At a joint meeting of the Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) board and the Transportation and Air Quality Committee (TAQC) on Wednesday, board members voted to approve an amendment to the ARC’s regional transportation plans, which adds about $207 million to the budget for transportation projects around the metro area.
The action applies to the ARC’s 2050 Metropolitan Transportation Plan (MTP) and the Transportation Improvement Program (TIP) for fiscal year 2024 through 2027. Amendments are required to move federally funded projects from long-range planning into the TIP timeline and whenever the costs for existing projects increase by more than $4 million or 40% of the current project phase cost.
The amendment affects 25 projects across metro Atlanta, including new safe streets projects on Peachtree Street in Midtown and Marietta Boulevard in the City of Atlanta as well as highway improvements on I-75, SR 20, and I-85 North that are facing cost estimate increases. The Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) will review the amendment following ARC’s approval. Once those agencies sign off on the changes, the amendment will allocate an additional $123 million in federal funding, $19 million in state funding, and $66 million in local funding for these transportation and infrastructure projects.
“Some uncertainty with federal funding”
The ARC board also received an update on how policy changes made by the Trump Administration are affecting federal grants awarded to projects across metro Atlanta.
Since November 2021, the region has won more than $550 million in federal funds through 65 awards from competitive programs created by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), passed during the Biden Administration, said David Haynes, manager of transportation planning at ARC.
“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s been some uncertainty with federal funding over the last few months,” Haynes said.
In mid-March, the U.S. Department of Transportation issued an internal memo calling for a pause on competitive grants to give administrators time to review programs for terms and topics that have been targeted by President Trump’s executive orders, including words like DEI, climate change, and EV charging, he told the ARC board on Wednesday.
There has not yet been an update about which projects will be cancelled, revised, or moved forward following this review process, Haynes said, and while about half of local awards (totaling more than $250 million) have a federal funding agreement that has already been executed, the other half of the grants may be at risk of losing full or partial funding.
Five federal awards worth a combined $195 million — including two grants for The Stitch project in downtown and funding for EV charging in the Atlanta region — are currently on hold and funds that have not yet been fully obligated could be subject to changes, depending on the USDOT’s decisions. Work on The Stitch is moving forward with the $8 million in federal funding that has already been obligated, but future phases of several projects are now facing uncertainty.
For the 19 local projects that didn’t have fully executed funding agreements before Trump took office, about $135 million worth of federal grants are in question. These awards include $65 million for the Flint River Gateway Trails project in the Tri-Cities area, $25 million for the Northeast Beltline Trail, $2 million for Centennial Yards complete street planning, and more than $7 million for various traffic safety initiatives across the metro area.
“We know that there are certain awards around the country where they have gotten the green light to move forward, so information is starting to trickle out,” Haynes said, but there still hasn’t been a nationwide update about programs or about awards specific to Atlanta.
New Housing and Transportation Study
Members of the ARC board and TAQC committee heard about a new study ARC is launching this year on housing and transportation across the metro area, after staff have observed how housing costs affect various other initiatives that ARC staff work to support.
“We see more and more [housing issues] intersecting with aging, with natural resources for our infrastructure and our stormwater, and especially with transportation, as it impacts where people can live and related often to where they work,” said Kristin Allin, Principal Planner for Community Development at ARC who is leading the study.
“The goals are to establish a broad framework and a set of regional housing goals to drive long-term planning as well as aligning goals across departments that intersect with housing,” Allin said.
“We also will analyze gaps that exist in the region… so that we can develop new tools, services, and resources within the ARC to benefit our region,” she said.
“Atlanta’s housing affordability crisis has gotten worse over time, with a combination of low housing supply, projected population growth, and limited access to public transit creating housing sprawl across the region that contributes to heavier traffic and fewer housing options for workers,” Allin said.
“In 2022, the Atlanta Fed deemed the Atlanta region unaffordable, in that the median household income is not sufficient to purchase a median-priced home. We’ve seen a loss of affordable units… and we’ve also seen an increasing cost burden. Almost 50% of our renters are cost-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs,” she said.
The ARC is receiving proposals from consultants to work on the study, which has a budget of $250,000, until May 29. Initial work on the housing and transportation research is expected to begin in the second half of 2025, and the contract will end on Dec. 31, 2026.
ARC Board Chair and Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens asked the team to move quickly, emphasizing the importance of providing the ARC board with actionable recommendations as early as possible — particularly ahead of the November 2026 election cycle — rather than waiting until the end of the project to issue a full report.
Several other mayors and county officials on the ARC board pointed out that many cities and counties have already conducted similar research and hope to receive specific advice about housing strategy implementation from this regional study.
ARC staff members were receptive to the calls for a speedier time-frame, affirming that housing supply is probably the top issue across the metro area right now.
“The last thing we want to do is try to recreate the wheel,” Allin said. “You guys are always already doing amazing work in many of your communities. You have plans underway, so we definitely will be taking all those into account as we move forward on this.”
Many of the Livable Cities Initiative (LCI) and Community Development Assistance Program (CDAP) awards for 2025 also focus on the issue of affordable housing in various neighborhoods.
Mayor Dickens also pressed the ARC team to use AI to find common policy suggestions across the collection of local housing studies that have already been completed.
The ways AI is already reshaping the world and metro Atlanta in particular were obvious during the ARC meeting as elected officials on the board received a briefing about the community impacts to consider when presented with proposed data center construction projects.
There are currently 41 proposed data centers in the region, concentrated mostly in areas south of I-20, Celine Benoit, Principal Planner for Natural Resources, Water Conservation and Efficiency at ARC, shared with the board.
She explained that local officials should be asking data center developers questions about power demands and transmission line capacity, water usage, storage, treatment, noise levels, and emergency scenarios, including drought management and power outages.
Other elected officials on the board voiced concerns that companies may build 100- or 200-acre campuses in the coming years that could end up sitting empty a decade down the road if the technology or priorities change. Douglas County currently has a 90-day moratorium on new data center projects and the City of Atlanta has banned new data centers near transit hubs or along the Beltline.
The Metro Atlanta Mayors Association is hosting an in-depth forum on data centers on May 22.
Good to see progress on transportation, but the housing grant uncertainty is seriously worrying. People need solutions, not delays.