MARTA rail has limited reach, but we can improve what we have

The combo of suburban sprawl and a compromised rail plan has worked to limit the reach of MARTA rail for Atlanta’s regional residents, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a brighter future for the rail that exists.

Peachtree Center MARTA Station (photo: Darin Givens)

"The successful 1971 vote allowed MARTA’s board to move forward [in Fulton, DeKalb and the City of Atlanta], but the rejections by Clayton, Cobb and Gwinnett voters forever changed how the system would look. With Clayton out of the picture, the southern line to Forest Park was shortened. Without Cobb, the northwest line to Marietta was cut. Without Gwinnett, the northeast line to Norcross was trimmed."

The above quote comes from a great article by Sara Gregory this week in the AJC titled "MARTA was meant to go more places. Here’s why it doesn’t."

It includes an animated map of the original rail plan, showing how it shrunk over time.

Here's a still that shows the plan as of 1961, with rail extending to Cobb, Gwinnett, and Clayton (the dotted lines are for possible 'future extensions').

And while this article demonstrates the sad loss of MARTA's potential reach, in the end we still have to make the best use of what we have while we hope and plan for new rail in the future.

That means turning an eye inward and finding all the successes we can find with producing walkable density (including affordability components) near our existing rail stations, whether that takes the form of a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) on one of MARTA's property or just one nearby. It could also take the form of street redesigns near stations that prioritize the pedestrian experience.

That may feel like small comfort to the many people who are stuck in the metro area's massive amounts of car-dependent sprawl, far away from rail. Atlanta's vast, sprawling suburbs were where the biggest gains in population growth happened for a long time, greatly limiting the use of the static train system.

But things are changing. According to an Atlanta Regional Commission report this summer, Metro Atlanta's average annual population growth rate has slowed to a rate of 1.2% in the last five years, but the City of Atlanta has bucked that trend, growing much faster in recent years than in previous decades, driven in large part by multifamily housing developments.

If we can channel much of that growth into walkable formats near high-capacity transit in the city, a future Atlanta could be known less for it's car-dependent sprawl and more for its successful turnaround, with MARTA rail becoming centerpiece for a new type of growth. Ideally, light rail on the Beltline becomes a part of that success too.