PATH400 Wins People’s Choice Award at AASHTO

ATLANTA — The PATH400 trail won the Socrata People’s Choice Award and a $10,000 prize on September 23 at the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Annual Meeting in Atlanta. The Socrata People’s Choice Award is awarded to the America’s Transportation Award project that receives the most online votes by the general public, and is presented with a $10,000 cash prize to be donated to a transportation charity or scholarship of the winner’s choosing. The PATH400 trail was one of just 12 projects from across the country that was vying for the national award.

“Our community partners were instrumental in developing and coordinating this project with Georgia DOT,” said Meg Pirkle, Georgia DOT Chief Engineer. “The investment in the Buckhead community will result in improved quality of life for years to come. We’re proud to have partnered with such extraordinary organizations like the PATH Foundation and Livable Buckhead.”

“The project team came from different fields of knowledge and worked diligently to deliver a quality of life project to the citizens of Georgia,” said GDOT’s State Program Delivery Administrator Kimberly Nesbitt. “The approach presented to GDOT was revolutionary – by converting existing highway right of way into a multi-use trail we were able to significantly reduce right-of-way cost for our partners. The Department along with Livable Buckhead, PATH Foundation and the City of Atlanta experimented and found a winning formula for project delivery.”

The $10,000 cash prize will be donated to help complete the PATH400 trail. Livable Buckhead is a nonprofit organization that is spearheading construction of PATH400 in Buckhead, in partnership with the Georgia Department of Transportation, the PATH Foundation and the Buckhead Community Improvement District.

“It’s a tremendous honor to win the People’s Choice Award,” said Denise Starling, executive director of Livable Buckhead. “We built PATH400 with the community in mind, so it’s great to have the public rally behind the project and show their support for the trail by voting for us. The prize money will help us as we to work toward completing the trail and as we continue adding events and features that make PATH400 even better than it already is.”

This project transformed a right-of-way along GA 400 into a 5.2-mile bikeable and walkable greenway that provides a beautiful and safe path for citizens to enjoy.  PATH400 was built on the right-of-way of GA 400 and the public land adjacent to Metro Atlanta Regional Transit Authority (MARTA). It reclaims what was a highway-only corridor and creates a multimodal trail by turning underutilized gray infrastructure into a useable green space. PATH400 connects neighborhoods, offices and retail locations and provides users with an easy way to explore, exercise, commute and engage.