MARTA’s subway system only runs in the cardinal directions and has not been expanded since 2000. Bus service is centered in Fulton and Dekalb counties with a few lines in Cobb County. In recent years, the Metro Atlanta region has been rapidly growing. The Atlanta Regional Commission estimates that 66,730 people moved to the area between April 2022 and April 2023. With this influx of residents sparking increased demand for transit, what is hindering MARTA’s expansion?
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority Act established the transit system and was passed by the state legislature in 1965. However, financing the system proved difficult. Colleen Kiernan, MARTA’s assistant general manager of external affairs, noted that some of the difficulty in approving the creation of and funding of MARTA was due to “urban areas [being] far underrepresented in their influence in the state legislature.”
In 1971, City of Atlanta, Fulton County, and Dekalb County voters approved a 1% sales tax to fund the system. Almost 45 years later, Clayton County passed the penny tax to join the MARTA system.
While the MARTA system was originally intended to serve Gwinnett and Cobb counties as well, these counties have repeatedly refused to join the system due to concerns about the one percent increase in sales tax.
This penny tax remains the main source of funding for the transit system. The revenue from the $2.50 bus and subway fares amounts to about 20% of MARTA’s operating budget, which is only half of their total budget.
MARTA’s 2024 budget is about $1.6 billion. Kiernan put this sum into perspective: “Regions who are making major transit expansions” are dedicating large investments. For instance, Los Angeles is spending $120 billion to expand its rail network. Additionally, Kiernan estimated that Seattle is earmarking $54-55 billion for its transit expansion.
The More MARTA program is intended to expand the MARTA system; it was approved by City of Atlanta voters in 2016. This increased the 1% sales tax to a 1.5% sales tax within the city limits and is expected to bring in an additional $2.7 billion. However, Kiernan noted that the original More MARTA plan had a “project list of [about] 70 projects… but that was a $12 billion list, and we were only ever going to have $3 billion to execute it.” In 2023, MARTA announced that the More MARTA program would only encompass nine new bus-centered projects from the original proposed projects list. Although the sales tax does not provide enough revenue for the expansion that Atlanta constituents wanted, MARTA did receive a new source of funding in 2020.
The Georgia Legislature approved House Bill 105, known as the “Uber tax,” which changed how taxes were levied for ride-hailing services such as Uber, Lyft, and taxis. All ride-hailing services now pay a flat 50-cent fee instead of a sales tax percentage. This tax revenue goes into a state-managed trust fund for public transit projects. Regions across the state create proposals for various projects and apply for funding.
From the ride-hailing tax, “MARTA received $6 million the first year for the Bankhead Station platform extension, $13.8 million the following year for the Five Points transformation project, and… $5.5 million for airport station renovation last year,” said Kiernan. However, Kiernan clarified that these funds must be spent on new capital improvements, not on operational costs.
Getting any state funding is a big change for MARTA. As Kiernan put it, “I feel like we’ve been successful getting [Georgia to] put aside a small pot of money and begin to make these investments.” To ensure successful proposals, MARTA’s plans have been closely aligned with the “state’s economic development priorities,” said Kiernan.
Graph via MARTA
Although the funding is an improvement, more than a few million per project is needed to keep up with the expansion of Metro Atlanta. Kiernan stated that the lack of funding “has limited our expansion [and ability to] keep up with the growth in the region. We’re able to operate and maintain the system we have today, but there’s really not much left over for growth that people would like.”
Despite the budget constraints of MARTA, there are still transit initiatives that can be advanced in the Metro region.
Darin Givens is the co-founder of ThreadATL, a non-profit urbanism advocacy group, and runs the popular @atlurbanist Instagram account. Advocating for expanded public transit, Givens has noticed that the lack of funding is a large barrier for MARTA. With a MARTA station near the Georgia Capitol building and other state-owned properties, Givens said that the “state government obviously benefits from MARTA… [yet] it does not provide any dedicated operations funding to MARTA.”
Without state funding, much of MARTA’s budget must be dedicated to operation rather than expansion. Givens pointed out that “we need a state government that really understands this amazing asset that we have. I mean, how many cities in the United States have a heavy rail line to a major airport?”
Givens shared another consequence of MARTA’s budget constraints: “I’ve heard in terms of the long timeline for projects… MARTA as an agency itself does not have enough of an in-house staff for doing the planning” required for new projects.
He believes that the small operations budget reduces funding for hiring professionals and results in longer planning stages.
Givens and ThreadATL advocate for increasing density, which can be described as the intensity of economic activity and number of people living in an area. Givens stated that “it is incredibly important to really focus on the assets that we do have within the footprint of the MARTA system and say, ‘Okay, let’s put as much walkable density around these existing stations as we can.’”
Another solution he hopes to see relates to Atlanta’s building codes on required parking spaces for new developments. Givens advocates for “eliminating parking minimums and… lowering parking maximums.”
These code changes are important, he said, “because studies have shown that the availability of cheap or free parking near transit stops is related to lower transit ridership.”Givens hopes that changes like these can lead to increased support for expanding public transit funding in the future.
On a national level, Kiernan has ideas about changes to transit and infrastructure funding. In the U.S., The Highway Trust Fund provides infrastructure funding, mostly for roads, from the federal 18.3 cents tax on every gallon of gasoline. The Highway Trust Fund is built on the concept of user fees. Kiernan said, “People who buy gas and drive on the roads are paying for the upkeep of new roads, but it… never really covered all of it,” so additional taxpayer dollars subsidize car-based infrastructure.
A similar structure for investment in public transit — locally or nationally — does not exist. Kiernan would like “more funding to things that are low or no carbon emission.” She said she hopes that future “infrastructure is funded through much more of a climate lens approach.” If the way infrastructure is funded changes, more money could be allocated to the expansion of transit systems such as MARTA.