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Midtown plan moves to implement Cortland and Piedmont Complete Streets with Midtown Improvement District managing procurement
Summary
A staff member described plans to reconfigure Cortland and Piedmont in Midtown Atlanta to add protected bike lanes, expanded sidewalks, bulb-outs and street parking; a project management agreement will send city funds to the Midtown Improvement District to manage procurement, timeline not specified.
A staff member said the Cortland and Piedmont Complete Streets projects in Midtown Atlanta will remove a lane on each street to create protected bicycle lanes, expand sidewalks, add curb bulb-outs at key crossings and provide street-side parking, and that a project management agreement will send city funds to the Midtown Improvement District to manage procurement.
The work is intended to change both Cortland and Piedmont — two multi-lane, one-way corridors built in the 1970s and 1980s to move high volumes of traffic — into streets that better serve pedestrians, cyclists and nearby residents. “These 2 projects have been anticipated for a number of years now,” the staff member said, adding that renderings and plans have existed for some time and that the projects were “ready to get going.”
The staff member described specific design changes: removing one travel lane on each street to install a dedicated, protected bicycle lane; widening sidewalk space; installing bulb-outs to shorten pedestrian crossing distances at key intersections; and adding dedicated street-side parking, typically on the west side of the streets. “As most people know, Cortland and Piedmont are 2 multi lane 1 way streets so they move traffic north and south through Midtown and downtown in pretty high volume but there's still a lot of excess capacity on those roads,” the staff member said.
The transcript indicates the city will provide funds that the Midtown Improvement District will manage, including procurement. The staff member said the Midtown Improvement District is “really good at doing so in an efficient fashion,” but no project schedule, exact budget, permit requirements or construction timeline was provided in the recorded remarks.
Background: the speaker said the streets were designed decades ago to move large numbers of vehicles but now function as neighborhood streets serving high-rise and mid-rise residents, townhomes and local businesses; the redesign is framed as a safety and neighborhood-accessibility initiative. Questions about specific funding amounts, permitting milestones and exact construction phases were not specified in the remarks.
No formal vote or council action was recorded in the transcript segment provided.
