trying to do something about the overly wide streets.

We continued on Forsyth and went by the Atlanta Journal Constitution building at the corner of Forsyth and Marietta.  I am sorry that the picture is better of the fence than it is of the building.  It is a weirdly compelling sight, with trees growing from various surfaces; this photograph does not do it justice.  The building is definitely ruin porn material; I just didn't take a good picture of it.

We stopped at the Federal office complex, where there was a pleasant shady green space.  Thousands of Federal workers have their offices there, but apparently they park their cars in their parking deck, go to work, have lunch at the cafeteria in the building, work some more and then go home, and the nearby commercial areas don't benefit particularly by their presence.

We headed back southeast on Martin Luther King Jr Drive, and stopped at Broad Street, which the Goat Farm team has been trying to catalyze as a downtown arts district.  I would have liked to walk around and explore but we kept moving; I guess I will have to come back.

From there we headed past the Fulton County Government Center and then back to the northeast.  We ended up at Underground Atlanta, where one of our speakers made the point about the hazards of having the place in the hands of a single owner, where whatever you do it's a really big investment, and if it fails (as has happened several times at Underground) it fails big, instead of one-building-at-a-time investment and experimentation.  That's Big Idea number 7, "make many little plans" and Big Idea number 8, "gradual money."  

The diversity of a good neighborhood can only be achieved when we allow many different people to pursue their own little plans, individually and collectively.

Both diverse little plans and new kinds of work require diverse little sources of money available on an ongoing basis.  Unfortunately, both public and private sources often only provide money floods and droughts instead.

Iain and I agreed that it was an interesting way to spend a Sunday afternoon.  So many neighborhoods with great old buildings that could be special, if we renovated them instead of knocking them down to build parking decks.  I found the thing I always find when I travel by foot or by bike through parts of town I knew only by car, that things are much closer together than I thought.  From the point of view of distance, it was definitely walkable, even if the walking wasn't necessarily pleasant with obstructions on sidewalks and so little interesting to look at in some places.  And finally, the overwhelming sense that for downtown to be radically better, we have to have more people there without their cars.

On the way home we (well, make that "I" - this was more me than Iain) got impatient and frustrated with MARTA -- a bus was supposed to be coming, but it didn't, and then we were going to take the train but none were showing up on the electronic board, and then the next bus didn't show up on One Bus Away and wasn't moving on MARTA's real time map.  So we booked an Uber ride home.  As soon as we did that, of course our bus appeared.  

Sleeping Through the Night

We got our dog Leonard from Atlanta Lab Rescue in July 2014.  He was a terribly anxious dog when we got him but time and Prozac helped.  He settled into our household pretty well and life with Leonard had been mostly uneventful.  Then the last time we took him to the vet, she suggested that we try to taper him off the fluoxetine (generic for Prozac) and see how he did.  So we took him down to every other day, and then we missed a couple of doses and figured we'd just see how he was altogether off of it.

He's always been terrified of storms, but unless the weather is bad, he's slept downstairs in the living room by himself.  Bullwinkle, our previous dog, couldn't climb the stairs in our house, but Leonard could.  When we first got him and didn't completely know what to expect, we'd barricaded the stairs with a piece of plywood that we had to step over and that mostly kept Leonard downstairs.  But then after we stopped the fluoxetine, he started waking up at night at 1:30 or 2 a.m. almost every night, and either hurtling himself over the barricade and coming upstairs, or barking until one of us got up.  We restarted the fluoxetine, but it didn't seem to really help that much.  For the last couple of months, almost every night either Tom or I has spent much if not all of the night on the sofa, keeping Leonard company.

This was not going to work in the long run, so on Thursday we had a session with a dog trainer, recommended by Intown Animal Hospital.  We told him about Leonard and what we knew about his life before we got him and what has happened in our household, and stopping the Prozac and the waking at night and how now we were taking turns keeping him from keeping everyone awake all night.  The trainer listened to all this and then looked at us and said, "Why can't he go upstairs?"

