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  • Atlantans Voted for Safe Streets. Where Are They?

    Atlantans Voted for Safe Streets. Where Are They?

    I’ve lived in Atlanta for five years, as of writing this.

    Two of those years were spent in Midtown, an affluent neighborhood just north of Atlanta’s downtown. Every city has such a place—luxury apartments with balconies and dog parks dot the horizon; trendy restaurants fill up for happy hour, serving spicy margaritas alongside overpriced appetizers; and Lululemon-clad locals work from home while sipping flat whites and sporting healthy credit scores.

    An environment that can become grating, after prolonged exposure.

    That’s exactly what happened, when our third year in Atlanta was imminent, so my partner and I decided to relocate to a single-family home in Lindridge-Martin Manor (LMM), a suburban neighborhood north of Midtown. The transition was difficult but rewarding: suddenly, we had a yard, a guest bedroom, and numerous windows from which our cat could stalk wildlife. Our new surroundings were a far cry from the urban density we had grown used to, but it was easy to look past the picket fences and hydrangeas around us, as LMM’s central location kept us close to Midtown, Buckhead, and Buford Highway. And, as a public transportation enthusiast, I comforted myself with the knowledge that the closest MARTA station was only a mile away.

    We felt like we had made it.

    As the months passed, our love for our house grew, but we began to notice the limitations of our new surroundings. We realized that we had moved from one of Atlanta’s only bastions of urbanism into an environment representative of the metropolitan area as a whole—a neighborhood where the needs of drivers are prioritized at the expense of others. And while we could attempt to ignore this car-centric reality, adamantly walking or biking from place to place, doing so makes for an unpleasant experience, at best, and an outright dangerous one, at worst.

    The charming underside of the I-85.

    From the Lindbergh Center MARTA station to the string of (surprisingly impressive) Cheshire-Bridge restaurants, I’ve tried walking to many destinations and have realized that doing so, even if somewhere appears close, requires an odyssey. Whether that entails passing under the twelve lanes of the I-85, sprinting across six lanes of rush hour traffic, or simply walking down a narrow sidewalk as oblivious drivers fly by depends on the day. A lack of regard for those outside of vehicles persists, regardless.

    This past May 18, these conditions led to tragedy when a driver heading down Lindbergh Dr. NE struck and killed a pedestrian. While the investigation remains ongoing, it appears they drove their vehicle over the curb, where the victim was standing near a bus stop.

    The unnamed individual died at the scene, their life taken and their story lost within the noisy, smog-filled chaos that is Atlanta traffic.

    A pop-up memorial for the LMM victim.

    “Pedestrian fatally struck by car in NE Atlanta.”

    “Pedestrian struck by vehicle in Lindbergh area of Atlanta.”

    “Pedestrian traffic fatality.”

    News outlets often use detached language when reporting traffic crashes, as if automobile-induced violence were merely an unavoidable aspect of modern life. But as Sarah Goodyear and Doug Gordon highlight in their book Life After Cars, each “fatality” creates a ripple of trauma that can circulate through entire communities.

    We may not know who was killed on May 18, but the pop-up vigil that appeared at the site tells us they were loved. They likely had family, friends, and coworkers in their life whose hearts now ache, and who continue to process their grief.

    But as tragic as this incident was, it’s far from an isolated incident.

    In the early 2020s, when much of the world was mask-clad and social distancing, communities around the United States saw a marked increase in traffic fatalities. Across the five counties that comprise the Atlanta Metro, crashes killed a staggering 520 people in 2021 and 496 people in 2022. In the years since, fatalities have trended downward, but they remain higher than pre-pandemic levels.

    While the exact cause of this spike in traffic violence is unclear, many attribute it to fewer vehicles on roads, enabling those that remained to travel at higher speeds. While dangerous for those buckled into motorized steel cages, higher speeds are deadly to pedestrians and bicyclists, who have no seatbelts, airbags, or other protections. Notably, cars don’t need to move at racecar-level speeds to cause tragedy—a vehicle moving at around 30 mph has a 50 percent chance of causing severe injury to a pedestrian and a 25 percent chance of killing them. At higher speeds, the risk of bodily harm increases exponentially.

