MARTA Board to decide on free Atlanta Streetcar fares
THURSDAY UPDATE: Today's MARTA Board meeting has been canceled for lack of a quorum. The meeting will be rescheduled soon.
The MARTA Board of Directors is expected to decide this week whether to drop the $1 fee for riding the Atlanta Streetcar.
Earlier Tuesday, MARTA sent a press release announcing the fares would be free when the agency takes over streetcar operations on July 1. But it subsequently corrected its press release, saying the board must make that decision. The board meets Thursday.
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MARTA said it still hasn’t made other key decisions about the streetcar, including how frequently it will run.
The fare decision comes as MARTA is finalizing plans for 21-mile miles of light rail in Atlanta. The plan calls for incorporating the existing 2.7-mile streetcar route into the new light rail network.
“As MARTA looks at ways to provide more and better transit operations, the streetcar presents an opportunity to expand with light rail,” Chief Operating Officer Rich Krisak said in announcing the decision to eliminate the fare.
The city-owned streetcar has failed to live up to its promise since it debuted in December 2014. Ridership failed to meet initial projections and fell significantly when Atlanta began charging $1 to ride in 2016.
Two years ago the Georgia Department of Transportation threatened to shut down the streetcar over safety and other concerns the city had not addressed. Atlanta later resolved those concerns to the state's satisfaction, and ridership ticked up 16 percent last year to 429,963 passenger trips.
But the city has agreed to turn the streetcar over to MARTA, which will integrate it into its proposed light rail system. The money to pay for the streetcar will come from the half-penny transit sales tax approved by Atlanta voters in 2016.