Atlanta Commissions Study to Find New Location for Amtrak Station

ATLANTA –– The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) recently announced it will, along with the City of Atlanta, fund a study of alternatives for relocating Atlanta's Amtrak Station.

Amtrak’s current (and only) passenger station in Atlanta is called Peachtree Station. It’s often locally referred to as Brookwood Station because of its proximity to a long-established neighborhood of the same name. Opened in 1918 by the Southern Railway as a suburban station, it has been serving Atlanta travelers for over 105 years.

The station’s original design was shaped by the architecture of homes along Peachtree Street during that era in order to blend nicely with the rest of the neighborhood. Southern’s downtown station at the time, Terminal Station, was three miles from Peachtree but there was demand for a suburban stop among the wealthy residents living in large homes on Peachtree Street so they would not have to travel downtown to board their train.

There were mixed feelings among historians in Atlanta when the 1996 Summer Olympic Games came to Atlanta. More passenger rail traffic was anticipated, and some changes to the inside structure were required to make the station more accessible to individuals with disabilities. While it was certainly important to make these changes, many wish there had been an alternative because the original design of the station, inside, at least, was ruined after the changes were made. Not all of the inside endured changes, but a major arched-ceiling hallway was removed.

For the past 50+ years, Atlanta has been served by one daily passenger train – the Southern Crescent, which was operated by Southern Railway until it was handed over to Amtrak in early 1979, and the Amtrak Crescent, which has provided mostly daily service between New York and New Orleans via Atlanta. For decades, under both Southern and Amtrak, the train would depart Atlanta in the early evening for a morning arrival in Washington, D.C. It’s southbound counterpart would operate on roughly the same schedule –– departing Washington, D.C. in the evening, arriving in Atlanta the next morning. Today, the Crescent’s schedule has been modified such that the northbound train to Washington, D.C. does not depart Atlanta until 11:00 pm. The southbound counterpart arrives in Atlanta each morning.

Although additional passenger service in and out of Atlanta has been discussed for decades, the city is left only with the Crescent to provide rail passenger service. Routes under discussion have included service from Atlanta to Chattanooga and Nashville, Atlanta to Savannah, and others, but nothing has come to fruition.

It’s against this backdrop that the ARC wants to look at relocating the Amtrak station. This is not the first time such a study has been undertaken. The graphic from the ARC website tells the story.

Graphic courtesy of the Atlanta Regional Commission

According to the ARC site, “ARC and the City of Atlanta are exploring a potential relocation of the Atlanta Amtrak Station from its current location on Peachtree Street in Midtown to another site in downtown Atlanta. Relocating and modernizing the Atlanta Amtrak Station could create opportunities to improve customer service, ADA accessibility, and multimodal connections for rail travelers. The relocated station would also serve as a signature local destination and gateway to the city for visitors while providing scalability for longer term service improvements between Atlanta and other cities. A new, modern station would improve the overall customer experience for passengers on Amtrak’s Crescent route, which links Atlanta to New Orleans, Birmingham, Charlotte, Washington [D.C.] and New York City.”