With MARTA off the ballot, will two metro Atlanta counties finally vote to expand public transit?
For more than half a century, residents of Georgia’s second and third most populous counties have repeatedly rejected penny sales taxes for transit expansion. But starting Tuesday, when early voting begins, Gwinnett and Cobb counties will propose those taxes again — this time, to fund the most far-reaching and costly plans yet.
The main difference: neither plan includes heavy rail or expands the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority.
Voter approval would reverse years of historical precedent and reflect both counties’ evolution into diverse, largely dense suburbs.
Or maybe it would just mean MARTA was the problem all along.
The support of each county’s relatively new Democratic majorities is key to the success of the latest transit plans, though this group’s engagement remains unclear.
Miatta Tarawally, 31, has lived in Snellville since she immigrated as a child from Sierra Leone, but neither of Gwinnett County’s two recent efforts were on the former Barack Obama voter’s radar. Nor did she know, less than two months before Election Day, about the county’s latest plan. But she likes the idea.
“It would be good if buses were here,” Tarawally said in the parking lot of the Centerville Walmart where, unbeknownst to her, a new high-frequency bus would run.
Atlanta’s suburbs have mounted stubborn opposition to transit ever since they were first asked to support MARTA in 1965. The objections are so well established that after old rail cars were dropped into the ocean to create reefs recently, one online commenter noted “Fish get MARTA before Cobb does.” Voters’ criticisms have run the gamut, from inflammatory sentiments about the race and class of riders to denouncements of MARTA’s spending and operations.
The two counties look different today than they did in 1965 when conservatism and white flight fueled growth. Both counties now lean Democratic, a party whose national platform calls for transit expansion. The tax questions on the ballot this November could also benefit from the relatively high turnout of a presidential election.
But those factors were true four years ago when Gwinnett voters nevertheless sank a transit proposal. It failed largely because Democrats’ support for transit was divided, data shows.
