Mayor wants to delay construction of Five Points due to MARTA audit

“My team and I are reviewing these initial findings and expect to receive the final report by the end of July,” Dickens wrote in a letter first reported by Axios. “Given the importance of the expected lessons learned from this report, I request that MARTA temporarily halt the Five Points MARTA station project until we receive the final report and engage in further discussions together to determine the best possible path forward for MARTA and the City of Atlanta.

A MARTA spokesperson said the agency would not comment on the matter until Monday. A spokesperson for Dickens also declined to comment.

City Council President Doug Shipman said he wants to see the final audit to understand the details of the financial issues. But he supports Dickens’s call to stop the construction of Five Points.

“The preliminary findings are consistent with questions that I and other council members raised over a year ago about the spending history for More MARTA,” Shipman said.

MARTA is in the midst of a $2.7 billion Atlanta expansion project made possible when city voters approved a half-cent sales tax on public transit in 2016. Two Years later, the agency unveiled a plan to spend the money on 29 miles of light rail and 13 miles of bus. rapid transit and other improvements.

But those plans have changed over the years, with proposed rail lines on Campbellton Road and the Clifton corridor evolving into rapid bus lines. Last year, MARTA revamped its expansion plan to focus on nine projects.

The agency cited inflation and other causes to explain the changes. But city council members suspected other reasons. Among other things, they found that MARTA spent far more than initially planned to expand local bus service, which critics say came at the expense of new transit lines.

Last year, the board requested an audit of Atlanta’s expansion program. MARTA recently said it returned more than 24,000 pages of documents and submitted hours of interviews for the audit.

Atlanta Chief Financial Officer Mohomed Balla presented the audit’s preliminary findings in a memo to Dickens on Thursday. Balla said “unspecified errors in MARTA’s FY22 calculations suggest a potential $10 million transfer” to the agency’s expansion account in Atlanta is necessary. He said the “discrepancies” between 2017 and 2021 could mean MARTA owes the expansion program an additional $59.9 million — a figure that could rise as auditors complete their work.

Balla noted that many of the city and MARTA officials who made decisions about the program are no longer there, making it difficult to understand past decisions about expansion. He also called for changes to the intergovernmental agreement that governs Atlanta’s expansion.

“I look forward to the audit being completed and Atlanta taxpayers receiving what they were promised by MARTA,” Councilman Amir Farokhi said on X Friday evening.

Dickens’ call to postpone the Five Points renovation also comes amid criticism of the project, which includes significant changes to the transit center.

MARTA plans to remove a concrete canopy over the station square, install a translucent roof, build new bus platforms at street level and add green space. The agency secured a $25 million federal grant and $13.8 million in state funding to help finance the $230 million renovation.

To prepare for construction, MARTA recently announced plans to reroute buses that run between Five Points starting July 6 and close the station to pedestrian access on July 29.

Passengers will still be able to change trains at the station, and MARTA plans to temporarily reopen Five Points during the 2026 World Cup. Construction is expected to be completed in 2028.

But MARTA’s plans have drawn backlash from city and community leaders. Some want the work to be postponed until after the World Cup and want Five Points to remain open during construction. to mitigate disruption for thousands of passengers.

Council members and downtown business leaders also opposed MARTA’s design for Five Points. They say street-level bus platforms will impede pedestrian access and detract from the “town square” feel they want for the neighborhood.

“Pausing the renovation of Five Points is a smart decision” in light of the audit findings and concerns about access to the station, Shipman said.

Five Points isn’t the only Atlanta project to spark controversy. MARTA’s plan to extend the Atlanta Light Rail to the Ponce City Market — a project that includes the first light rail on the Beltline — has drawn backlash from some business leaders and residents .

Dickens himself gradually moved away from his long-standing support for rail on the Beltline. In March, it announced plans for four infill stations along MARTA’s existing rail lines – stations that were not included in MARTA’s expansion plans. Dickens did not identify funding for the stations, although the half-cent sales tax was an obvious source.

In Thursday’s letter, Dickens suggested that a delay in the Five Points project would give the city a chance to reevaluate its transit priorities.

“In addition to the audit, over the past year we have identified other priorities that need to be considered before moving forward,” he wrote.

Staff writer Riley Bunch contributed to this report