City leaders, stakeholders, and transit advocates continue to put pressure on MARTA to pause its $230 million renovation plan for Five Points Station.

During a lunchtime rally hosted by transit and pedestrian advocacy nonprofit Propel ATL on Tuesday, multiple speakers – including Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman, City Councilman Jason Dozier, and Central Atlanta Progress President A.J. Robinson – urged MARTA to reconsider its renovation plan.

The revamp, which is being paid for by the More MARTA sales tax collection, would close the station for four years. An audit of the More MARTA program demanded by the city is still ongoing with a final report expected in July.

In its original announcement about the closure, MARTA said there would be no pedestrian access and bus routes would be moved to other nearby stations for the duration of the project.

Last week, MARTA backtracked and said it would work with contractors to try and reopen at least one pedestrian access point after the first 18 months of renovation, which includes removing the leaking concrete canopy over the station.

Propel ATL’s Rebecca Serna said in her opening remarks at the rally that the renovation would lengthen trips for the 17,000 riders who use that station daily. Thousands more would be impacted by the station’s closure during the World Cup matches in 2026.

Shipman said the city council started asking questions more than a year ago about how the More MARTA money was being spent.

“We want to know if taxpayers are getting what they’re paying for,” Shipman said. “So far, the audit has raised fundamental questions about More MARTA spending.”

Mayor Andre Dickens said in a June 6 letter to MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood that he believed the Five Points project should be paused after preliminary figures from the audit showed the transit agency could be required to repay $10 million to its expansion program for 2002 and $59.9 million from 2017-21, and possibly more.

“I am asking the MARTA board to follow the mayor’s request,” Shipman said at the rally. “Let the audit finish and let’s come up with something better than this ill-conceived plan.”

Dozier said closing MARTA’s busiest station for years would cause hardship for its riders who rely on the trains and buses to get to work and appointments.

Robinson, who previously called MARTA’s redesign of the Five Points Station “deeply flawed,” said during the rally that it would be a “detriment” to the city.

“We shouldn’t be using More MARTA funds for a leaky roof neglected for 50 years,” Robinson said. “We deserve better.”

Deborah Scott, CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Stand-Up Georgia, used a megaphone make her demands of MARTA heard.

“Black and brown folks who ride MARTA will not stand for this,” Scott said. “We cannot close this station. It’s an insult to the community. We want MARTA to be responsible to the people who ride it.”

MARTA said in a media statement just after the rally that it was “full steam ahead” with the Five Points project:

We are full steam ahead to revitalize Five Points and deliver an enhanced experience for our riders with as limited disruption as possible. Delaying this work is irresponsible and does nothing to alleviate the service impacts necessary for such complex deconstruction work. The time to do this work is now, not years from now when we will be left with no choice and potentially forced to close the entire station without the benefit of detour planning and communications.

We welcome all viewpoints for a project of this scope and pledge to continue listening and adjusting, when possible, but we remain committed to delivering this project that was approved by our partners at the City, by voters, and supported by the state and federal government.

  • Decades of water intrusion has weakened the concrete canopy and continues to damage the inside of the station and create hazards for customers.
  • The canopy deconstruction requires a complex support system on the concourse level and temporarily closing the street level is the only way to do the work safely and efficiently.
  • The deconstruction work is scheduled to take 18 months, not 4 years. The entire project is scheduled for 4 years, but street-level access will not be impacted that long.
  • We are investing millions in renovating the platform levels and hundreds of millions in new trains. It is irresponsible to not also address the deteriorating canopy and risk damage to these investments.
  • Because this project is funded through a combination of sources, delaying it impacts MARTA’s ability to secure federal funding for current and future transit expansion projects.

This story comes to GPB through a reporting partnership with Rough Draft Atlanta.

Tags: Atlanta  Georgia  MARTA