MARTA set to receive close to $1 million in funding from U.S. Department of Transportation
A Federal Transit Administration planning grant will fund transit-oriented development studies at a dozen stations along the planned Clayton County bus rapid transit line south of Atlanta.
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority is set to receive close to $1 million in federal funding under the Federal Transit Administration's 2021 Planning for Transit-Oriented Development Program, according to reporting citing MARTA and FTA program details. Related reporting from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution put the specific award at $970,000.
The money is earmarked to study transit-oriented development potential at 12 stations along MARTA's planned Clayton County bus rapid transit line, a project meant to connect the College Park MARTA station to destinations including Airport Gateway, the Shops of Riverdale, Southern Regional Medical Center's campus, the Mount Zion commercial corridor and Southlake Mall.
Sources reviewed for this account differ slightly on the line's length — reporting describes the corridor as covering roughly 15 to 17.2 miles — a discrepancy this account reports rather than resolves.
What the study covers
Transit-oriented development planning grants like this one are designed to help transit agencies assess how surrounding land near future stations could be developed for housing, retail and other uses that support ridership — work that typically precedes any construction funding decision. The Clayton County corridor is one piece of MARTA's broader push to expand bus rapid transit south of the city.
The larger funding pattern
The award sits inside a wider pattern of federal transit-oriented development funding: MARTA separately received $1.75 million from USDOT's Regional Infrastructure Accelerators Program in October 2023 for a regional TOD accelerator, with MARTA General Manager and CEO Collie Greenwood saying at the time, "From Georgia 400 bus rapid transit, to Roosevelt Highway and rail infill stations in between, the transit needs of this region are far greater than our current funding model supports." That later award is reported here only as context for the scale of MARTA's ongoing federal funding requests, not as part of the Clayton County TOD planning grant itself.
What it signals
Planning money, not construction money, is what MARTA secured here — a distinction that matters because a transit-oriented development study can take years to translate into an actual funded rapid-transit line, and federal transportation dollars for Atlanta's south side have arrived in a sequence of relatively small planning grants rather than one large capital award.
US In News compiled this archived account from contemporaneous coverage by The Atlanta Voice and Mass Transit magazine. It restores a story originally published on this site in early 2022; figures are as reported at the time.