Forecast: MARTA Study Provides Outlook for Funding, Ridership
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) officials now have additional information for planning purposes through research provided by the Vinson Institute.
Institute faculty evaluated the reasonableness of revenue and expenditure forecasts previously developed by MARTA and offered demographic data related to future ridership, reported Wes Clarke, study director.
MARTA was created by an act of the Georgia General Assembly in 1965 and is funded primarily through a 1 percent local option sales tax in Fulton and DeKalb counties and passenger fare revenues. The authority operates 600 buses on 132 routes and 338 rail cars connecting 38 stations.
“In September 2009, MARTA officials, faced with declining revenues due to the lagging economy, asked us to review the revenue and expenditure forecasts and assumptions that were driving short-term budget development and long-range planning. We determined that the best means to accomplish this was to use alternate forecasting methods and data,” Clarke explained.
Estimates of how population growth and the changing composition of the resident population will affect demand for bus and rail services were developed by the Institute’s Applied Demography Program, according to Warren Brown, director.
“The future for growth in demand is based on population projections in the central counties of the Atlanta Metropolitan Statistical Area,” Brown noted. “These projections were combined with ridership rates data from the 2009 National Household Travel Survey to estimate the potential demand for mass transit. Use of National Transit Database information enabled us to also project ridership based on growth of the population at current rates of mass transit utilization.”
“The results of the study suggest, as MARTA officials believed, that the current funding scheme consisting of sales tax and fare revenue, supplemented with some federal dollars, may no longer be sufficient to maintain the existing infrastructure and service levels, much less expand the system. As the transit utilization data suggest, there could be greater levels of service, but fare revenue only recovers a quarter of the cost,” Clarke said.
Also included in the study is comparative data on other metropolitan transit systems that was prepared by Georgia Institute of Technology faculty member Mike Meyer.