Now there was not any particularly good reason why he couldn't go upstairs; when we'd first gotten him, we hadn't known how he would behave in the house, so it made sense then, maybe, but not so much now.  He does eat loose paper that he finds on the floor, but it's been almost two years and that's probably long enough even for us to get the papers picked up.  So night before last I took away the barricade and called him to come upstairs.  He explored a little but ended up falling asleep downstairs as usual.  I put his smaller bed in the family room upstairs where I thought a dog might want to sleep, and I went to bed.

Around 2 a.m. he came upstairs and jumped on our bed.  I got him off the bed, and he settled down pretty quickly in the hallway.  He woke up a couple of times and after wandering around a little quickly went back to sleep, on the floor in the hall between our and Iain's rooms.  That's where he was, sound asleep, when I got up yesterday morning.

Last night I moved the bed to the hall where he'd slept the night before, but I think he stayed downstairs all night.  He didn't make a sound.

A Saturday Morning Bike Ride

Yesterday morning I went on a bike ride by myself.  Since he got his bicycle, Tom has usually come with me, but he didn't yesterday morning, so I could stop and look at things that usually we just ride by.  Here is what I saw.

I rode into the Piedmont Park extension, across Monroe, and over the wooden bridge that goes across Clear Creek, which runs behind Ansley Mall and eventually joins (or perhaps becomes) the South Fork of Peachtree Creek.  Although it may be less polluted than it used to be, as the city has been forced to address storm sewer overflow issues, it still sometimes smells of sewage.  There are signs that say no fishing and no wading.  So it's always a surprise to see wildlife there.  Looking north from the bridge, there was a pair of ducks.

Once I was through Piedmont Park and back across Monroe, there was the ghost bike in memory of the Grady High School student riding her bike home following a school theater performance who was struck by a car and killed in February.  I've ridden by here a number of times but had not stopped before.  Near the ghost bike there's a memorial to Alexia.

Continuing south on the Eastside Trail, there are koi painted on the trail.  I know the Beltline people are fanatical about unauthorized art, but I really like these.  I think the same artist has painted koi on the sidewalks on Edgewood; I probably have pictures from there, too.

In Inman Park, there was a new tiny door I hadn't seen, from TinyDoorsATL.  

And one of the old tiny doors has been relocated.  This is the one at the overpass near the skate park.

Coming back across Clear Creek, looking south this time, there were these turtles sunning themselves on a partially submerged log.

And finally, on that long uphill stretch of Cumberland Road, I stopped at the Little Free Library.  There was a Post-It note on the door, saying the books were all new as of April 16.  I looked, and somewhat to my surprise found (along with the expected popular fiction) a copy of Balzac's Old Goriot and Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.  What a great neighborhood.

You miss a lot, if you don't stop to look.

Atlanta Streets Alive Goes Crosstown

Last Sunday was the first Atlanta Streets Alive event of 2016.  Atlanta Streets Alive is an open streets event sponsored by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition.  If you've never been to an open streets event, you've missed out on a potentially transformative experience.  Clearing the cars off the road and walking or biking the route changes how you see your city.  The first time I participated in an Atlanta Streets Alive event was in May 2012.  Highland was closed from Virginia Avenue to somewhere in Inman Park -- around Corley Street, as I recall.  It never had occurred to me that I could walk from Morningside to Inman Park, but Iain and I did that day.  Since then, I've been at almost every Streets Alive event there's been, if not every one.  There have been events on Peachtree, and the North Highland route has been extended include a section of Boulevard.  There have been two Streets Alive events in the West End.  For most of them, since that first one, I've been a volunteer, but last Sunday I wasn't working (there had been no email, saying they really needed just a couple more volunteers, if any of us could make it), so Iain and I loaded up our bikes in the van and drove to Grant Park.

It wasn't hard to find the starting point -- Georgia Avenue was barricaded and there were lots of people waiting for start.  There were speeches first, but we couldn't really hear them; we were too far back.

We did see this beautiful black cat on a leash, while we were waiting for the start.  I often ask dog owners if I can take a picture of their dog; this may have been the first cat that I ever photographed in a public place that was accompanied by its owner.

There was music.  This band with dancers was near the start.

This band was in front of the West End Performing Arts Center.  As in previous events, there was a lot of music along Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard in West End. 

Towards the western end of the route, there was bicycle polo.  There not being so many lawyers involved, it did not appear that you had to sign a waiver in order to play.