    Over the past few decades, America’s obsession with super-sized cars and trucks has exacerbated these risks. Since 1980, vehicles have bulked by an average of 1,000 pounds, while growing 12 percent longer and 17 percent wider in the past decade. Indeed, although most crashes in Atlanta are vehicle-to-vehicle, pedestrians are overrepresented in fatalities, comprising an average of 35% of all deaths in the past five years. This includes the LMM crash, where the driver was behind the wheel of a Ford F-150—a truck that exemplifies the trend of gargantuanism. 

    Larger vehicles also feature limited fields of vision. Graphic courtesy of the City of Portland, Oregon.

    It’s difficult to say what could have made a difference on May 18, as the exact circumstances that led to the crash remain unclear. But a better protected bus stop, a wider sidewalk, and a pedestrian crossing sign to remind drivers that people live and walk here couldn’t have hurt. None of these upgrades are expensive or unrealistic—on the contrary, Atlanta’s Vision Zero Action Plan cites them all as “Recommended Systemic Safety Counter Measures.” This comprehensive roadmap seeks to not only reduce, but eliminate fatal and severe crashes by 2040. 

    Unfortunately, while ambitious, local advocacy groups have expressed concern over the city’s progress towards its Vision Zero commitments. One such group is Propel ATL.

    Founded in 1991 as the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, the ABC merged with Pedestrians Educating Drivers on Safety (PEDS) in 2021, rebranding as Propel ATL in 2022. Today, the organization aims to grow Atlanta’s streets into “safe, inclusive, and thriving spaces for people to walk, ride, and roll.” 

    Following the crash, I reached out to Propel ATL to discuss it within the context of larger, city-wide trends. They agreed to meet, but before speaking, made me aware of another crash that had recently occurred in Atlanta’s West End. Again, near a bus stop. 

    Terence Cobb, known by those close to him as “Yohan,” had occupied a bench near the corner of Ralph David Abernathy Boulevard SW and Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard SW for years. Well-known by many in the community, he was 40 years old on May 12, when a driver struck and killed him while he was on the sidewalk.

    Two pedestrians killed within a week, both near bus stops. What did this mean?

    A family-submitted photo of Terence Cobb.

    On June 8, I met with Propel ATL’s Executive Director Rebecca Serna. With a background in Urban Policy and Fulbright experience studying participatory planning practices and innovative public transportation projects in Colombia, Rebecca and her team are experts at tracking Atlanta’s progress towards building safer streets. When progress is slow or non-existent, that means holding elected officials accountable and advocating for more. 

    “Drivers need to feel uncertain,” Rebecca said, when I asked her about deterrents to reckless driving. “When they do, they tend to slow down. Narrower lanes, trees along roadways, safe crossing signs… all are visual cues that remind them to drive slower and look for pedestrians.” On the stretch of Lindbergh Dr. NE where the pedestrian was killed, no form of traffic calming is present, and one side of the street doesn’t even have a sidewalk. This contrasts with the western portion of the two-mile-long street, which has sidewalks, pedestrian crossing signs, and chicanes (artificial obstacles that force drivers to slow down).

    The approximate location of where the LMM victim was killed (top), compared to the street’s western side, where traffic calming solutions are present (bottom).

    Creating friction for drivers is always a good idea, but this is especially true near bus stops. As the deaths of the LMM victim and Terence Cobb highlight, many pedestrian deaths occur within walking distance of bus stops—59 percent, according to Propel ATL’s own research. To that end, potholes—despite being the bane of drivers everywhere—can sometimes be useful.

    “Potholes are a natural traffic calming solution, and too often, they’re the only form of traffic calming we have,” Rebecca said. Our goal, of course, shouldn’t be to let streets deteriorate into pothole-ridden messes, but to use their inevitable repavings as opportunities to advocate for better infrastructure, especially because so many people reach out to city officials to complain about them. 

