MARTA’s new bus network promises more frequency, but will test reliability

Addressing this infrequency — one of regular riders’ chief complaints — is among the top aims of MARTA’s bus network redesign that goes live on Saturday. Developed over the past five years, the new NextGen network marks the first major overhaul of bus routes since 1972 when the agency was founded.

The elevator pitch?

“Much, much more frequency in the bus network, which provides customers with much more access to more places,” MARTA’s Ryan VanSickle told a group of business and civic leaders earlier this year.

VanSickle, who shepherded the redesign, has described the undertaking as “generational change.”

NextGen trades geographic reach for frequency, promising more trips along high-demand routes and consistent service seven days a week. The network has shrunk from 113 routes to 81, with the elimination of many infrequently used routes. But in terms of service provided, MARTA expects to exceed its current levels.

Two-thirds of the new routes have buses that come at least every half hour, and in 12 on-demand zones, a van pool is guaranteed to arrive in a half hour or less. On a dozen routes, buses will come every 15 minutes or faster.

MARTA hopes shorter waits will draw in new riders — and their fare dollars.

More frequent scheduled service is one thing. But delivering on the promise of faster headways will require MARTA to improve reliability and reduce cancellations.

Reliability has been part of MARTA’s north star for the past year, alongside safety and cleanliness. While the transit agency has canceled fewer trips in recent months and made significant improvements since 2023, cancellations happen routinely and far exceed the agency’s target rate, according to an analysis of three years of bus trip cancellations by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

During a particularly bad stretch of weekends in summer 2023, MARTA canceled as many as 1-in-9 trips. There have been improvements since, but 2025 still ended with a December cancellation rate eight times higher than the goal.

Not a single bus route met the agency’s service target in 2025. Nine routes had cancellation rates at or above 5%, which means that 5-day-a-week commuters who use those routes are dealing with a no-show bus once every two weeks.

“You’re going to be late for work twice a month, 24 times a year, which gets you fired,” former MARTA CEO Keith Parker said earlier this year during a discussion about bus service with the group that’s advising MARTA’s interim CEO. “So yeah, it matters.”

In the face of such uncertainty, many “choice riders,” so-called because they have transportation options other than public transit, will simply opt for other travel modes. MARTA’s bus ridership in 2025 was one-third of its pre-pandemic levels, and attracting choice riders is seen as key to growing ridership.

Those with fewer choices must simply make do.

Multiple riders told the AJC that delays stemming from canceled bus trips have gotten them in trouble at work. One woman said the only thing that’s saved her from a write-up is a boss who also takes the bus and experiences the same delays.

Other riders said they’ve missed doctors’ appointments and been charged no-show fees. Many reported calling Uber or Lyft rides to get where they need to go — an added expense and an extra vehicle on the road.

Delays cost riders precious time. Nearly every one of the more than a dozen riders the AJC spoke with said they pad extra time into their trips in anticipation of a delay.

It’s not always enough.

“Even if I leave three hours early, I can still be late,” said Carl Neal, who travels by train and bus from his home near Indian Creek Station to his job at Bartaco in Buckhead, and to welding classes near the old North DeKalb Mall.

“Even if I’m consistent, there are inconsistencies.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Many riders told the AJC that while they’re excited for more frequency, what they want most is reliability.

“Just come when you say you’re going to come,” said Wanda Bradley, a 68-year-old retiree who counts on MARTA buses to get around because she’s legally blind.

No operator, no trip

MARTA scheduled about 2.6 million bus trips last year, and canceled about 3% of them.

Cancellation rates are highest during weekday rush hours, with evening trips more likely to be dropped than morning ones. Service is also less reliable on weekend nights.

Any number of factors can result in a canceled trip. Sometimes trips are scrapped because of misbehaving or sick passengers. Traffic crashes or jammed roads can throw a bus off schedule and cause trips after it to be skipped.

But more than 90% of the time in the last three years, trips were canceled for one of two reasons: There’s no operator, or there’s no bus.

A third of all missed trips last year were because of equipment issues that left buses inoperable. Trips were canceled for engine problems, air-conditioning outages, flat tires and bad transmissions, according to cancellation data provided by MARTA.

Staffing issues are the single-largest cause of cancellations, however. They accounted for nearly 60% of the cancellations in 2025, an AJC analysis found.

MARTA, like many transit agencies, has struggled with operator staffing shortages. The job is hard, requiring drivers to navigate metro Atlanta traffic in vehicles that can stretch 60-feet-long, all while collecting fares and managing passengers. Some new hires don’t make it a month before deciding the job’s not for them.

At the low end of the pay scale, a full-time bus driver makes $21.22 an hour; at its upper bounds, $29.03 an hour. That’s less than many other jobs that require a commercial driver’s license, including driving for CobbLinc or Ride Gwinnett.

