Let me say something MARTA riders have been waiting a long time to hear: the system has been excellent during the World Cup.
Not adequate. Not “better than expected.” Excellent. Five-minute headways, every day. Transit Ambassadors on every platform, speaking multiple languages, actually helping people. A contactless fare system that works. Crime down. Trains running on time. Two hundred and twenty thousand rail riders in a single day — and the wheels didn’t come off.
For those of us who have spent years writing about MARTA’s chronic underfunding, its aging fleet, its understaffed stations, and its reputation as a system that’s easy to dismiss, the past two weeks have been a revelation.
MARTA proved it can be a world-class transit system. The question is whether anyone in power cares enough to keep it that way after the FIFA cameras leave.
What changed
The honest answer is: money and attention.
MARTA spent months preparing for the tournament. It accelerated the launch of Better Breeze contactless payment. It completed the NextGen bus redesign ahead of schedule. It hired hundreds of temporary ambassadors, staged standby buses, and brought in police from Denver to supplement its security presence.
The agency also benefited from something it rarely gets: public goodwill. Atlanta wanted to look good for the world, and that meant rooting for MARTA to succeed rather than expecting it to fail.
The result was a transit system that felt, for the first time in memory, like it was designed for people who actually use it.
The September question
Here’s my worry. On July 20, the day after the World Cup final, the temporary ambassadors go home. The Denver police fly back. The five-minute headways revert to the usual eight or ten or twelve. The standby buses get reassigned. The media attention evaporates.
And by September, we’ll be back to the MARTA that most Atlantans know: understaffed, underfunded, and underestimated.
It doesn’t have to be that way.
MARTA’s World Cup performance was not a mirage. It was a demonstration of what the system can do when it has adequate staffing, when its leadership prioritizes rider experience, and when the public gives it room to succeed.
What it would take
Sustaining this level of service isn’t free. But it’s also not as expensive as critics suggest. Here’s a starting point:
- Make five-minute peak headways permanent. The infrastructure supports it. The trains exist. What’s needed is the operating budget to run them.
- Keep the ambassadors. Not all 4,000 shifts’ worth, but a permanent corps of customer-service staff at the system’s 10 busiest stations would transform the rider experience.
- Expand Better Breeze. The contactless system works — now extend it to buses and make Breeze-card top-ups available at every corner store in the network.
- Maintain the security posture. The visible police presence during the World Cup correlated with a measurable drop in crime. That’s not a coincidence.
The politics
MARTA has never been short on plans. It has been short on political will. The agency’s funding structure — dependent on a 1 percent sales tax in just four counties — has been inadequate since the 1990s. The Georgia General Assembly has historically been hostile to transit expansion, and suburban counties have repeatedly voted against joining the system.
But the World Cup just showed 270,000 in-person fans and a global television audience that Atlanta’s transit system can work. That is a more powerful argument for investment than any white paper or advocacy campaign could ever produce.
Don’t waste it.
Elena Vásquez covers Atlanta city hall and transportation for WACN 21. The views expressed in this column are her own.