    As our discussion shifted to city-wide trends, I asked Rebecca whether she felt Atlanta was on track to meet its 2040 goal of zero traffic fatalities. 

    “No, I do not,” she said without hesitation. “Vision Zero is a great plan—a lot of people have put a lot of work into it. And yet the city’s current draft budget intends to cut Department of Transportation funding.”

    Since we met, the city formally approved its fiscal year 2027 budget. The Department of Transportation lost $2.2 million in funding, a reduction of nearly 4 percent, while Parks & Recreation, City Planning, and other departments saw similar cuts. Funding for police, however, grew by $16.5 million—at $324 million, it now comprises nearly 33 percent of the city’s total budget. This, despite the fact that traffic crashes killed more people than homicides in 2024. 

    Graphic courtesy of the Center for Civic Innovation.

    But this reactive approach to public safety isn’t new in Atlanta. Nor, as the past few years have shown, is it popular.

    In 2021, officials announced plans to build the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center on an 85-acre site south of the city. From its conception, the project—infamously nicknamed “Cop City”—drew criticism: only 48 percent of Atlantans supported the facility, while 52 percent were unsure or against it. As resistance grew, George State Patrol Troopers shot and killed activist Manuel Esteban Paez Terán (Tortuguita) in 2023, who was engaged in an occupied protest, and arrested dozens of others. Following these events, over 100,000 Atlantans called for a referendum, but City Council members dismissed these demands as legally moot. The facility opened in April 2025.

    This controversy stands in stark contrast to public transit expansion—something that Atlantans have expressed clear support for. 

    In 2016, 71% of voters supported funding MARTA expansion through a sales tax, and in 2022, another overwhelming majority voted to fund safer streets through Moving Atlanta Forward. But unlike Cop City or a ballooning police budget, progress towards these endeavors is hard to find: MARTA expansion has been slow or non-existent, and many of the city’s Moving Atlanta Forward projects have stalled. This quagmire has eroded the public’s confidence in elected officials’ ability to deliver, leading many Atlantans to believe that meaningful public transportation expansion will never happen. 

    While hardly a place for measured discourse, Reddit nevertheless offers insights into public sentiment. “More MARTA was established in 2016. Ten years and zero projects,” comments one user, in response to a recent MARTA story shared on r/Atlanta. “I genuinely think we need to start arresting people at MARTA and at the city of Atlanta over how taxpayer funds are mismanaged,” suggests another, while receiving 246 upvotes.

    Some (of many) comments pulled from r/Atlanta and r/MARTA.

    I asked Rebecca where she believes this disconnect stems from.

    “Such a big question,” she laughed. “Something that concerns me with MARTA, specifically, is the revolving door between consulting agencies and their top leadership. If you look at what MARTA spends on planning versus what’s actually being built, there’s a huge disconnect. Both MARTA and the City of Atlanta, as a whole, struggle with project delivery.”

    But she also emphasized how 2019, the year the city formed its own Department of Transportation, offered a breath of fresh air.

    “Previously, getting things done was even more difficult, as the city’s answer to everything was: we’ll use consultants. That was a really bad answer, and we pointed it out, which is part of what led [the city] to getting a Department of Transportation.” The key, now, is to hold elected officials accountable to their commitments, particularly as several high-profile MARTA incidents risk turning people against public transit.

    I asked Rebecca what that pressure could look like.

    “We started a campaign called Where’s My Project?, and it tracks the progress towards the projects taxpayers voted for through Moving Atlanta Forward. I would encourage people to get involved in that campaign, as it’s grassroots and helps bring people together to organize,” Rebecca said.

    If that feels daunting, there’s an even simpler thing to do.

    “Just send an email to your city council member saying how important safer streets are to you,” Rebecca said. “You don’t have to be an expert, you just have to know the outcome you want. Elected officials—particularly the mayor—don’t often hear from people with these concerns.”

    To that end, I reached out to Councilmember Alex Wan, who represents Lindridge-Martin Manor, and the Atlanta Department of Transportation for comment—both as a journalist and a concerned citizen. Neither party responded to my inquiries; presumably, they were lost within a sea of pothole complaints and other similar grievances. 

