Some projects have experienced rocky starts or snags, jeopardizing longer-term expansion

By Lindsay Ellis
Lindsay.Ellis@wsj.com
Updated Aug. 31, 2015 7:50 p.m. ET

ATLANTA—A gleaming blue streetcar glides along a narrow 2.7-mile loop here, picking up and dropping off passengers near downtown parks, restaurants and the home where Martin Luther King, Jr. was born.

The tiny route, launched in December 2014, is “phase one of a grand vision,” the city says, to build 50 miles of lines linking popular destinations to neighborhoods and other forms of transportation, easing the heavy traffic for which Atlanta is notorious.

But the system has cost $98 million to design and build, a figure that expanded over the course of construction, opened more than a year behind schedule, and has suffered several snags including the loss of service for several days this summer when the line’s power delivery service needed repairs.

Critics say that is a slow start and a hefty price tag for a conveyance that serves a narrow slice of the city. They question whether expanding the project makes sense.



Passengers ride on a streetcar in Atlanta. The Atlanta Downtown Improvement District says the system has helped spur $1.5 billion of economic development. Photo: Erik S. Lesser/European Pressphoto Agency