MARTA’s Five Points overhaul facing ballooning budget, delays

When MARTA started to relaunch work to improve functionality and aesthetics at its centralized transit hub nearly two years ago, the Five Points station redevelopment project was expected to cost $230 million. 

Now it could cost in the ballpark of $100 million more, as the agency’s newly appointed leader has relayed to city government officials. 

Jonathan Hunt, MARTA general manager and CEO, recently told the Atlanta City Council’s Transportation Committee the forecast calls for a “large budget jump” at the Five Points station, due in part to unforeseen delays. 

Hunt told committee members during a Wednesday meeting the increased $290-million budget for the Five Points remake “should be somewhere more like $330 [million],” though he cautioned the $40-million recent increase was an estimate he’d come up with on the spot. Hunt promised to return to the committee with exact figures.

A MARTA spokesperson today tells Urbanize Atlanta the $40-million estimated increase isn’t correct. “But unfortunately,” wrote Payson Schwin, MARTA's acting senior director of communications, via email, “we don’t have a final answer… yet because the team is still evaluating revisions to the project.” 

Hunt told city council members last week that change orders to construction figures above 10 percent must be approved by the More MARTA Program Governance Committee—a process that had yet to begin. The PGC is an oversight body established to guide projects funded by the More MARTA half-penny sales tax approved by Atlanta voters a decade ago. PGC members include City of Atlanta, MARTA, and Beltline officials.

The delays Hunt mentioned will now reportedly bump back the completion of the Five Points rebuild from 2029 to May 2031, according to Skanska, the project’s construction firm. Project consultants Skidmore, Owings & Merrill also now list the finish line for Five Points redevelopment as 2031, as Atlanta News First relayed earlier this month. 

Skanska officials reported in early October the complex process of deconstructing the old Five Points concrete roof infrastructure is about 60 percent finished. That’s considered the first of five redevelopment phases at the transit hub. 

Five Points, the central transfer point for all MARTA rail lines, remains open as 200,000 pounds of concrete is removed each day, while roughly 50,000 riders pass below on a daily basis. 

Years in the making, the work at Five Points will reimagine the 144,400-square-foot bus and train hub as a more vibrant, accessible, and safer "city center" in the heart of downtown, officials have said. It calls for replacing the current roof with a 32,000-square-foot, mass-timber canopy that includes three new pedestrian entrances, according to Skanska. 

Since MARTA debuted, Five Points has been the system’s largest station. But contrary to popular opinion, MARTA’s Airport station is technically the system’s busiest, followed by Five Points, as agency officials told Urbanize last year. 

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Meanwhile ...  

In the same transportation committee meeting, Hunt relayed to city council members that MARTA is “extremely close” to starting to deploy new state-of-the-art CQ400 trains built by Stadler for public use, pending his signing off on documentation that certifies the railcars as safe for state and federal review. 

Hunt estimated the trains will be accepting passengers in less than six months. 

Hunt also said MARTA’s Rapid A-Line—a five‑mile Bus Rapid Transit loop linking downtown Atlanta with Summerhill, Peoplestown, and the Beltline—is on pace to be fully complete with no other work pending by the end of 2026. 

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• MARTA-related news, discussion (Urbanize Atlanta)