Atlanta, GA | |||||||||||||
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General information | |||||||||||||
Location | 1688 Peachtree Road, N.W. Atlanta, Georgia United States | ||||||||||||
Coordinates | 33°47′58″N84°23′34″W / 33.79938°N 84.39275°W | ||||||||||||
Owned by | Norfolk Southern Railway | ||||||||||||
Platforms | 1 side platform, 1 island platform | ||||||||||||
Tracks | 2 | ||||||||||||
Connections | MARTA: 110 | ||||||||||||
Construction | |||||||||||||
Parking | Yes; Paid; Limited | ||||||||||||
Bicycle facilities | No | ||||||||||||
Accessible | Yes | ||||||||||||
Other information | |||||||||||||
Station code | Amtrak: ATL | ||||||||||||
History | |||||||||||||
Opened | March 17, 1918 [1] | ||||||||||||
Passengers | |||||||||||||
FY 2022 | 49,579 [2] (Amtrak) | ||||||||||||
Services | |||||||||||||
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Peachtree Southern Railway Station | |||||||||||||
Architect | Hentz, Reid & Adler | ||||||||||||
Architectural style | Renaissance | ||||||||||||
NRHP reference No. | 76000628 [3] | ||||||||||||
Added to NRHP | September 14, 1976 | ||||||||||||
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Atlanta Peachtree Station is a train station in Atlanta, Georgia. It is currently a service stop for Amtrak's Crescent passenger train. The street address is 1688 Peachtree Road, Northwest, in the Brookwood section of town between Buckhead and Midtown.
Presently, Peachtree Station is served by the Amtrak Crescent route with one train in each direction per day. The southbound #19 arrives at 8:43am and the northbound #20 arrives at 11:00pm.
Designed by architect Neel Reid, it was built in 1918 as a commuter stop on the northside of town for the Southern Railway whose main stop was Terminal Station downtown. The new station was formally named Peachtree Station by Southern; informally it was widely referred to as Brookwood Station. It played a role roughly analogous to Boston's Back Bay station.
Amid a long decline in passenger rail service, Southern closed Terminal Station in 1970 and moved most of its services to the smaller Peachtree Station (though the Nancy Hanks continued to use a makeshift platform and ticket office near Terminal Station until it ended in 1971). That same year, the statue of Samuel Spencer was relocated from Terminal Station to Peachtree station, where it would stay until 1996. When Union Station closed in 1971 with the start of Amtrak, Peachtree Station became the only passenger station in Atlanta still open.
Southern was one of the few major railroads to stay in the passenger business when Amtrak launched. However, the three-decade decline in passenger service culminated in 1975, when Southern cut back service to a single train, what was then the Southern Crescent. It was the first time in Atlanta's railroad history that it was only served by just one train. Southern finally got out of the passenger business in 1979 and turned the Crescent over to Amtrak. Southern then leased Peachtree Station to Amtrak, a lease maintained after Southern merged into Norfolk Southern.
Designed in an Italian Renaissance style of architecture, the depot features Palladian windows and classical elements such as pilasters and a molded entablature. [4]
Amtrak passengers often note that the station is small and is elevated far above the tracks, requiring use of a long stairway or elevator. This design reflects the original intent of the station as a suburban stop and the much smaller size of Atlanta at the turn of the 20th century.
The interior of the station underwent an extensive remodeling in preparation for the 1996 Olympics, held in Atlanta.
For some time, there have been proposals for a new Amtrak station in downtown. In April 2011, the city of Atlanta submitted an application for a grant seeking $22.5 million to relocate the station approximately 1 mile (1.6 km) south to Northside Drive and 17th Street, near the multi-use community of Atlantic Station. [5] However, the deal fell through, and the property instead sold to Fuqua Development. [6]
In November 2011, the Georgia Department of Transportation signed a $12.2 million contract with Cousins Properties, The Integral Group, and Forest City Enterprises to develop plans for a new station in The Gulch area near Five Points, close to the former site of the Terminal station. This station is intended to serve as a hub not only for Amtrak, but for MARTA, intercity buses, and the proposed commuter rail lines as well. [7]
Amtrak is continuing to negotiate with MARTA, Norfolk Southern, and the GDOT as it explores options for replacing its facility. Among the options currently under consideration is the site of the former General Motors assembly plant adjacent to the Doraville MARTA station. [8]
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is the principal public transport operator in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Formed in 1971 as strictly a bus system, MARTA operates a network of bus routes linked to a rapid transit system consisting of 48 miles (77 km) of rail track with 38 subway stations. MARTA's rapid transit system is the eighth-largest rapid transit system in the United States by ridership.
The Crescent is a daily long-distance passenger train operated by Amtrak between New York City and New Orleans. The 1,377-mile (2,216 km) route connects the Northeast to the Gulf Coast via the Appalachian Piedmont, with major stops in Charlotte, North Carolina; Atlanta, Georgia; and Birmingham, Alabama.
New Orleans Union Passenger Terminal (NOUPT) is an intermodal facility in New Orleans, Louisiana, US. Located at 1001 Loyola Avenue, it is served by Amtrak, Greyhound Lines, Megabus, and NORTA with direct connections to the Rampart–St. Claude Streetcar Line.