On the way back, we stopped to see the chalk art; I think this was near Gordon-White Park in the West End. 

We got vegetarian Caribbean food from a food truck in the West End and then got back on the road.

But we didn't go very far before we stopped for dessert at Krispy Kreme, and then we found the MARTA Army table, where I got my new bus schedule to post.  I first joined the MARTA Army at the last Streets Alive event on Boulevard, when they were set up at a table across the street from where I was working in an Atlanta Bicycle Coalition tent.  I asked Simon if I could take his picture, and he insisted that I be in it too, which wasn't really what I had in mind, but there I am.

Then we continued east, and caught up with the famous phoenixes that always lead the bicycle parade. 

Here's Chantelle Rytter, the force of nature behind the Beltline Lantern Parade and the bicycle parades at Streets Alive events.  Earlier, she had stopped at the same food truck we did, with a few other people, and someone asked her about the photo of her that is currently on the Atlanta Streets Alive website.  She laughed and said, out of all the pictures there are of her, they had to use one where she had a mustache on?

The theme for the bicycle parade this time was zoo animals (since the parade was starting so close to the zoo), and there were lots of zebra bikes like this one.

It wasn't the liveliest or most crowded Streets Alive event I've ever been to -- that's always on North Highland, where bars and restaurants set up tables on the sidewalks and spill into the street, and the there are so many people you can't ride a bike through the crowd -- but in some ways it was the best one.  Grant Park I sort of know -- we used to go to the zoo when the kids were younger, I took flute lessons there for a few years, and now we go to restaurants there sometimes -- but the only time I've been to Summerhill was when I worked at the Summerhill fall festival for Living Walls a few years ago.  The route took us through Summerhill and Mechanicsville, right past the soon-to-be abandoned Braves stadium before we got to West End. These are neighborhoods that weren't well-served by either the Braves or the City of Atlanta.  (Let's see if the redevelopment that is being planned for the area will finally make things better for the people who've lived here all this time, as opposed to just making it better for the developers.)  What was special about this route was the demonstration that these neighborhoods in fact could be connected by what should be one of the great east-west cross streets in the City of Atlanta.  Grant Park is a thriving neighborhood, and once that massive dead zone of parking lots is replaced by something that is actually occupied more than 81 days a year, Summerhill and Mechanicsville should be better places to live.  Connecting all these neighborhoods should help all of them. 

Although there seemed to be fewer restaurants and other local establishments participating along some parts of the route, there was a nice neighborhood festival feel pretty much all along the way.  The neighborhood associations were all there, with tables and tents and friendly people there to answer questions.  I know that the Bicycle Coalition made a conscious decision not to do the same loop in West End this time, but to make the case for connectivity.  It was, I think, a great decision.  They have a petition on their website now, asking for support for biking infrastructure investment along Georgia Avenue and Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard.  The time is right to stitch the fabric of our city back together, and I don't know a better way to do it than to make a pretty modest investment in infrastructure that can help make this corridor one of the great streets in our city.

Dodging the Bullet (This Time)

The weather forecast was dire for the East Coast.  A big storm was on the way and lots of states were going to get slammed.  In Atlanta, rain was forecast to change to snow on Friday afternoon.  Our city, having learned its lesson in 2014, prepared by early school closure of schools and work places.  It didn't sound like anything too bad was expected here, but there could be ice on the roads Friday night and everyone wanted to home in case that happened and things were worse than predicted.

Before I left work, we heard that conditions were already deteriorating in North Georgia.  I stopped at the grocery store on the way home Friday afternoon.  The store was crowded for early afternoon; I think everyone was making sure they were set for the weekend, just in case. 

As predicted, it was really bad to the north of us.  Ice and snow slammed Tennessee and North Carolina, a storm surge hit New Jersey, and Washington and New York City got two or three feet of snow and were pretty well shut down. In Atlanta, nothing much happened.  Saturday morning, we had a dusting of snow and some continued light flurries, but the roads at least in my neighborhood were clear, dry, and free of ice.

Here's what it looked like:

There was some snow art on a car's back window:

And at Morningside Presbyterian, the kids with the sleds had already come and gone by the time I came by.

We were lucky, but many other cities and towns to the north of us are still digging out, or drying out. I haven't heard a lot of complaining about the cautious approach the city took.  No one wants to be the person responsible for school children spending the night on a school bus stuck on I-285 (again). 

