Beltline News

Well, no sooner do I quit complaining about Atlanta's gridlocked traffic and lack of pedestrian access, than the Beltline makes a major announcement:

Atlanta, GA – Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) Commissioner Vance Smith, Jr., and Atlanta Beltline, Inc. (ABI) President and CEO Terri Montague today announced closing on a purchase option agreement that, if exercised, would give the Beltline control of the Southwest and a portion of the Southeast Right of Way (ROW). The agreement gives the City the option to acquire all of the remaining GDOT ROW along the Beltline Corridor as contemplated in the Five Year Work Plan. Under the terms of the agreement, GDOT will give ABI exclusive rights to purchase the property until June 30, 2012. In the meantime, ABI has secured a lease of the property in order to begin preparing it for public use in the coming years.

The Beltline Five Year Work Plan called for acquiring 35 to 37 percent of the 22 mile Beltline ROW by July 2011. Through this agreement, 48 percent of the corridor is now secure for use by the Beltline. ABI completed the purchase of the 4.6 mile Northeast corridor in October, 2008.

The segments of ROW in this transaction run from Allene Avenue to Lena Street in the Southwest (3.12 miles) and from Wylie Street to Memorial Drive in the Southeast (.36 miles). Both former freight rail lines are unused and have been granted abandonment by the federal Surface Transportation Board, which will allow ABI to proceed with planning and implementation of transit and trails for these segments. At this time, ABI is partnering with MARTA to complete an Environmental Impact Statement by summer 2010 that will help to determine how the optioned property would ultimately be used for transit and trails.

The Beltline is a $2.8 billion redevelopment project that will shape the way Atlanta grows over the next 25 years and beyond. The project provides a network of public parks, multi-use trails, and transit along a historic 22-mile railroad corridor circling downtown and connecting many neighborhoods directly to each other. The Beltline is easily the most comprehensive economic development effort ever undertaken in the City of Atlanta and among the largest, most wide-ranging urban redevelopment projects currently underway in the United States.

Georgia DOT gave the Beltline exclusive rights to purchase the property until June 30, 2012. The Beltline paid Georgia DOT $10 (yes, that's ten dollars, not 10 million) for the Option to Purchase, which will be applied to the final amount upon closing. For the next 12 months, the purchase price will be the appraised amount of $10,727,000 for the land in the Southwest and $2,823,000 in the Southeast. If the property is not purchased during the 12-month period, another appraisal will determine the purchase price.

As of July 6, 2009, the Beltline will lease the property from the Georgia DOT for $100 a year. The lease gives the Beltline permission to build the trail facilities, either interim or permanent, contemplated in the Beltline Redevelopment Plan. The term of the Lease is 4 years, with the option to extend for an additional 3 years on a year-by-year basis.

So this is exciting news for anyone who wants to see more pedestrian access and more mass transit in Atlanta. The Beltline now owns significant portions of the northeast, southeast and southwest quadrants of the route, although there are still significant challenges with acquiring the active rail lines in the quadrant in which I live, the Northwest. But despite this, or perhaps because of this, I keep on volunteering to participate in the various stakeholder groups, advisory boards, and neighborhood advocacy organizations that have taken up so much of my time lately.

We're No. 22! And 6! And 148!

Atlanta has recently been ranked as the 22nd least-walkable city out of 40 in the nation. San Francisco ranked No. 1 on the list as the nation's most walkable city, followed by New York, Boston, Chicago, and Philadelphia. The four cities ranking at the bottom were Memphis, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, Charlotte, Nashville, and Jacksonville.

Not that driving here is any great pleasure, though. Another survey has found that drivers in metro Atlanta spent 135.3 million hours in traffic delays in 2007, the sixth-worst rate in the nation, using up 95.9 million more gallons of fuel than they would have if it were not for traffic delays. Overall, traffic congestion in metro Atlanta cost an estimated $3 billion in 2007, the fourth highest in the nation. The traffic-jam champion was Los Angeles, followed by walkable New York and Chicago.

