With generous federal assistance and a 1 percent special sales tax collected in Fulton and DeKalb counties and the city of Atlanta, rail construction began in 1975. Smith, New Georgia EncyclopediaĪfter its establishment, MARTA purchased assets of the old Atlanta Transit System, a privately owned company that had operated bus routes in the city. Gwinnett and Cobb counties have not yet followed suit, but polls indicate that opposition may be waning in both counties. Although they retained representation on the authority’s board, suburban jurisdictions remained opposed to MARTA’s expansion until 2014, when voters in Clayton County approved a referendum to join the system. In so doing, the system’s suburban opponents limited MARTA’s effectiveness as a solution to the area’s transportation woes and helped to redefine the lines separating the city from its suburbs. As a consequence, voters in the two counties defeated the measure by a four-to-one margin. The system’s suburban critics, many of whom left Atlanta following the integration of the city’s public spaces, predicted that MARTA would expedite the racial integration of predominantly white suburbs, would lower home values, and would make suburban communities vulnerable to federal busing programs and the dispersal of public housing. This time MARTA encountered opposition from conservative suburban residents in Clayton and Gwinnett counties, where metropolitan expansion and white flight from Atlanta had recently contributed to dramatic population growth. Georgia State University MARTA Station, 1978Ĭourtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As a result of the board’s concessions, voters in Atlanta, Fulton, and DeKalb approved the measure. In 1971 MARTA was put to the voters again, appearing on ballots in Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, and Gwinnett counties as well as the city of Atlanta. The board took steps to become more representative of citywide interests, welcoming its critics to the negotiating table, restructuring routes to better serve Black communities, implementing a minority employment plan, shoring up federal financial support, and proposing the system’s extension into the suburban Atlanta counties of Clayton and Gwinnett. MARTA encountered stiffest opposition from Atlanta’s Black community Black voters objected to the proposed system’s marked service inequality (routes would provide greater service to white neighborhoods than to Black ones), limited African American representation on the MARTA board, and the board’s refusal to honor requests for minority employment guarantees. When the referendum to create MARTA finally appeared on ballots in the city of Atlanta and in Fulton and DeKalb counties in the fall of 1968, MARTA’s proponents touted the system as a transportation cure-all that would ease the metropolitan area’s congestion and establish Atlanta as a “national city.” Despite enjoying wide support in the city’s business community, the measure failed in all three jurisdictions. When he was elected mayor the following year, Allen made rail transit an administrative priority and began the difficult task of obtaining legislative approval, assembling a board of directors, and soliciting architectural and engineering plans.Ĭourtesy of Special Collections & Archives, Georgia State University Library. The proposal’s centerpiece was a rail transit system that would solve Atlanta’s impending transportation crisis and distinguish the city from its regional peers. proposed a six-point program for the city’s growth and development. In 1960 Atlanta Chamber of Commerce president Ivan Allen Jr. MARTA is the only major mass transit system in the country that does not receive state support. Fares and a sales tax provide the bulk of the system’s operating revenues.

The transit agency was established in 1971 with the passage of an authorizing referendum by voters in Fulton and DeKalb counties and the city of Atlanta.Ī public authority operated under Georgia law, MARTA is governed by a fifteen-member board of directors with representation from Fulton, DeKalb, Clayton, and Gwinnett counties and the city of Atlanta. The eighth-largest transit system in the United States, MARTA serves nearly 400,000 passengers a day. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, known as MARTA, provides bus and rapid rail service to the most urbanized portions of the Atlanta metropolitan area.

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