But it's only January -- there's still time for some winter weather.

It's Official -- No Bike Lanes on Peachtree in Buckhead

I saw the news in the Intown Atlanta news brief that showed up in my inbox Monday morning:

The Georgia Department of Transportation has officially removed bike lanes from its plans during the re-striping of Peachtree Road through Buckhead, and that’s just fine with the district’s city council members. Atlanta City Councilmembers Yolanda Adrean and Howard Shook said they support GDOT’s decision to remove the bike lanes after public outcry. “We’ve always advocated that the number one goal of this and all other road projects in Buckhead must be to move the most cars in the safest and most efficient manner,” said Shook. “This is that plan.” Adrean added: “The GDOT team has proven how well public input and great engineering can come together,” said Adrean. “And we are already developing exciting bicycle routes that will be much safer than the ones originally proposed for Peachtree.” The start date for the re-striping work has yet to be determined.

So there are several things about this statement from City Councilmembers Yolanda Adrean and Howard Shook that are notable.  In particular, Howard Shook's comment that "the number one goal of this and all other road projects in Buckhead must be to move the most cars in the safest and most efficient manner."  That's it -- the purpose of roads is to move cars.  Let's take bikes out of the discussion, since the very thought of bike lanes on Peachtree generates a degree of antipathy that I have found quite extraordinary.  The GDOT proposal that is now off the table would have also improved pedestrian safety.  There's nothing in this statement about vibrant streets, or making Peachtree lively and walkable, nothing about Peachtree as Buckhead's Main Street that ties the community together -- just moving cars "in the safest and most efficient manner," which presumably means without any pesky pedestrians trying to cross the street.  They might want to consider asking GDOT to make Peachtree a limited access expressway through Buckhead, if that is really their
goal.

On Tuesday, the AJC had an editorial/commentary from Richard Dugas, Jr., chairman and CEO of the PulteGroup, a developer with headquarters in Buckhead (incidentally, PulteGroup is the company that has proposed the redevelopment of Elizabeth Ann Lane).  Mr. Dugas said that access to MARTA rail was a key factor in the company's decision to relocate to Buckhead.  "By making access to MARTA -- and bicycle facilities -- a priority, PulteGroup has become an even more attractive employer of choice for the next crop of managers and CEOs, the millennial generation."

There we are, back to bikes. Have no fear, Mr. Dugas, Ms. Andrean says that "we are already developing exciting bicycle routes that will be much safer than the ones originally proposed for Peachtree.” 

I can't wait. 

Irrationality in Buckhead

Let me get this out right at the beginning - I really don't like Buckhead.  Any neighborhood built around high-end retail and soul-crushing traffic is not really a place I am going to enjoy being.  Of course I am sure the people who run Buckhead don't care what I think so that's fine.  Let's move on from there.

And any moving to be done in Buckhead is going to be done very slowly, by car, because Buckhead residents and the business leaders in the neighborhood have come out strongly against a plan by the Georgia Department of Transportation that would replace the underutilized inner lanes, both north- and south-bound, with a center turn lane and use the other lane to add bicycle lanes on each side, between the traffic lanes and the curb.  Originally the plan had been, I think, to extend this configuration northward but now it is only proposed for Peachtree between Deering Road -- just north of I-85 -- and Peachtree Battle (between the small red circles I've added to the map below).

Now in terms of bike infrastructure this is not nothing --the Beltline crosses Peachtree about in the middle of this segment -- but it is not fabulous.  But given the outrage in Buckhead, you would think the road was being permanently closed to vehicular traffic.  Former mayor Sam Massell, president of the Buckhead Coalition, compared public sentiment in Buckhead over this proposal to that generated by the proposal to put a highway through intown neighborhoods in the 1970s and the extension of Georgia 400 through Buckhead.  I find this an astonishing analogy, given that then peoples' homes were being destroyed for new highways.  In this proposal, there will be a dedicated left turn lane and new bike lanes to replaced two underused lanes that are responsible for more than their share of accidents.  The new design will be safer for drivers, pedestrians, and bicyclists, but the residents of Buckhead are outraged by the proposal.