And Atlanta placed only 148th out of 193 cities in Allstate's 2009 America’s Best Drivers Report. The report says drivers in Atlanta experience an auto collision every 7.9 years, below the national average of 10 years.

Dharma Day

Today marks the first full moon since the summer solstice (I like to notice these things). The full moon of July is marked in some places as Dharma Day, the day to celebrate the buddha-dharma.

As I've noted here before, buddha-dharma has four meanings:

1. The teachings which show us the reality,
2. The existence or things, as in “the myriad dharmas,” “the 10,000 things,”
3. The law or morals which form the way of life in accordance with that reality or teaching, and
4. The truth or reality to which the Buddha awakens.

These four meanings reflect the Four Phases of Buddhist philosophy:

The Relative - The Buddhist Truth as embodied in the Buddhist philosophical system (The specific teachings which show us the reality).

The Absolute - The Buddhist Truth as the external world, or nature (the existence or things, the myriad dharma).

The Practical - The Buddhist Truth as ethical or moral conduct as practiced in everyday life (The law or morals which form the way of life in accordance with that reality or teaching).

The Transcendent or Ultimate - The Buddhist Truth as the ineffable, the complicated, the balanced state of zazen, or reality itself (The truth or reality to which the Buddha awakens).

These are not four separate meanings, but closer to four separate properties, just like a physical object can simultaneously have separate properties of color, mass, shape, and location in space.

In discussing the precepts recently, Taiun Michael Elliston gave five separate lectures on five consecutive evenings on the Precepts as Perscription (The Relative), Precepts as Description (The Absolute), Precepts as Reality (The Concrete), Precepts as Action (The Communal), and Precepts as Freedom (The Spiritual). Similar concept, and I like the inclusion of The Concrete, but I would have called Precepts as Action "The Practical" and Precepts as Freedom "The Transcendent." But tomato, tomato (that actually doesn't work as well in writing as it does verbally).

But no matter. Right here, right now, today is Dharma Day, and you can choose to do with it what you will - practice zazen, read a sutra, provide commentary on the sutra, work on your koan. I chose to live the life my karma has lead me to: work during the day, participate in a neighborhood planning meeting in the evening, and blog about the wondrous and profound buddha-dharma between these two events.

Enjoy your day.

In a miscellaneous talk, Dogen said,

Men and women in secular society, both young and old, often pass the time talking about lewd things. They do so to amuse their minds and beguile themselves. It seems as though idle talk entertains their minds and diverts them from boredom for a while. Monks, however, should completely avoid such talk.

Even in secular society, when well educated and sincere people discuss some serious matter with due courtesy they do not engage in such talk. They do so only when they are drunk or unrestrained. Needless to say, monks must concern themselves only with the Buddha-Way. Only a few eccentric and immoral monks engage in such indecent talk. In the monasteries in China, since they never engage in small talk, they do not speak of such matters. In our country also, while Eisai, the Abbot of Kenninji Monastery was alive, one never heard such talk. Even after his death, while a few of his disciples were still at the monastery, people did not speak of such things. Lately, in the last seven or eight years, the young monks sometimes indulge themselves in idle talk. This is really shameful.

In the Scriptures, it is said, “Though coarse and violent actions may sometimes cause people to wake up, worthless speech obstructs the true Way.” Be it even a word which comes to the lips unintentionally, useless talk hinders the Way. Still more, lewd talk will excite the mind. You must be most careful. Without forcing yourself not to use such language, if you realize it is bad, you will be able to reform gradually. (Shobogenzo Zuimonki, Book 1, Chapter 17)

Crash

Lying in bed on a Sunday, the cat put out for the morning, the coffee brewing in the kitchen, few things remind one more of impermanence than the sound of a tree crashing down - the cracking of wood, the rustling of leaves, and the crash to the earth. Impermanence is swift - life and death are the great concern.

Long-time readers will recall that I live in a heavily wooded area, and one of my fears is of a tree falling down on my house. Trees have already fallen on several houses in my neighborhood, and sometimes I think that it is just a matter of time before one falls on mine.

