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A Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit
Authority train runs through the city on a
䏄뙠yover in this undated image.
MARTA
Georgia to let voters decide on
$2.5 billion MARTA expansion
By David Ibata | March 28, 2016
RELATED TOPICS: SOUTH | PASSENGER | COMMUTER RAILROADS | INFRASTRUCTURE | POLITICS
ATLANTA — Atlanta residents commonly
complain that MARTA rail goes to too few
places to offer a practical alternative to
driving.
That may change with last week’s passage of
state Senate Bill 369.
The Georgia legislature approved the $2.5
billion referendum bill for Atlanta transit — a
big step toward the creation of the city’s first
light­rail service, and the biggest capital
expansion of transit since the construction of
the original heavy­rail lines in the 1980s.
“This bill allows us to go to voters for approval for what will be the largest expansion of
MARTA in the system’s history,” Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed says. State lawmakers recently
approved a bill that would let Atlanta seek voter approval in a referendum for a 40­year, half­
cent sales tax increase to pay for expanded transit. The bill now goes to Gov. Nathan Deal for
his signature.
The rail lines of MARTA — the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority — serve the city
and closer­in suburbs. The agency began operations in 1972, taking over bus routes in Atlanta
and Fulton and DeKalb counties. With voter approval, MARTA expanded bus service to
Clayton County in 2015.
MARTA’s first third­rail electrified rapid transit line opened in 1979, but its heavy­rail system
today is dwarfed by others of similar vintage; it operates only 48 route­miles, compared with
107 miles by San Francisco’s BART and 117 miles by Washington, D.C.’s Metrorail.
An earlier bill would have permitted a much broader referendum to raise $8 billion across all of
Fulton and DeKalb for new transit that also could have included MARTA heavy rail extensions

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to the north and east, and light rail to Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, east of Atlanta.
That measure was stalled by opposition from suburban legislators. A compromise breaking
Atlanta off from the suburbs to allow a city­only transit referendum passed in the final hours of
the legislature’s 2016 session.
Assuming Deal signs the bill, as expected, and voters approve, the chief beneficiary of the
funding may be the Atlanta BeltLine, a 22­mile network of linear parks similar to New York
City’s High Line or Chicago’s 606 Trail, that reclaims abandoned railroad rights­of­way
circling Atlanta’s central business district.
The BeltLine would connect 45 neighborhoods with walking and bicycling paths and now,
possibly, light rail.
The Atlanta belt dates to the late 19th century, when the steam railroads converging on the city
began building bypasses around its congested core. Shifting traffic patterns in the late 20th
century made most of the belt obsolete.
In 1999, a Georgia Tech student, Ryan Gravel, proposed in a master’s thesis that the belt be
redeveloped as linear parks with multi­use paths and transit. City officials, community leaders
and developers quickly got behind the idea.
After a pause for the Great Recession, work is now plunging ahead on the BeltLine’s four trail
segments — the East Side Trail close to Midtown and Downtown is farthest along — with
significant residential and commercial development popping up along the line. The proposed
light rail would cross existing MARTA heavy rail in several places, allowing line­to­line
transfers and greatly expanding the transit agency’s reach.
“By focusing on expanding the MARTA system through light rail along the Atlanta BeltLine
and in other parts of our city, we will address last­mile connectivity, making this a transit
system that works for everyone, for every day,” Reed says.
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