MARTA Five Points Overhaul Budget May Rise to $330 Million as Completion Slips to May 2031: New CQ400 Trains Expected to Carry Passengers Within Six Months
MARTA General Manager and CEO Jonathan Hunt recently told the Atlanta City Council's Transportation Committee, in Fulton County, Georgia, that the budget for rebuilding Five Points station downtown may jump sharply. When work relaunched nearly two years ago, the redevelopment was expected to cost $230 million; the current budget stands at about $290 million, and Hunt told committee members it "should be somewhere more like $330 [million]," while cautioning that the $40 million increase was an estimate he came up with on the spot and promising to return with exact figures. A MARTA spokesperson, Payson Schwin, later told Urbanize Atlanta the $40 million figure is not correct, but that the team is still evaluating revisions and has no final answer yet.
Delays are also pushing back completion. Construction firm Skanska says the Five Points rebuild will now finish in May 2031 instead of 2029, and project consultants Skidmore, Owings & Merrill also list 2031 as the finish line. Skanska reported in early October that deconstructing the old Five Points concrete roof is about 60 percent finished, the first of five redevelopment phases. The station, the central transfer point for all MARTA rail lines, remains open while about 200,000 pounds of concrete are removed each day and roughly 50,000 riders pass below. The project will reimagine the 144,400-square-foot bus and train hub with a 32,000-square-foot mass-timber canopy and three new pedestrian entrances. Change orders above 10 percent must be approved by the More MARTA Program Governance Committee, a process that has not yet begun.
At the same committee meeting, Hunt said MARTA is "extremely close" to deploying new Stadler-built CQ400 trains for public use, pending his signing off on documentation certifying the railcars for state and federal safety review, and estimated the trains will be accepting passengers in less than six months. He 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 by the end of 2026. (Compiled from Urbanize Atlanta, October 20, and FOX 5 Atlanta)
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 亚特兰大 MARTA North Avenue 站实景。图片来源：Wikimedia Commons 文件 MARTA North Avenue.jpg，JJonahJackalope 摄，CC BY-SA 4.0 授权