This morning was a very close call. A big and apparently quite healthy oak grows pretty much right on the property line between me and my neighbor. Although several quite large branches of that tree are above my house, I've worried less about that tree than some of the other, less-healthy trees in my yard. So when I heard the unmistakable sound of falling wood this morning, I thought for sure that one of those rotten trees were falling.

But I was mistaken. A large limb from the property-line oak had fallen, for no apparent reason that I could discern, and fell right between my house and my neighbor's without damaging either. However, I have a small shed behind my house, and the limb landed on top of that shed. It didn't knock a hole through the roof, however.

All in all, I was quite lucky. There's a much larger limb that in itself is the size of most other trees that extends directly over my bedroom - had that limb fallen, it might have damaged my house and possibly my self as well. As it was, the branch that fell came down in such a way as to cause minimum damage.

I called the insurance company and one tree removal contractor but, it being a Sunday, have heard nothing back. My neighbors spend their summers up at a lakehouse in North Carolina (they're retired), but I managed to reach them by cell phone and tell them the good news/bad news. They immediately offered to pay half the cost of clean-up, but I advised them to let's wait and see how the insurance companies want to handle things first. It might be interesting to see which side of the property line the cost burden falls upon, or if, like the limb itself, it falls equally between the two homes.

Interdependence Day

"It was after the military clash at Lexington and Concord in April 1775, between colonial Minutemen and British troops, that the Continental Congress decided on separation. They organized a small committee to draw up the Declaration of Independence, which Thomas Jefferson wrote. It was adopted by the Congress on July 2, and officially pronounced July 4, 1776. . .
"Some Americans were clearly omitted from [the] circle of united interest drawn by the Declaration of Independence: Indians, black slaves, women. Indeed, one paragraph of the Declaration charged the King with inciting slave rebellion and Indian attacks. . . The use of the phrase 'all men are created equal' was probably not a deliberate attempt to make a statement about women. It was just that women were beyond consideration as worthy of inclusion. They were politically invisible. Though practical needs gave women a certain authority in the home, on the farm. or in occupations like midwifery, they were simply overlooked in any consideration of political rights, and notions of civic equality. . .
"Thomas Jefferson had written a paragraph of the Declaration accusing the King of transporting slaves from Africa to the colonies and 'suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.' This seemed to express moral indignation against slavery and the slave trade (Jefferson's personal distaste for slavery must be put alongside the fact that he owned hundreds of slaves to the day he died). . . Jefferson's paragraph was removed by the Continental Congress, because slaveholders themselves disagreed about the desirability of ending the slave trade. . .
"When the Declaration of Independence was read, with all its flaming radical language, from the town hall balcony in Boston, it was read by Thomas Crafts, a member of the Loyal Nine Group, conservatives who had opposed militant action against the British. Four days after the reading, the Boston Committee of Correspondence ordered the townsmen to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve. This led to rioting, and shouting: 'Tyranny is Tyranny let it come from whom it may.'"
- Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

War (Friday Night Video)

"Last May, in Addis Ababa, I convened a meeting of heads of African states and governments. In three days, the thirty-two nations represented at that Conference demonstrated to the world that when the will and the determination exist, nations and peoples of diverse backgrounds can and will work together in unity to the achievement of common goals and the assurance of that equality and brotherhood which we desire. On the question of racial discrimination, the Addis Ababa Conference taught, to those who will learn, this further lesson:

"That until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned; That until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation; That until the color of a man's skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes; That until the basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race; That until that day, the dream of lasting peace and world citizenship and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion, to be pursued but never attained; And until the ignoble and unhappy regimes that hold our brothers in Angola, in Mozambique and in South Africa in subhuman bondage have been toppled and destroyed; Until bigotry and prejudice and malicious and inhuman self-interest have been replaced by understanding and tolerance and good-will; Until all Africans stand and speak as free beings, equal in the eyes of all men, as they are in the eyes of Heaven; Until that day, the African continent will not know peace. We Africans will fight, if necessary, and we know that we shall win, as we are confident in the victory of good over evil."
– Haile Selassie, speech to the United Nations General Assembly, 1963