Opposition grows over MARTA’s plan to close Five Points station for years 

The lives of 17,000 people will be disrupted by MARTA’s plans to close access to its Five Points Station for up to four years, beginning July 29.

One of those daily transit riders is Magnolia Puy, a stay-at-home mom who doesn’t have a car and doesn’t know how to drive. She moved to Atlanta 12 years ago after growing up in Paris and living in New York City. She has lived within walking distance of the Five Points station ever since.

Until now.

Puy and her family are in the process of moving largely because of MARTA’s plans to close the Five Points station to foot traffic and buses for the duration of the $230 million renovation project with the exception of a temporary reopening of the station during the World Cup in the summer of 2026.

“MARTA is choosing to end our way of life as a transit-riding family,” Puy said on Sunday. “We’ll have to find other options. So, we’ve made the tough choice to move out of downtown and go to Midtown. If we can’t have all of our transit routes, we might as well move to be closer to a grocery store and other things in walking distance.”

In a letter to MARTA general manager Collie Greenwood, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens asked the transit agency to pause the project until the completion of a joint audit of the More MARTA tax revenues and expenditures.

Mayor Dickens continued pushing back on MARTA’s plans to close Five Points. In an exclusive interview after the June 14 quarterly meeting of the Atlanta Committee for Progress. Dickens disputed MARTA’s contention that the city already had approved the project.

“We all have talked about the need to do some enhancements and improvements, but no one knew that it was going to take four years and that for a considerable portion of that time, there will be no access for people who are disabled or otherwise unable to go up and down stairs,” Dickens said. “This was all news to us. It just was a surprise. Like, wait a minute.”

Dickens expressed even more skepticism about the Five Points station renovation project, asking whether the limited More MARTA funds should be spent elsewhere.

“How can this be done in a different way that doesn’t have this much disruption?” he asked. “It being shut down for six to eight weeks or even three or four months is understandable for something complex. But four years?”

The mayor continued:

“When you see how disruptive this is going to be, you start to say: Is there a better way to utilize these funds in the near term? Could you affect more stations? Could you get some infill stations out of this?” Dickens asked.

The mayor is not alone in questioning MARTA’s plans.

Central Atlanta Progress, a business organization, said MARTA’s plans to close the Five Points Station endanger downtown’s rebirth. Instead of the large-scale renovation, CAP is calling for a station “refresh” and to delay the construction until after the 2026 World Cup. 

At the MARTA board meeting on June 13, most of the public comments opposed the idea of closing the station to pedestrian access for four years. 

Carden Wycloff, a disability advocate, said MARTA’s current plans for shuttles would add significant delay to her trips. “For me, transit equals independence,” she said. “MARTA, this plan takes away our freedom.”

Rebecca Serna, executive director of Propel ATL, spoke on behalf of 13 organizations, including the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association, saying it is imperative that any transformation maintain pedestrian, bus and ADA access for the duration of the project. 

“MARTA should respond to that kind of pressure,” Dickens said. “They should respond to riders and citizens and businesses.”

So far, MARTA is not backing down. At the MARTA board meeting, all the members who spoke said the agency should move forward with plans to close the station on July 29, even though some called on revisiting issues of access.  

The mayor is standing firm in questioning MARTA’s plans and the way More MARTA funds are being spent. City of Atlanta taxpayers approved an additional half-penny sales tax in 2016 for numerous transit projects within the city, but MARTA has been slow to expand transit. There have been concerns about the spending of the More MARTA dollars. Hence the audit, which should be completed by late July. Preliminary results have city leaders saying MARTA needs to return $60 million in funds to More MARTA, while the agency has said that number is closer to $9 million. 

Dickens said More MARTA had “a lot of projects on it,” and it is not known how much they are going to cost until construction is about to begin. 

“That’s why every bit of analysis that we can do going into these large projects is important, particularly for an agency that has not built a lot of stuff in a long time,” said Dickens, who said there should be some beautification of the Five Points station in time for the World Cup. “But it won’t be this complete overhaul because this overhaul is going to take a long time, according to them.”

Dickens also disputed MARTA’s comments about the audit. 

“We want to remind everybody that this was a joint audit. This is not just the city. This is MARTA and the city agreeing to the audit terms, the audit company, the auditor. All these things were agreed to,” Dickens said. “The audit is not a city audit that’s going to be biased toward the city. It is the audit.”

The Atlanta Committee for Progress did not take a formal position on the project, but members did acknowledge the business community needs to be engaged in the decision.

“Individual members have said they are not supportive of this shutdown for four years with limited access for people with disabilities,” Dickens said. “They have expressed their displeasure in MARTA moving ahead with something that clearly, they disagree with right now.”

A wide gulf exists between MARTA and the city on several issues, including the audit and the Five Points Station renovation. Also, there is a lack of clarity on the priorities for expanded transit in the City of Atlanta, including rail on the BeltLine, the proposed four infill MARTA stations that Dickens announced at his State of the City on March 25.

Meanwhile, Puy believes MARTA’s decision to close Five Points for up to four years is not in the agency’s own best interests. Closing access to the only station that connects all of MARTA’s rail lines will further alienate MARTA’s most dedicated riders and hurt the transit agency’s ridership. Atlanta is already lagging behind other major cities in getting riders to return to riding transit after the pandemic.

As Puy sees it, the Five Points station redo is more of a beautification project rather than an expansion of transit.“They are choosing to not consider the customer experience in favor of a project that simply rebuilds the existing station without making any meaningful improvements in how the station serves the public,” Puy said. “They are not listening to the needs of the people by closing a station for four years. They are pushing people to buy a car.”

A couple of Youtube videos that show growing opposition: