MARTA Board Passes Budget Without Fare Hike

It’s Keith Parker’s first budget as MARTA CEO. He took over in December vowing to stabilize metro Atlanta’s largest transit agency.

“This budget puts us on path to be fiscally sustainable in about three years and then actually adding to reserves by year four and five while along the way doing a whole host of things that make us long-term more attractive to our customer base.”

The budget puts off a planned 10-cent fare increase at least until next year. But Parker says he wants to avoid that too until he can afford to improve rail service frequency from the typical 15-20 minute headways to closer to 10 minutes.

“Right now, our goal is to uncover enough funds to get the headway improvement and avoid the fare increase both.”

In terms of customer service, bathrooms at major MARTA stations will re-open; police presence on buses and trains will increase; video surveillance equipment will be used to cut down on what Parker calls “knucklehead behavior”; and a “potentially game-changing” smartphone app is expected to be rolled out.

Parker figures after those reforms are complete, riders will find a fare increase more palatable.

“We think by then we would almost certainly have this new app in place, increased police presence, bathrooms re-open, new services onboard, so I think that’s worth a dime.”

Meanwhile, the budget sets aside funds for a one-time three percent bonus for all employees in December. Parker has also promised merit pay increases 18 months after that.

“We’re going to invest in employees to try to get their morale up, to have them do a better job, because we think if we do those things, it’ll pay for itself multi-times over.”

Much will depend on how ongoing union negotiations pan out. A consulting firm has recommended big reductions to employee pension and health benefits, but union reps says they’ll take a hard line against any such effort.