MARTA’s interim leader Jonathan Hunt will be the next permanent CEO.
On Aug. 13, the MARTA board of directors announced Hunt would permanently take on the transit agency’s top job after a lengthy search. The finalists were announced four days ago; he beat out Cleveland Ferguson III from the Jacksonville Transportation Authority and Leroy Jones from the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority for the role.
As CEO, Hunt will continue to oversee the eighth-largest transit system in the United States. MARTA has 48 miles of heavy rail with 38 stations, 2.7 miles of streetcar and a 5-mile bus rapid transit route. In 2025 MARTA had about 66 million riders.
“The decision this board has just made is one of the most consequential we will ever make,” MARTA Board Chair Jennifer Ide said.
It’s a continuity move for an agency with a fraught history. After former CEO Jeffrey Parker committed suicide on Jan. 14, 2022, Collie Greenwood took over as the interim and then permanent CEO. Greenwood left abruptly in 2025, citing visa complications.
MARTA appointed chief legal counsel Jonathan Hunt as the interim CEO and began a lengthy search for the permanent replacement last August. It fielded about 250 candidates spanning transportation industries.
When Hunt took on the interim role, he said he was not interested in becoming the permanent CEO. But the search took a while, with delays and a pause in recruitment. Hunt oversaw the agency through ongoing challenges and a ridership boost with the FIFA World Cup.
Ide said he inherited the job with “high expectations and a very long list of major projects coming online at one of the most transformational moments in MARTA’s history.”
In April, he decided to apply for the permanent position. He cites two priorities: increasing ridership and improving customer experience. The agency already faces many challenges, like safety problems, long headways for train arrivals and delayed rides, public trust issues, low ridership and the ever-looming question of expansion.
Hunt has addressed some already. He hired 30 additional MARTA officers in a push for safety, and ridership has gone up 30 percent in the past 10 months, compared to the 10 months prior, though the World Cup may have boosted ridership data.
Ide said the board is confident in Hunt’s leadership because of how well he knows MARTA. He joined the agency in 2014 and spent more than a decade in the legal department, rising to chief legal counsel before taking on the interim title. He has longstanding relationships within and outside the agency.
“He understands our operations, our finances, our capital program and the complicated web of community interests that we answer to,” Ide said.
In brief remarks during the meeting, Hunt laid out his vision: Collaboration across jurisdictions, with business partners and community leaders, additional transparency and improving rider experience.
“There is a lot of work to do, and I’m going to borrow a statement from Mayor Dickens, where he says Atlanta is a group project,” Hunt said. “So is MARTA.”
