Now that it has passed the Atlanta City Council, the Beltline proposal is drawing heavy publicity and unreal expectations.

The Associated Press has a mostly laudatory feature today, giving the impression that an abandoned rail line is going to replace Piedmont Park as the city's lungs. It calls the plan the start of a national trend, identifying small lines in New York, Chicago and elsewhere that could be turned into real parks.

But the Beltline isn't a park. The Beltline is a transit corridor. In time the plans are to run light rail alongside bike paths, and there's not enough land in the plan to provide much more free space.

At Bloglanta Amber and a reader named Chad Magnuson hashed out some of the more unrealistic expectations. She wants more transit stations to give Atlanta a New York vibe. He says that such a mind will never appear here, that the city is too bigoted against gays.

The fact is that the Beltline will not solve Atlanta's transit problems, its social problems, nor its lack of park space. But it could keep the area vital and growing, which was the original point.