The job is emotionally stressful, and it’s getting harder to deal with passengers, said David Ward, a MARTA employee since 2001 and the president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 732, which represents MARTA employees.

Assaults against transit operators have risen nationally since the pandemic, and last year, a MARTA bus operator was fatally shot over a fare dispute in Decatur. Leroy Ramos’ family said another passenger had threatened him on a different route just a day earlier, and he had debated calling off work the day he was shot.

After his death, fellow drivers described dealing with a barrage of verbal and physical assaults on the job. Ward said the mistreatment makes hiring harder and leads drivers to call off work more frequently out of sheer frustration.

“Nobody wants to go to work, to be spit on, to be called obscenities and just be disrespected,” Ward said. “For $20 an hour? Come on, people.”

Staffing data provided by MARTA shows the retention rate for bus operators plummeted after 2020. To make up for the attrition, MARTA ramped up hiring, bringing on between 500 and 600 new hires each year since 2022. But about half of all the new hires in 2024 were gone within a year, most in the first six months.

The churn is constant, with nearly as many operators leaving as can be hired.

After accounting for vacancies and absences, MARTA hasn’t had enough drivers to run scheduled service for most of the last three years. Between 2023 and 2025, operating the scheduled service required roughly 690 drivers weekly.

MARTA was short 18 drivers per week, on average.

MARTA has tried to incentivize showing up, giving drivers quarterly attendance bonuses instead of annual ones. Drivers’ wages have also risen over that time.

The union, which is currently in the middle of contract negotiations, is asking for another raise to compensate for the growing difficulty of operator jobs, as well as more safety protections for drivers.

Ward, the union president, said he’s also proposed changing attendance rules that ding a driver for a one-day absence the same as if they took three. Many operators, knowing they’ll take a hit for missing one day already, will just take that entire time off. Ward said it’s a “no-brainer” that attendance would rise with a rule change.

Attracting drivers

The NextGen network’s design should ease some of the staffing pressures. Stephany Fisher, a MARTA spokesperson, said labor issues aren’t expected to impede service.

That’s in large part because NextGen’s schedule requires fewer operators.

Full service under the new network requires 661 operators weekly, about 30 fewer than are needed to serve the current routes. The agency expects to be fully staffed with a reserve bench once the redesign goes into effect — for the first time in years.

MARTA officials believe the new routes will also be more attractive to drivers.

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez/AJC

Operating additional service during rush hours, as MARTA has been doing, is costly and requires both more buses and more operators. It’s harder to schedule, often requiring operators to take on less desirable split shifts or overtime.

These challenges mean that bus service during peak hours — at the very time when rider demand is highest — has historically been the least reliable, with 3.3% of peak trips canceled in 2025 compared to 2.8% trip cancellations during off-peak hours.

There are fewer split shifts under NextGen, VanSickle has said. There are more full shifts that will get drivers to 40-hour work weeks without requiring as much scrounging for “bits and pieces” of work, he said. And some routes have built-in overtime, a request from drivers that MARTA was able to accommodate with its budget.

“When we create a better set of scheduled work, routes and trips, it tends to lead to less absenteeism,” VanSickle said.

Other changes, like straightening routes that zigzag off main roads and into side roads with infrequently used stops, were made with efficiency in mind. The new routes also feature timed connections that should make it easier to transfer from buses to trains at key stopovers. The current system rarely coordinates the timing of arrivals and departures, often adding to riders’ travel times.

Better, not perfect

The bus network redesign is coming amid significant other changes in MARTA.

The Rapid A-line, MARTA’s first rapid bus line, will begin service on Saturday, too, connecting the downtown, Summerhill and Peoplestown neighborhoods. New fare gates are in the process of being installed systemwide. And the first of MARTA’s new train cars will launch in early June.

It’s a lot of change all at once that will leave MARTA looking very different by the end of the year, if it all works as planned.

The NextGen bus redesign changes hinge on the assumption that a streamlined system will be both easier to run and more attractive to riders.

Still, if staffing shortages and equipment issues persist, more frequent schedules won’t mean shorter waits — just more buses that never arrive.

With a fully staffed bank of operators, MARTA is in a better position to pull off the promised improved service than it has been in years. But it could still take a few months to tell how well the NextGen network performs.

MARTA officials have cautioned that there will be growing pains. An army of ambassadors will be out at stations on Saturday and in the coming weeks to help passengers navigate the new system. Virtually every route is changing in some capacity, and many riders will need to catch different buses.

“This new network is better. It’s not perfect,” MARTA Board Member Jacob Tzegaegbe said in a meeting earlier this year, urging the transit agency and fellow board members to hold space for any frustrations riders have over the changes. “Let’s listen, but let’s also realize we have a better network and we’re going to continue to make it better.”