    More noise is needed.

    ***

    I recently left my house and noticed a new addition to the nearby 35 mph speed limit sign: a Dynamic Speed Monitoring Display (as it’s officially known) that uses radar to tell drivers how fast they’re moving. While I’m skeptical of this tool’s ability to calm traffic, I see it as a step in the right direction. More importantly, I’m hopeful that it’s just one of many planned upgrades to the street.

    We can’t bring back the Lindridge-Martin Manor victim, Terrence Cobb, or any of the other pedestrians, cyclists, or drivers killed while navigating Atlanta’s streets. But we can honor their legacy by amplifying their stories and pressuring elected officials into delivering on their commitments. 

    Traffic violence is not a given, nor should it be normalized—other countries, and even other American cities, have shown that it’s possible to reduce car dependency, build safer streets, and meaningfully expand public transportation.

    It’s time for Atlanta to do the same.

  • Salmon, Sweetgrass, and Reciprocity in the Age of Exploitation

    Salmon, Sweetgrass, and Reciprocity in the Age of Exploitation

    There’s a place on Earth where trees grow tall as towers, their branches caressing the sky like fingers. 

    Beneath this verdant canopy, ocean fog drifts between trunks, saturating everything in a cool, dreamlike glaze. Moss is ubiquitous, covering trunks and boulders the size of cars in velvet green coats, while ferns blanket the ground, sheltering beneath the shade of the giants around them. Within this rich ecosystem, animals are as abundant as plants. Mother bears with cubs lumber around looking for food. Otters paddle and twirl through mountain rivers. And salmon—colorful and essential to this region’s wellbeing—splash hundreds of miles upstream to spawn.

    Oregon Rainforest
    An Oregon rainforest. (Thomas Shahan, Flickr)

    Salmon are a keystone species in the lush landscapes of the Pacific Northwest. While most aquatic animals live in saltwater or freshwater environments, salmon can survive in both. Every year, they travel from their ocean homes to streams, rivers, and lakes to lay eggs, passing through estuaries along the way. Salmon depend on these brackish halfway points; within them, their bodies undergo physiological changes that prepare them for their freshwater forays.

    As the migrating salmon move inland, bears, eagles, and humans feast on them, leaving their fishy carcasses within the dense undergrowth after eating their fill. Over time, the volume of briny, decomposing bodies introduces substantial amounts of nitrogen to these freshwater ecosystems, thus nourishing not only predators, but plants, too.

    Sammamish kokanee
    A Kokanee salmon in the Lake Sammamish watershed. (USFWS – Pacific Region, Flickr)

    The salmon that make it to the spawning grounds lay thousands of eggs, only to die shortly after in a final act of poetic significance—their life’s purpose now complete.

    Anthropic Narcissism 

    While salmon are crucially important to the environment, their population has plummeted in recent centuries. 

    As settlers replaced Indigenous peoples, harvest goals shifted from sustenance to profit, with little regard for population integrity. Grazing space became another priority, since settlers also brought herds of cattle with them. Thus, estuaries—some of the most productive ecosystems on the planet—became obstacles, and people got to work dredging, damming, and otherwise eliminating them. Without these vital pathways and rest stops, salmon could no longer migrate, nor feed anyone.

    Scientists estimate that in the past, between sixteen to twenty million salmon migrated inland across the Pacific Northwest each year; now, that number is around one million.

    Once the ecological role of salmon and was understood, conservation efforts like the Endangered Species Act were implemented. Today, the ESA protects twenty-eight Evolutionary Significant Units of Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead, providing support for recovery plans, hatchery programs, and habitat restoration efforts.

    The Issaquah Salmon Hatchery, 1936. (The Seattle Times)

    Unfortunately, both Trump administrations have been not just unfriendly to salmon (and myriad other endangered species), but outright hostile. From abandoning climate pledges to rolling back protections on clean air and water, officials are wrecking the planet with a degree of tenacity only possible thanks to their incessant misinformation campaigns. The ESA, in particular, has sustained repeated attacks, opening the door to renewed habitat destruction and population endangerment. While a federal court struck down the Administration’s most recent assault on the ESA, subsequent attacks will doubtlessly follow, and their repercussions will extend far beyond salmon.

