GRTA Xpress bus service changes at a glance:
- Three new routes will be added directly to Perimeter Center from Cobb, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties.
- One route from Mableton to Downtown that has low ridership will be eliminated.
- 18 park-and-ride lots will have increased access to downtown and Midtown in terms of the number of trips made per day.
- Three park-and-ride lots without previous Midtown access will have new service.
- Eleven park-and-ride lots will have new, earlier or later service to Downtown.
- Seventeen park-and-ride lots will have new, earlier or later service to Midtown.
- All routes will have a more streamlined route through Downtown that reduces the number of turns and avoids some of the more congested areas to improve on-time performance.
For details about the proposed changes, visit www.directxpress.xpressga.com.
On a typical workday, about 9,000 passengers from a dozen counties board an Xpress bus bound for metro Atlanta job centers. But the job centers themselves are shifting, and the Xpress bus system is moving with them.
The board of the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority on Wednesday approved three new cross-suburb Xpress routes: buses originating in Cobb, Gwinnett and Forsyth counties will carry riders to the bustling office towers near Perimeter Mall, an area that continues to see explosive growth.
The changes will shape the future of commuter coach service in the region for years to come. The changes result from an 18-month-long ridership evaluation — the first of its kind since Xpress buses began operating a decade ago. The net effect will be more frequent transit service to more places, such as the Perimeter Center area, that metro Atlantans travel to work.
Most of the bus routes will still serve Downtown or Midtown Atlanta. But the addition of three new routes to Perimeter Center is aimed at capturing ridership in a hotter-than-ever job market.
The Perimeter already has more office space than downtown, Midtown or Buckhead. Thousands more jobs will be added over the next two years with the expansion of the campus of Cox Enterprises, the parent of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution; the headquarters relocation of Mercedes-Benz; and the buildout of a national State Farm Insurance hub.
That gangbuster growth over the last few decades has brought with it bumper-to-bumper congestion around Perimeter at rush hour on most days. But currently only one GRTA route serves the Perimeter, traveling to and from Conyers in Rockdale County.
Kevin Chenault, an IT professional who lives in Lithonia, was waiting for that bus at the Dunwoody MARTA station Tuesday afternoon. He said the ride home is an hour and 15 minutes on a good day, and he spends that time in the air-conditioned comfort of a coach bus, scrolling through emails on his laptop, playing video games or napping.
“If I’m sitting in traffic all that time, I’m mentally drained,” Chenault said. “If I ride the bus, I can relax, destress, refresh.”
He thinks other area workers will make the same choice when they have the option.
Every route will change
Changes will be made to all existing Xpress bus routes as part of GRTA’s new service plan. The changes could include retiming departures/arrivals, adding or subtracting stops, or changing dropoff and pickup points. The total number of routes will shrink from 33 to 25 as some routes are consolidated. Overall service will grow, however, with more frequent stops.
Passengers will wait only 15 minutes between buses during the peak periods, down from the 30-minute waits on many routes today. At busy times in high-demand areas, the wait could be whittled down to as little as 10 minutes.
One route from Mableton to Downtown that has low ridership — an average of 10 passengers per ride on a bus made to carry 57 — will be eliminated.
Other tweaks are causing a kerfuffle, though. For example, some federal workers at three buildings downtown would have to walk farther to catch the bus, instead of having a bus that practically stops at their office doorstep.
The bus stop shift is being made as GRTA seeks to reduce the number of turns that buses make through downtown and avoid heavily congested areas, which improves on-time performance.
Steve Houlder, who manages the Martin Luther King Jr. Federal Building, is a regular Xpress bus rider. He says GRTA will lose a lot of business if customers have to walk three to five blocks down Central Avenue to the new bus stop. He walked there one morning and counted 43 vagrants.
GRTA has met with the federal workers to hear their concerns. But Houlder said he is skeptical their feedback will be taken into account.
GRTA executive director Chris Tomlinson said the authority may make “some modifications to address those concerns.”
More Xpress bus service planned
Looking down the road, GRTA wants to add direct bus service from non-MARTA counties like Cobb and Gwinnett to the airport.
The transit agency is also considering adding more park-and-ride lots in the Cobb/Cherokee and Henry/Clayton areas along I-75. That way, riders could take advantage of new express toll lanes that are under construction on I-75 in those counties. The addition of the express lanes is expected to spur more people to switch to Xpress buses for their daily commute, since transit buses can use the toll lanes for free to bypass traffic.
In the I-85 HOT lanes, only 2 percent of the vehicles during morning rush hour are transit vehicles. However, those vehicles carry more than a quarter of the people who travel through the lane.
The short-term route changes to Xpress bus service won’t cost GRTA a dime. The long-term plan to add airport service and add park and ride lots is aspirational, because the agency doesn’t have the money to do it right now. GRTA will seek grants and request additional state funding in coming years to help further those goals, Tomlinson said.
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