That's the word used to describe the reaction to a presentation by an engineer from GDOT at the October 8 meeting of the Board of the Buckhead Council of Neighborhoods.

In the Q&A session, meeting attendees expressed outrage. The apparently unanimous response was solid opposition to the GDOT proposal, though reasons cited for opposition differed. Some felt that bikes had no place on Peachtree since motor vehicle traffic was already very congested and getting worse. Others felt the congestion on fewer traffic lanes on Peachtree would flood their quiet neighborhood streets with cut-through traffic. Some questioned if there were even enough Peachtree area bike traffic to justify having bike lanes. Others expressed concern for the safety for bike riders who would only have a four-foot lane, bounded by a ten-foot traffic lane on the left and the curb on the right. Some argued that Ponce de Leon was a poor model for what should be done to Peachtree since PDL’s right of way was wider than Peachtree’s. And so forth.

To be fair, not everyone in Buckhead actually is outraged.  I know one person who is a Buckhead resident who has been advocating on the other side of this issue, and Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District, has provided very supportive comments to The Saporta Report.  But Sam Massell has gone on record "opposing any restriping of any part of Peachtree in Buckhead (between I-85 and Club Drive) that includes bike lanes at this time."  (I can't figure out how to attach the pdf of Mr. Massell's letter to the GDOT Commissioner, so I will put the text at the end.  It is available for download with the AJC story.)

I am astonished at the intensity of opposition that this proposal has generated.  Perhaps people who live and work in Buckhead don't go anywhere else, and don't know that real cities that want to create places that people value are making space for bicycles and pedestrians.  (A few examples below from Minneapolis, Washington, DC, and Chicago and also this link.)

Minneapolis

Minneapolis

Empty bike rental rack - Washington, DC

Chicago

Chicago

Chicago

Perhaps spending so much time staring at the brake lights of the car in front of them has made them not completely rational, and the idea of a person on a bicycle speeding past them, while they are stuck in traffic that they have helped create, elicits irrational rage.  I don't know, but I do know after learning a little more about this issue, Buckhead is now inextrictably linked in my mind with irrational people who would rather have car crashes and dead bicyclists than lose one traffic lane they weren't really using anyway.  Is this a part of town you should feel safe visiting or doing business in?  And any forward-looking business looking to relocate should not go to a part of Atlanta that is so manifestly irrational.  There's plenty of commercial property available where people are not so crazy.

How disappointing that leadership in Buckhead (with the exception of Mr. Durrett) is unwilling to actually lead in a forward-looking way.  It will probably change, eventually, but until then, I'm planning on spending as little of my time and money in Buckhead as possible.

Text of Mr. Massell's letter to Russell McMurry, Commissioner, Georgia Department of Transportation

Dear Russell:

When I worked at City Hall in the 1970s I instituted what we titled the Pedal Pool with donated bicycles for staff who had trips to make downtown.  I have long been a dues supporting member o the Atlanta Bicycle Bicycle Coalition and I support its principles.  We were one of the first to contribute ($5,000) to the Path Foundation to help provide early path work at Chastain Park.  I make a special effort to publish routes (about 11.5 miles) of bicycle lanes in our Annual Buckhead Guidebook.  I have written articles encouraging more respect between auto drivers and bicycle riders and I defend the rights of each group to use our public streets as regulated by local Ordinances and other regulations.

In what seems to be a relatively short period of time, our Community has come some distance in welcoming the growth of this mode of transportation.  I'm confident we will continue to increase the practicality of coexistence between bikes and cars.  This is particularly true in Buckhead as Millennials continue to become a larger percentage in the population profile.

However, from our Members and from the General Public, it appears that the argument we face concerning adding bike lanes now to part of Peachtree separates at about age 30 for those in favor against those opposed.  On a popular vote we believe that would calculate to as many as 63% being in opposition.

The Mission of the Buckhead Coalition is "to nurture the quality of life of those who live, visit, work and play" in this Community, and as such we see our position must be to oppose any restriping of any part of Peachtree in Buckhead (between I-85 and Club Drive) that includes bike lanes at this time.  As such, we respectfully urge the State, our City and our CID to discontinue any further consideration of adding any such bike lanes on this Public right-of-way.

Sincerely,

Sam Massell
President