ATL board approves next steps for reduction of Xpress bus service

The Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority (ATL) board gave the green light for the Xpress commuter bus service to further refine a plan to cut stops, change routes, and reduce the number of park-and-ride lots at its August board meeting on Thursday.

Proposed changes presented to the board this week by ATL Deputy Executive Director Cain Williamson were similar to those shared with ATL in June and with riders during public meetings in July. The first phase of the plan includes: 

• Reducing total daily trips from 197 to 94 trips. Of those, 48 trips would end at MARTA stations—either Civic Center, Dunwoody, H.E. Holmes, College Park, or Indian Creek
• Reducing the current total of 27 park-and-ride lots throughout the region down to 18 lots
• Reducing stops in downtown, midtown, and perimeter from 55 down to 12

The “Redefining the Ride” initiative began in April 2023 and comes after the Xpress buses, which primarily serve riders traveling between 20 to 50 miles on average from the suburbs into business districts in Perimeter Center, Midtown, and Downtown, experienced a significant drop in ridership during the COVID-19 pandemic. The number of people taking the bus has yet to rebound to 2019 levels, and with fewer seats filled, the state legislature also cut $4 million in funding for the Xpress program this year.

“We obviously had to go through some kind of major adjustment to the system,” Tom Weyandt, ATL board member for District 5, said. “There’s no question that major changes had to be made, and that was going to inconvenience some riders.”

Pending ATL approvals, the Xpress bus services changes will go into effect in spring 2025.

Ridership trends

Average daily ridership is about 2,200 per day for Xpress service, Williamson said, which is 11 percent higher than 2023 and up from the less than 800 daily riders during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, but still less than half of its peak average daily ridership of 7,685 in 2019. 

For Maria Herbert, a transaction accountant at Cushman & Wakefield who has been taking the Xpress bus from Douglasville to her office in midtown for 17 years, the adjustments could mean opting to drive into the city more often. 

Her redefined route would drop her at H.E. Holmes MARTA station, requiring two train transfers and a longer walk to get into midtown rather than the seven-minute walk from the current bus stop to the office.

“Particularly in the colder months, or if it’s raining — depending upon weather, I might just drive,” Herbert, 55, said.

That means more cars on the road contributing to congestion and air pollution — issues this commuter bus service was established to help address. It also means extra costs, extra time, or a lack of public transit alternatives for riders who don’t have access to a vehicle.

Without Xpress service, 13 percent of riders surveyed by ATL said they wouldn’t have a way to make the trips they take on the bus. While the majority of riders do have a car, 18 percent reported that there is no car available to them and another 28 percent said they would inconvenience someone else by needing to use a personal vehicle.  

Changing behaviors

Hebert is one of many workers who have returned to the office on a more limited basis — three days per week rather than five days pre-pandemic — and that shift is reflected in Xpress ridership. Survey responses showed that 56 percent of riders take the bus three days per week or less, while 31 percent of riders said they use Xpress daily. 

The first phase of proposed changes aims to increase the Xpress utilization rate, or the percentage of filled seats, from 16 percent on average to 35 percent. 

“In 2019, we had an average of 40 percent utilization rate on the routes, and it was as high on high ridership days as 45 percent, so that’s sort of where we’re trying to get back — at a minimum — to where we were pre-pandemic,” Williamson said, assuming that Xpress maintains current ridership levels.

Customer satisfaction for Xpress is strong based on the survey responses, and nearly half of riders who took the survey were new or returned to using the service in the last year, but the proposed cuts could change that. 

“We do anticipate that there will be some dip in ridership as a result of the service changes,” he said. “And there will be a period afterward when we are hopefully climbing back up.”

Remaining questions

One big unknown for the 83 percent of people using Xpress to commute is whether new routes and stops will still get them to work on time, and whether they’ll be able to make it back home.

Herbert said recently the evening buses have been leaving earlier than during pre-pandemic years. 

“The last bus that I could catch now is 5:15,” Herbert said. People working later in the evenings aren’t able to use the bus service without a return trip that accommodates their work schedules, she said.

There’s also the question of whether riders will be willing to drive further to catch a bus or make more transfers to MARTA lines. 

Weyandt said it could be an opportunity to expand ridership and connect more people to MARTA.

“I think connecting into the MARTA system at more places, especially at the end of the line, is something that, frankly, should have been done when service was started. I was always a skeptic about the need to bring all these buses all the way into town,” he said.

Less than one in four Xpress riders who took the survey are currently making transfers to another bus or train, but 48 percent of respondents expressed a willingness to transfer in the future. A majority of survey respondents said they wouldn’t be willing to drive further to reach a park-and-ride lot, while 43 percent said they would.

The resolution passed by the ATL board on Thursday leaves room to “fine-tune” the service changes, Weyandt said. 

“That’s going to mean looking specifically at whether we really need to eliminate all of those stops, and whether there aren’t some activity centers” that could be added back in, such as the 5th street stop serving Georgia Tech, he said. “It’s way short of 55 stops, but it’s probably more than the 12 we’re looking at now.”

Next steps

Williamson said the ATL team is still gathering data but has “substantially completed” its collection of responses from existing riders. The focus now is on getting a broader group of people who may be potential Xpress riders to take the survey, and those results will be analyzed by early winter, he said. 

Those responses will inform the final planning for Xpress service changes.

“The large employers that some of these people work for… they should have a voice in this as well,” Herbert said. “It does affect the community. It’s going to affect people’s employment, and the employers as part of that equation.”