Help Us Save Clayton Rail!
Act Now!
If You Live In Clayton:
Everyone else:
How Clayton Rail Could Tie into the Existing Network
As you may have heard, MARTA is planning to abandon its previous commitments to expanding rail within Clayton county. That line represented Metro Atlanta’s first serious attempt at implementing passenger rail transit on the national rail network, something which has been dreamed of for decades since the collapse of private passenger rail services in the 1970s, and would have been a major milestone accomplishment for the agency, and metro as a whole.
We had hoped that Clayton’s line would act as a catalyst for a much larger network of Regional Rail services reaching across the core five counties. That network could have further provided support for both an extensive exurban commuter network, and intercity network centralized on Atlanta.
Such a network would have been an invaluable tool for managing future metro growth in a climate-conscious manner, not just bringing transit access within reach of millions of metro residents, but also providing nodes ripe for Transit Oriented Development. Every station would have helped to enable low-carbon lifestyles, while expanding transit access to some of the worst-served areas in the metro, for both current and future residents alike.
Unfortunately, MARTA’s likely decision to replace the project with Bus Rapid Transit has all but eliminated such hopes, and comes even as Amtrak moves forward with its plans for expanded intercity rail radiating from Atlanta, federal support for such passenger rail projects is at a recent peak, and as the necessity to combat climate change grows ever more urgent.
Background
A commuter rail route through Clayton has long been proposed within Georgia, within initial studies starting as far back as 1992, and culminating in the Georgia Rail Passenger Program. GDOT narrowed in on the Clayton Line as one of the initial corridors from which to launch a larger network, and, in 2004, received $106 Million in state and federal funds to build the line. Initially planned to open by 2006, the route sat mostly dormant, despite a few initial property acquisitions, and state political interest never solidified enough to complete the line.
In 2014, with the money mostly unspent, previous federal allocations for the corridor were withdrawn.
Also in 2014, after years of no local transit service, Clayton joins MARTA, with the potential rail line prominently featured during the build up to the referendum. As part of the contract for joining, half of Clayton’s collected sales tax is set aside into a 'High Capacity Transit’ fund. The 14th Amendment to the MARTA’s Rapid Transit Contract and Assistance Agreement, which outlined the specific services Clayton would receive, included planning and eventual operations of rail from East Point to Lovejoy. This commitment was reaffirmed in the 2020 15th Amendment.
Indeed, MARTA has been setting aside funds, and working towards rail in Clayton, but things have gotten a bit off track.
What’s Gone Wrong?
As early as 2016, Norfolk Southern, the private company who owns the track from East Point to Lovejoy, began pushing back on the planned rail line. In 2017, Norfolk Southern made it publicly clear that they would not share their tracks with MARTA for passenger rail, and previous discussions had created the requirement for a 26ft buffer between any MARTA and Norfolk Southern tracks (centerline to centerline).
MARTA would, based on this refusal to cooperate, carry out analysis that showed significant impact to properties adjacent to the proposed rail corridors. Not only would many properties be forced to be cleared to make room, including historic sites within downtowns along the corridor, but costs would drastically increase as well.
As it stands now, MARTA believes their route is too expensive, too destructive, and not productive enough. They are right, but for all the wrong reasons.
Where MARTA Has Made its Mistake
The problems with MARTA’s approach to Clayton County’s predicament can be generally grouped into three main categories:
First, MARTA has drastically under estimated the utility and value of the route.
Even as other commuter rail systems around the country are experimenting with higher frequencies, and longer service spans, MARTA assumed that its Clayton rail line would operate on thread-bare service levels. As a result, ridership projections looked awful, and the route’s costs seem ridiculous in comparison.
MARTA has talked about the need for frequent, all day service, and we agree that there is a need, but the agency has incorrectly assumed that rail can’t provide this in Clayton. Such statements are especially bad given how MARTA already operates high-frequency rail services elsewhere on its network, and so knows the value of frequent rail services.
