As Clayton County celebrates five years of MARTA service this month, the transit agency is refreshing plans for a long-promised operations and maintenance facility for the south metro community.
MARTA says it will construct a 105,000-square-foot maintenance facility on 30 to 35 acres in north Clayton County by 2026, a building substantially larger than the 10,000-square-foot structure talked about in 2014 when MARTA first laid out plans for operations in Clayton. MARTA hopes the facility will make it more efficient by centralizing bus services for Clayton and south Fulton County and offering a place where buses needing repairs can be fixed quicker.
The new plan also bumps up the number of employees expected from 150 in 2014 to more than 350 when it opens six years from now, MARTA CEO Jeff Parker told Clayton officials recently. The lengthy time getting the facility in operation is due to the years it will take finding and purchasing the land, conceptual designs, obtaining federal grants and construction.
“We really intend on making it a substantial operation of our bus system,” Parker told the Clayton County Commission in late February.
The move comes as MARTA is planning to broaden its presence in the south metro community, including bringing commuter rail services and more bus routes to meet growing demand.
Clayton officials have pushed the agency to pick up the pace on amenities residents want to see today, such as bus shelters.
Parker said MARTA has erected 39 shelters since launching operations in 2015 and plans to build dozens more in 2020. But he admitted the pace was slow and said shelters would not be available at all 625 bus stops in the county.
“The bottom line is we want people to be able to go to work and go wherever they are going without being in the rain,” Commissioner Felicia Franklin Warner said.
In addition to the expanded operations facility, Parker also said MARTA plans to add two east-west bus routes in Clayton and will develop a transit center at the Clayton County Justice Center.
The revised operations and maintenance facility will cost about $110 million, instead of the $26.2 million projected in 2014. MARTA also will put funds into the project, along with federal dollars and Clayton’s capital reserves for transit operations. Clayton’s reserves previously were the sole source of funding.
“We want to increase the efficiency of the MARTA system,” Parker said. “A newer facility in Clayton County will lower our overall maintenance costs and make sure that we have an efficient operation.”
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