Golf Cart Town, Peachtree City, Georgia

About thirty minutes south of Atlanta is a very unique town of Peachtree City. It is your typical southern city with hardworking people, good neighbors, and atypically good schools. The city has frequently been called one of the best places to live by Money Magazine. However, the people that live in or come to Peachtree City don’t remember the magazine’s quote – they remember golf carts. Hundreds of golf carts, seen on any given day, roaming throughout the city.

Peachtree City has over 90 miles of dedicated golf cart paths which allows drivers to travel anywhere within the city on all-electric (and a few gas-powered) golf carts. The narrow paths can take families to dinner or the grocery store without ever using an ounce of gasoline. This freedom has certainly influenced local businesses. Several shopping centers in the city have designated golf cart parking spots near the front of the lot, and the town’s McIntosh High School even has a separate golf cart parking lot that is never empty. Golf carts are also allowed on neighborhood roads and there are golf cart crossings for going over the busier roads.

Almost all of the golf carts you see roaming Peachtree City have seating for four or five people, with a beach seat in the back in place of the golf bag holder. A few limousine golf carts with three or more rows of seats are fairly common too. Most of the golf carts that are sold to civilians are from brands like Club Car, E-Z-GO, Yamaha, and a few other startup brands. Yes, there are golf cart dealerships in town to buy them from.

The carts at these dealerships come in colors and with optional extras such as: all-weather golf cart cover, heaters, radios (which always get stolen), lift kits, and wheels/hubcaps in tons of styles and sizes. Some owners also add custom parts like conversion kits to make their cart look like a Rolls Royce and a few vinyls to make it look like a ricer. It’s hard to find two identical golf carts in the same place.

A full charge on the batteries can last a good couple hours depending on your driving, which is more than enough to get you pretty much anywhere in town. Getting back is usually the hard part as recharging takes almost a full night, which means you see plenty of carts stranded on the side of paths that need to be towed away by the nice men at the dealerships. That’s where having a noisy gas cart comes in handy, even though you piss off everyone you drive by.

You only need to be twelve years old to drive a golf cart with a parent.  A learner’s permit can be had at fifteen allowing you to drive on your own with a limited number of passengers (the last part seems to be ignored by everyone). I spent three years of my high school career at McIntosh driving the family golf cart to school every morning, which was… interesting.

Imagine this: hundreds of students driving hundreds of golf carts on narrow paths to the same place at the same time. That makes for hilarious traffic jams that have put Peachtree City on the national news. When you also consider the fact that most of these students are still new to the whole driving thing, well, let’s just say it gets dangerous. Some drivers stop short and get rear ended by a train of others, some go too fast and run into a tree, some literally run over bikers and joggers who have every right to use the paths, and some get hit by cars because they don’t know what the right of way is. Other people tend to flip the carts instead, as seen in one of the pictures, because they think they’re invincible. Despite the mandated 20mph top-speed limit on all new golf carts, spectacular examples of Darwinism can be found on the paths.

This special privilege that citizens of Peachtree City are given is truly unique. It provides a way to get somewhere without firing up the car, thus saving money on gas. It makes simple journeys to the pizza place an adventure where you conquer twisty paths and try not to get killed by blithering idiots along the way. It makes driving home from school with your friends in a torrential downpour a fun experience (depending on who you’re with) rather than a burden. And above all else, it makes for some damn crazy stories. All I can say is that living with a golf cart in the family for over thirteen years has been an interesting experience and it would be hard for all of us to live somewhere without them. It’s become a way of life for us PTC-ers, and that’s just the way we like it.

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