Gwinnett leaders are taking a new look at how best to transport nearly 1 million residents throughout the county, less than a year after a transit referendum that included MARTA narrowly failed.
On June 22, the Board of Commissioners agreed to hire a consultant to update its comprehensive transportation plan over the next year. The new plan will include feedback from residents and business owners and address the transportation needs of a post-pandemic Gwinnett.
County officials have tried to tackle the issue of public transit access for decades, failing on multiple occasions to sell voters on several iterations of plans to link the suburban county to MARTA.
“We have to reconvene and revisit the transit and transportation conversation,” said County Commission Chairwoman Nicole Love Hendrickson, who took office this year. “But there is still low-hanging fruit for projects that we can bring in the next two years that can address the needs of the transit-dependent community.”
Prior to the pandemic, the county’s transit system recorded about 1.5 million boardings each year, said Lewis Cooksey, director of the county’s transportation department. Local buses currently run through the most heavily populated areas of Gwinnett around Duluth, Lawrenceville, Lilburn, Norcross and Peachtree Corners.
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
Credit: Alyssa Pointer
New bus routes may be needed to meet the demands of new development, Cooksey said, such as the Amazon facility near Stone Mountain, The Exchange at Gwinnett near Buford and the 2,000-acre “knowledge community” known as Rowen planned near Dacula.
Riders of the county’s buses can connect to MARTA, as a few routes stop at the train station in Doraville that is linked to the rest of metro Atlanta’s transit system. Gwinnett also has express buses that take riders to downtown Atlanta.
Expanded hours of operation and new bus routes, particularly along U.S. 78, may result from the transportation plan update, Hendrickson said. The county might build more park-and-ride locations, Cooksey said, where people can park their cars and hop on buses.
Currently, it costs $1.25-$5 to take a ride on local or express buses. A cost analysis will test the feasibility of removing bus fare fees and if it would increase ridership, Hendrickson said.
Referendums to bring MARTA into the county have failed to pass multiple times over the last 40 years, first in 1971 and most recently in 2020. The last referendum lost by 1,013 votes out of 398,041 cast.
Several theories could explain the most recent rejection, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a special tax for education that appeared alongside the transit referendum on the ballot. Residents voted against the plan for mixed reasons.
The MARTA conversation may arise again, Hendrickson said, but she’s unsure if it’d appear on a 2022 ballot.
U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg touched ground in Gwinnett County last Friday to sell the $1 trillion infrastructure deal that passed the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. He hyped up the billions of dollars that Georgia would receive over the next five years for infrastructure improvements.
The state stands to receive $1.4 billion for improving public transportation, in addition to billions for repairing and building highways and expanding the electric vehicle charging network.
U.S. Rep. Carolyn Bourdeaux, D-Suwanee, has advocated for improving public transit in the overlooked suburbs since she took office this year. Her “future-fit-the-suburbs” plan calls for more transit options and creating or expanding greenway systems.
Even for those who opt not to use public transit, Buttigieg stressed that it could relieve congestion in ways that building bigger roads could not. The lack of transit prevents some people from bettering their quality of life and even accessing jobs, which he believes the infrastructure plan could help address.
“There have to be local decisions made about the future of everything,” said Buttigieg on Friday. “... Often the real question is: How do we give people an alternative to having to drag two tons of metal with you everywhere you go? Excellent transit can provide that alternative.”
With or without MARTA, the updates that come to the county’s transit system will need to appeal to the diverse needs of the county. The transit needs of Norcross or Peachtree Corners likely differ from the needs of Snellville or Grayson, Hendrickson said.
“It’s not a one-size-fits-all approach because the way our county is designed,” Hendrickson said. “... We have to do a better job at providing a value proposition to all of our stakeholders that are essentially paying for it and investing it.”
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