Transportation

If everything had gone according to schedule, we’d all have been riding the Atlanta Streetcar for months now. While the start date for the light rail system is still uncertain, the track, stops, and other infrastructural elements are in place. To promote the (eventual) launch of the system, the City of Atlanta and Central Atlanta Progress are hosting a 5K race along the route this Saturday. The race is sponsored by Siemens, the manufacturer of the streetcars that will (eventually) glide through downtown Atlanta.

For its “Dream Cars” exhibition, which runs May 21 through September 7, the High Museum of Art becomes a showroom for seventeen concept cars built by Ferrari, GM, and Porsche. The fleet represents auto design ambition from the 1930s through the twenty-first century.

In early May, without much of a heads up to Atlanta City Hall, Bird, founded by a former Lyft and Uber executive, dropped off 200 of its electric scooters in the city. The electric vehicles—which include Lime, Spin, Ofo, Muving, and Relay—have since become fun, dangerous, exciting, annoying, revolutionary, and polarizing. What can Atlanta do?

In late January 2014, just under three inches of snow—and, more specifically, the ice that followed—crippled metro Atlanta, shutting down the region’s economy and forcing people to sleep in stranded cars, stores, and community centers. What if history repeats itself?

With low prices from Atlanta to commemorate Southwest’s finalized acquisition of AirTran and cheap fares out of Dallas marking the end of the Wright Amendment, I had the perfect bargain storm. I spent roughly $45 for each of six flights—and earned a companion pass for the low cost of $270.60.

Across the country, deaths of pedestrians are nearing historic highs, and Georgia and metro Atlanta are no different. According to the Atlanta Regional Commission, the number of collisions involving pedestrians and bicyclists in the 20-county metro region has risen sharply, from nearly 1,700 in 2006 to more than 2,500 in 2015—a 53 percent increase.

When I was a kid, the full force of sprawl was not yet in effect. The roadways were not at capacity because the region was always building more of them.

These are Atlanta's 500 most powerful leaders. We spent months consulting experts and sorting through nominations to get a list of the city's most influential people—from artists to chefs to philanthropists to sports coaches and corporate CEOs. In this section, we focus on civic leaders, government and politics, transportation, and utilities.

The civic transformation ushered in by driverless cars could revolutionize the way Atlanta’s buildings and roads are designed, as well as upend how people move around a car-centric metro region. Eventually it might even do away with car ownership altogether.