Even when MARTA proposed to build out its own, dedicated tracks, it limited hypothetical frequencies to an abysmally low level, representing a massive waste of opportunity. And yet, rail still didn’t perform as bad as it could have. Rale ridership wasn’t too much lower than the counter proposed BRT, likely owing to the comparative average speed of trains on their own tracks vs. buses with limited dedicated lanes.
Additionally, MARTA has not done a good job of adequately incorporating Transit Oriented Development into their plans. This is also surprising given that the agency has been working hard to both build out development around its current rail stations, and to help Clayton towns adjust zoning laws to be more transit friendly. Despite this, MARTA completely ignored the potential of new development around new rail stations in Clayton. Nothing was shown for the potential ridership and revenue boosting nature of TOD directly at the new stations, particularly compared to a BRT route that won’t be as effective for anchoring development.
In fact, MARTA has done a generally bad job of incorporating cost-sharing potential into its plans. Recent updates to Airport Spending regulations would allow Hartsfield Jackson to help fund any new services to its terminals, and Amtrak has plans for an Atlanta-Macon-Savannah service that could share out certain costs for stations, maintenance facilities, and even track upgrades.
Together, these self-imposed failures to properly consider cost-improving strategies drastically undersell the ridership potential of rail.
Second, MARTA has given up the fight without exhausting their full list of options.
While challenging the freight railroads for access to their facilities is hard, it is not impossible. There are a few tools left that MARTA has yet to use in this fight.
First, MARTA has not yet sought legislative relief from the Georgia Congressional Delegation, including our state’s two newest Senators. Freight railroads have long been a barrier to better passenger service, and so MARTA is likely to find support from elsewhere in the country, with the possibility of congressional oversight authority shifting against the freight companies to ensure access for new passenger rail lines.
Second, MARTA has not yet attempted to exercise the eminent domain authority that counties and cities are granted on its behalf. Unfortunately MARTA doesn’t have eminent domain powers of its own, but the agency could assemble legal packages for sponsoring governments, like Clayton County. This is where alternatives analysis on best-case scenarios would be most valuable, showing to courts how MARTA could not only provide cost-effective passenger rail to Clayton, but do so while also increasing total freight capacity at the same time.
Third, MARTA has not attempted to leverage congressionally-granted authority to Amtrak as a means of forcing passenger service onto the route. Amtrak both has legal authority to demand train slots from freight companies, and examples of being contracted to operate regional and commuter rail services elsewhere in the country. Given that Amtrak too has a vested interest in the Clayton line for its planned Atlanta-Macon-Savannah corridor, there may well be opportunities to push forward with operational contracts allowing MARTA onto the Norfolk Southern tracks.
There are still fights to be had, and potential victories to secure, but only if MARTA actually makes the attempt at all.
Third, MARTA is treating Clayton Rail as a Single local decision, rather than one of regional necessity.
Rail in Clayton is not the only project that relies on an agreement with the freight railroads. The Clifton Corridor is the primary current project that is working to build parallel to existing freight rail within the City of Atlanta, but running into costly resistance from CSX. In a similar way, the Northwest BeltLine has been planned to operate parallel to active CSX tracks for most of its length between Bankhead and Lindbergh. Looking further into the future, any heavy rail pushing into Cobb County, and indeed the wider Get On Board Georgia regional rail vision both will require some kind of agreement to access freight railroad land or track to remain cost-effective.
All of these projects are locally important, and, combined, they represent a massively important regional network threatened by a refusal to cooperate on the freight railroads’ end.
Additionally, and more immediately impactful to MARTA, walking away from the Clayton Rail project represents the agency walking away from previously promised, and contractually required, services. This will, and already has, damaged MARTA’s reputation across the metro, harming the political and public trust in the agency to deliver promised projects. Such damage will make it harder to promote expansions in other counties throughout the metro.
Fighting the freight companies is essential to enable the success of future projects, and maintain MARTA’s own integrity as a trustworthy agency.