    From monarch butterflies to California spotted owls and Florida panthers, the anthropic narcissism that defines our times impacts all threatened and endangered species, as well as the countless others that depend on them.

    Rage and Gratitude

    When reading these sorts of stories, itʻs hard not to feel rage.

    Rage at the hubris of the rich, content to sleep in beds of money while they destroy the planet. At the arrogance of settlers, who thought they understood lands better than the Indigenous peoples who’d resided on them for millennia. And rage at ourselves—at each of us, in our way—for our complicity in ecocide.

    But while we should feel rage over salmon deaths, over gray whale starvation and golf courses, over the pollution of sacred lakes and rivers and so much more, anger isn’t enough. We need something more powerful than rage—a paradigm shift in our collective thinking that can help us reharmonize with the natural world. For help, it’s worth turning to the work of botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer.

    In her book Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer introduces numerous plants, highlighting their ecological benefits alongside their roles in Native cultures. But she also argues that seeing plants solely as oxygen-producing climate regulators hampers our ability to fully appreciate them. While grasses, shrubs, trees, mosses, and non-vascular varieties, such as fungi and lichens, are essential to the environment, they’re also complex organisms deserving of our respect.

    Kimmerer leading a class in upstate New York. (SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry)

    Fruit trees, to take an example from the book, communicate with one another via pheromones, debating when to produce fruit and then doing so, collectively, once consensus is reached. Besides overwhelming would-be-fruit-eaters, this release of airborne volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) allows for the discussion of other matters, such as pest invasions and when nearby trees should activate their defense systems. Meanwhile, beneath the earth, mycorrhizal fungi networks connect root systems, allowing trees to send direct signals about diseases, droughts, and other threats. By using this underground web, established trees can even share nutrients like carbon, helping others—particularly younger saplings—grow strong.

    From cedar trees in the Pacific Northwest to the mangroves of the Everglades, the trees around us aren’t isolated organisms—they’re part of a vast, interdependent network of shared abundance.

    An illustration of the “internet of trees.” (Macrina Busato)

    Then there are agricultural plants, which humanity has depended on for sustenance for twelve thousand years. Today, corn, rice, wheat, and similar plants cover one-tenth of the earth, supplying the staples that stock grocery store shelves around the world. Coated in plastic and disposed of, if they don’t sell, our global supply system makes it easy to take the food we eat for granted, while having us believe that we’ve domesticated this critically important group of species. But as we’ve propagated, irrigated, fertilized, weeded, and pruned on their behalf for millennia, it may be more apt to say that they’ve domesticated us. 

    And lichens, some of the simplest forms of life, in many ways, aren’t one organism, but two. Each lichen is comprised of a fungus and an alga—two beings that work alongside each other for survival. As the fungus “farms” the sugars produced by the alga, some scientists say that fungi were the first organisms to invent agriculture.

    Notably, efforts to recreate lichen in stable laboratory conditions are generally unsuccessful. Only when conditions become severe do the alga and fungus unite, individualism switching to reciprocity.

    Studying and observing the natural world allows us to deepen our appreciation for it, growing our relationship from textbook-level to gratitude. As Kimmerer explains, gratitude is essential because you don’t want to harm something you care about: You want to protect it.

    Collective Reciprocity

    Like the estuaries that salmon pass through, gratitude is a stop along the way to our final destination: reciprocity.

    This framework—of recognizing the bounty the natural world provides and showering it with gifts, in return—is another core theme of Kimmerer’s work. But reciprocity comes with a set of obligations, both on the individual and collective levels. 

