Recent years have shown that there’s no easy, or fast, road toward needed transportation improvements in metro Atlanta.
Achieving needed milestones is arduous work now. Thus, it’s worthwhile to celebrate them when, beyond the odds, they do still occur.
Seen that way, the new reality that Clayton County citizens will vote in less than four months on whether to join MARTA is especially noteworthy. And it’s equally encouraging, too, that the fragile political pilgrimage necessary to even permit this vote did not collapse at some point along the way.
It did not. Which means the 3-1 vote earlier this month by the Clayton County Commission to place a MARTA penny sales tax referendum on the November ballot marks an historic moment for metro Atlanta. The commission’s vote during a special holiday weekend meeting followed a one-step-up, one-step-back political waltz that had left the proposal in jeopardy at times. In the end, the Clayton commissioners voted to let the people decide. They are to be commended for that move, and for recognizing that the return of transit is critical to their county’s future.
The prospect of public transportation rolling toward a comeback in Clayton also has significant meaning for the rest of the metro as well. Clayton and MARTA’s courtship represents an important recognition that the Atlanta metro really is – or can and should be – more than the sum of its respective parts. We’re pleased to see another core county publicly acknowledge that “region” is not really a bad word and concept.
That we’re here speaks well of MARTA’s performance under CEO Keith Parker, who’s worked hard to improve the agency and its relationships with public officials.
If this deal doesn’t somehow fall apart – and Clayton voters go along with the idea in November – MARTA would then be three-fifths of the way toward the long-ago envisioned transit system linking five counties and the city of Atlanta.
That is a big step forward for this metro. One that will bolster our ability to create jobs and bring workers to them — region-wide.
The lack of transit has no doubt hindered economic development in Clayton and adjacent areas since the last C-Tran bus departed in 2010 as the result of funding shortages. Anyone driving the stretch of State Route 85, for example, between the south edge of Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport and the Fayette County border sees a large number of businesses along that busy road. Potential workers without vehicles lack a reliable way to take advantage of jobs there. Similar situations exist along other Clayton County thoroughfares.
Bringing back some form of transit can help Clayton improve its economic vitality. The contract approved by Clayton and the MARTA board lays out a reasonable, stepped approach to that goal.
Buses will reappear first. Given they’re the easiest, cheapest and fastest option to restore, that makes sense. Passengers could begin boarding on Clayton routes as early as next year.
Beyond that, things are murkier. The contract calls for accruing tax receipts toward future construction of either a north-south passenger rail line or an “alternative high capacity transit option,” likely Bus Rapid Transit, which brings some of the attributes of rail to rubber-tired vehicles.
Adding either rail or BRT will be tricky. Commuter trains, at minimum, will require challenging negotiations with freight hauler Norfolk Southern. Reaching a public-private partnership deal will likely require buying access for passenger trains using public money for rail line improvements. BRT, among other things, requires using roads in a new way by carving out space for buses to load, unload and move passengers with less interaction with other vehicles.
It’s too early to authoritatively say what any Phase 2 of Clayton transit will look like. Conversations and studies around both rail and BRT should continue, with the goal of finding cost-effective ways of moving the most metro Atlantans now and in the region the future will create.
Toward that broad end, adding Clayton County to the metro transit mix should prove a good thing. We hope the momentum continues elsewhere around the region.