Arts Center station is a train station in Atlanta, Georgia, serving the Red and Gold lines of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) rail system. It is the northernmost of three MARTA stations that serve Midtown Atlanta, the others being Midtown and North Avenue. North of this station, Lindbergh Center, the tracks emerge out from the subway as it approaches the above ground station.
Doraville is a train station in Doraville, Georgia, and the northern terminus on the Gold Line of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) rail system. Doraville serves as the ground for the Doraville rail yard for the Gold line, with a capacity of 30 rail cars.
Charlotte station is an Amtrak station located at 1914 North Tryon Street, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) to the northeast of Uptown Charlotte. Owned by Norfolk Southern, it is located near that railroad's yard outside Uptown.
Brookwood Hills is a historic neighborhood located in intown Atlanta, Georgia, United States, north of Midtown and south-southwest of Buckhead. Home to about 1000 people, it was founded in the early 1920s by Benjamin Franklin Burdett and his son, Arthur. The site of the neighborhood is located where some of the bloodiest battles of the American Civil War took place during the Atlanta Campaign.
Terminal Station was the larger of two principal train stations in downtown Atlanta, Union Station being the other. Opening in 1905, Terminal Station served Southern Railway, Seaboard Air Line, Central of Georgia, and the Atlanta and West Point. The architect was P. Thornton Marye, whose firm also designed the Fox Theater and Capital City Club in downtown Atlanta, as well as the Birmingham Terminal Station.
The Union Station built in 1930 in Atlanta was the smaller of two principal train stations in downtown, Terminal Station being the other. It was the third "union station" or "union depot", succeeding the 1853 station, burned in mid-November 1864 when Federal forces left Atlanta for the March to the Sea, and the 1871 station.
The Manassas Line is a Virginia Railway Express commuter rail service that extends from Washington, D.C. to Bristow, Virginia. The first of VRE's two lines, with service beginning on June 22, 1992, the line operates on tracks owned by CSX Transportation and Norfolk Southern Railway.
The Georgia Rail Passenger Program (GRPP) was a set of plans, as yet unbuilt, for intercity and commuter rail in the U.S. state of Georgia.
The transportation system of Georgia is a cooperation of complex systems of infrastructure comprising over 1,200 miles (1,900 km) of interstates and more than 120 airports and airbases serving a regional population of 59,425 people.
Metro Atlanta, designated by the United States Office of Management and Budget as the Atlanta–Sandy Springs–Roswell metropolitan statistical area, is the most populous metropolitan statistical area in the U.S. state of Georgia and the sixth-largest in the United States, based on the July 1, 2023 metropolitan area population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau. Its economic, cultural, and demographic center is Atlanta, and its total population was 6,307,261 in the 2023 estimate from the U.S. Census Bureau.
South Downtown is a historic neighborhood of Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, United States. South Downtown is primarily home to city, county, state, and federal governmental offices, which prompted the city to adopt signage declaring the area "Government Walk." Although much of South Downtown is dominated by surface parking lots, the neighborhood was passed over during the redevelopment boom of the 1960s and 1970s that resulted in the demolition of much of Downtown's architecturally significant buildings. The result is myriad buildings from the 1950s and earlier that retain their historic structural integrity.
Armour Yard is a railyard on the northwest side of Interstate 85 between the Piedmont Road and Monroe Drive exits in northeast Atlanta, Georgia, south of the Lindbergh neighborhood of Buckhead. For southbound travelers, it can be easily seen below from the freeway viaduct, and looking underneath the massive viaduct from "old 85".
The Georgia Multi-Modal Passenger Terminal (MMPT) was a planned passenger terminal, designed by FXFOWLE Architects and Cooper Carry, to be built in a location to be determined near the Five Points MARTA rail station in The Gulch area of Downtown Atlanta. It would be the hub of existing and proposed transportation networks, including the existing MARTA rail and bus systems, the Xpress GA and other regional express buses, and the planned commuter rail system.
The Gulch is an area of Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, which is unbuilt but envisioned as the site of major development.
Atlanta's transportation system is a complex multimodal system serving the city of Atlanta, Georgia, widely recognized as a key regional and global hub for passenger and freight transportation. The system facilitates inter- and intra-city travel, and includes the world's busiest airport, several major freight rail classification yards, a comprehensive network of freeways, heavy rail, light rail, local buses, and multi-use trails.
Clayton County commuter rail was a proposed commuter rail line traversing Clayton County, Georgia and connecting with the MARTA rapid transit system at East Point station. After Clayton County joined the MARTA system in 2014, MARTA began studying alternatives for high-capacity transit through the county. After multiple transit modes were evaluated for passenger transit south of Atlanta, commuter rail was selected as the locally preferred alternative in 2018. Stalled negotiations with the Norfolk Southern Railway, who owns the tracks, caused planning to be put on hold. The project was replaced by a BRT system by the Clayton County Board of Commissioners, the City Councils of Jonesboro, Forest Park, Lovejoy, Riverdale and Lake City, and the Clayton County Chamber of Commerce, MARTA Board of Directors Planning and Capital Programs Committee on November 17, 2022 due to a variety of obstacles with right-of-way acquisition, environmental and historical resource concerns, along with a ballooning cost estimate.
Media related to Peachtree (Amtrak station) at Wikimedia Commons