April 11, 2024 turned into a two-track day for Atlanta transit. At its board meeting, MARTA signed off on a $51.4 million contract increase to get the Five Points station overhaul into pre-construction. The same day, Mayor Andre Dickens issued an administrative order naming the sites for new infill stations on MARTA's heavy rail line, one of which lands between Inman Park and Reynoldstown.
Five Points is the busiest station in the MARTA system. The roughly $206 million redesign, first announced in late 2023 and covered here in how the Five Points overhaul got its start, calls for a rebuilt concourse and plaza, new green space, better accessibility, improved bus operations and a new canopy over the station.
Project manager Keli Davis brought the funding request to the board. The money covers the pre-construction phase, which Davis said would begin in June 2024 and take in demolition, deconstruction and planning for the effects of that work. The total is split into two packages: $47 million for the first and $4.5 million for the second.
Davis drew a clear line between demolition and deconstruction. The existing canopy, she explained, has to come down in the reverse of how it went up, removed one engineered piece at a time rather than knocked over by heavy equipment.
Riders should plan for a long interruption. Once construction begins, the station is expected to be unavailable to passengers for about 18 months, with work running through 2026. The project will not wrap before Atlanta hosts eight World Cup matches that year, so MARTA intends to pause construction during the tournament and let fans move in and out of the station while games are on.
The infill station announcement follows up on Dickens' State of the City address in March, where he said a new heavy rail stop would be built at the Murphy Crossing redevelopment along the BeltLine in southwest Atlanta. The April order put locations to the rest of the plan: Krog Street and Hulsey Yard, between Inman Park and Reynoldstown; Joseph E. Boone Boulevard; and Armour Yards in Buckhead. For readers on downtown's eastern edge, the Krog Street and Hulsey Yard site is the one to watch.
The order directs the city to work with Atlanta BeltLine Inc. and MARTA on design and a financing plan for the stations. Dickens also tasked the city's chief operating officer with engaging MARTA on a broader plan for mobility and transit options across the full length of the BeltLine.
That language left an open question hanging over the Eastside Trail. Light rail was part of the BeltLine's original design, and the new heavy rail plans revived talk of extending the Atlanta Streetcar onto the Eastside Trail. Some residents oppose putting a streetcar next to the trail's pedestrian paths. During public comment at the board meeting, retired program manager and engineer Chris Dura suggested running two shuttle buses along a four-mile route with the same stops a streetcar would make, as a way to collect hard ridership numbers before anything is built.
For now, the mayor has stopped short of committing to a streetcar, choosing the broader "mobility and transit options" framing instead. Downtown riders, meanwhile, have a firmer timeline: pre-construction at Five Points was set to start that June.
Original reporting by Delaney Tarr for SaportaReport.