    Collective reciprocity at work. Tanner Springs Park, a native oak-prairie wetland in Portland, Oregon. (2025)

    As an individual, reciprocity means using the tools and resources at your disposal to give back. If you’re a writer, that might mean using your voice to shed light on topics ranging from ecological issues to enshittification. If you’re an educator, it may involve fostering the innate care and compassion of your students. And if you’re a member of the working class, trying desperately to make ends meet while being one paycheck away from disaster, reciprocity can be as simple as recognition: acknowledging what nature provides and giving thanks to it, in return. 

    But individual actions, while meaningful, aren’t enough.

    Collectively, we’ve chosen to distance ourselves from reciprocity, choosing instead to embrace its ugly opposite: exploitation. Modern business schools teach students that our planet offers a bounty, yes—but one that translates to infinite economic growth. Corporations are not just permitted, but expected to rake in profits while laying waste to the planet. And our politicians care little for fish, plants, or constituents, focusing their attention, instead, on lobbyists and their reelections. As a species, we’ve tacked price tags onto everything, and the commons exist—be they forests, foreign fossil fuels, or whales—for extraction. 

    The Tragedy of the Commons: Deforestation in the Amazon. (AFP via Getty Images)

    Thus, returning to a place of gratitude and reciprocity begins with us viewing the world with less arrogance. Human ingenuity is remarkable, but we can’t allow it to morph into hubris, especially when thereʻs so much to learn from those around us.

    We may see fish as simple, but migratory species like salmon highlight the value of long-term, multi-generational thinking: After journeying for hundreds of miles, they trade their lives so that the next generation can survive. Trees might not have larynxes, but they communicate nonetheless, demonstrating how those who thrive have an obligation to help others (including other species) do the same. And lichens show us that when conditions worsen, cooperating with one another isn’t optional, but necessary.

    Of course, nature can appear cruel, and at times, cutthroat. But intense competition is usually a feature of young, developing ecosystems—not established ones with layers of checks and balances. A forest perennially at war with itself couldn’t survive; thus, scarcity and hoarding aren’t features of mature ecosystems.

    Abundance, on the other hand, is. 

    An old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

    A cutthroat economic system that devours and hoards is similarly unsustainable—for humans and the planet. Like a young forest, we should see the exploitation and competition of our times as features to shed on our path to maturity.

    Fighting for Abundance

    Alarm bells should be ringing. 

    Instead of fighting to preserve the climate and protect the species we cohabitate with, our government is driving us ever closer to the precipice. As we careen towards the edge, the effects of this recklessness are becoming increasingly apparent.

    Atlanta, where I live, recently endured a month-long drought. The rain that finally arrived was much-needed but, because of how dry the ground was, also triggered flood warnings across the region. Scorching heat has become common throughout the cooler months, and the increasingly powerful tropical storms that spin up the Atlantic coast have made conditions wetter, and thus more mosquito-ridden. Winters now feature warmer temperatures on average but are interspersed with sudden, polar vortexes that kill many of the Southern plants and animals unaccustomed to them.

    And, hard-to-believe as it may be, these changes pale in comparison to those felt in the Global South.

    The aftermath of a cyclone that hit Sri Lanaka, November 2025. (AFP via Getty Images)

    Fortunately, nature is resilient, and in the years ahead, humans will need to be too. 

    The lesson from the decimation of the Pacific Northwest salmon should be that no organism exists in isolation. We rely on one another, and when one species suffers, we all do. As our short-sightedness and greed exacerbate the climate catastrophe, the plants and animals around us will need our help more than ever. And, contrary to what the arrogant among us would have us believe, we will need theirs. 

    To survive, we need to return to practicing gratitude and reciprocity, as well as tear back the suffocating overgrowth of our current system—however daunting confronting the entrenched forces of money and power may be. Just as we now gaze back at institutions like slavery and wonder, what were people thinking, there will come a time when subsequent generations do the same—when our cruel, exploitative system is confined to textbooks, to be studied, with amazement, by people incredulous that their ancestors lived in a world that prioritized a fiction like money above their planet’s tangible wellbeing. 

    As we build new institutions that work to preserve life, we’ll mature from a group of competing saplings into a forest, transforming our world from one of scarcity to abundance.