Peachtree Street Visioning
Project Category: All Projects Complete Streets
Project Overview
Peachtree Street, Atlanta’s most iconic street, connects the City of Atlanta like no other corridor. In Midtown, Peachtree bisects the commercial core of the district and is home to many of the City’s most significant arts organizations, office buildings, residential properties, and retail offerings. Some of the City’s largest events take place on Peachtree including the Peachtree Road Race, Atlanta Streets Alive, and multiple parades. Peachtree’s public realm (street and sidewalks) has been improved over the years but is not in keeping with the needs of today’s users. From a traffic perspective, Peachtree currently prioritizes vehicles over pedestrians. The crash rate is high enough for Peachtree to be included on the City’s High Injury Network – the 10% of streets that are home to 73% of the fatal and serious injury crashes. In addition to being unsafe, Peachtree also operates inefficiently due to illegally parked vehicles at the curb and the lack of left turn lanes. Peachtree also lacks excitement in the public realm. There are few places on Peachtree that are exciting or memorable – defining characteristics of “great” streets. This is not in line with the community’s stated preferences.
Building from the 2022 Public Life Action Plan, Midtown Alliance is leading an effort to create a new vision for Peachtree in Midtown that is safe, exciting, and memorable by improving and activating the public spaces and areas of strength along the corridor. The goal is to create a thriving public realm where neighbors, office workers, classmates, and visitors come together to connect to each other, to arts and culture, to street-level business, and to Peachtree’s rich history.
Project Progress:
Midtown Alliance has hired an acclaimed design team (Kimley-Horn and SnØhetta) to help define the next chapter for Peachtree Street. Planning work began in July 2023 and will continue through the end of 2024. This work will culminate in a conceptual plan for the entire length of Peachtree in Midtown (North Avenue to West Peachtree Street).
Public Engagement:
Midtown Alliance will conduct extensive public engagement throughout the planning and design phases.
Public Meeting #1 - On, November 1, 2023, Midtown Alliance hosted a public meeting to kick-off the study phase of the project. View a replay of the meeting presentation here.
Public Meeting #2 – On March 20, 2024, Midtown Alliance hosted a public meeting to get feedback on an early draft concept for updating Peachtree Street. View the draft concepts here – north of 11th Street, south of 11th Street.
This meeting also created awareness around the safety issues experienced on Peachtree Street as highlighted in the video below:
What’s Next?
Midtown Alliance will be conducting extensive community engagement in the coming months. If you have an interest in Peachtree and have ideas for how Peachtree could evolve, please contact transportation@midtownatl.com to schedule a meeting.