Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority
public transit operator in Metro Atlanta, Georgia
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA ) is the principal public transport operator in the Atlanta metropolitan area. Formed in 1971 as strictly a bus system, MARTA operates a network of bus routes linked to a rapid transit system consisting of 48 miles (77 km) of rail track with 38 subway stations. MARTA's rapid transit system is the eighth-largest rapid transit system in the United States by ridership.
MARTA operates almost exclusively in Fulton, Clayton, and DeKalb counties, although they maintain bus service to two destinations in neighboring Cobb County, while Doraville station serves portions of Gwinnett County via Ride Gwinnett buses. MARTA also operates paratransit service for disabled customers and on-demand microtransit service for people in areas with first or last-mile issues within their neighborhood.
In 2025, the entire system (bus and subway lines) had 65,752,400 rides, or about 258,700 per weekday in the second quarter of 2026.
Expansion of the MARTA system stalled after the completion of three new rail stations in 2000. In 2016, Atlanta voters approved a historic sales tax increase to raise $2.7 billion over 40 years, in order to significantly expand the MARTA system (dubbed the More MARTA program), including 29 miles of light rail transit, 13 miles of bus rapid transit, arterial rapid transit, transit centers and multiple infill MARTA stations. Since its inception, the More MARTA program has been criticized for slow progress, delays, and reversals on executing its list of expansion projects.
History
Beginnings
MARTA was proposed as a rapid transit agency for DeKalb, Fulton, Clayton, Gwinnett, and Cobb counties.
The public source identifies “Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority” as public transit operator in Metro Atlanta, Georgia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Metropolitan, Atlanta and Rapid.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1423792. VIAF identifies the subject as 158945030. The Library of Congress control number is n80099526. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1971, 2025, 2026 and 2000.
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This entry incorporates text from “Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.