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MARTA Board members from Clayton County Jerry Griffin and Roberta Abdul-Salaam, at agency headquarters on Thursday after a board vote on a rapid transit map for their county. “We have a citizens’ advisory group, we have a technical advisory group and a stakeholders’ advisory group,” she said. “That’s the whole goal.”Ībdul-Salaam said citizens are still involved and they’ll continue to play a key role in the decisions that are made. We’re “trying to get to the people who use transit and see what their needs are,” he said.

“It’s the first time that we’ve brought in a large group of citizens to work on and look at the thing and sit down and think about it,” said Griffin. Griffin called the plan a good beginning. So that’s a bit technical, but what it does is send a signal to the federal government that MARTA and Clayton have made a decision and are serious about doing both projects. The formal approval of the plan gets MARTA closer to meeting federal requirements for starting physical work on each project and it gets the agency closer to negotiating with Norfolk Southern, said Abdul-Salaam. There are a couple reasons why MARTA’s Thursday vote was a big step, according to Roberta Abdul-Salaam and Jerry Griffin, Clayton’s representatives on the MARTA board. The plan also adds fast bus service in dedicated lanes connecting Jonesboro, Riverdale, Morrow and College Park. The plan would put a commuter rail line mostly alongside Norfolk Southern’s freight rail line from Lovejoy to East Point.

On this map from MARTA, green marks the future rail line, orange marks future bus rapid transit and blue marks parts of major roads for reference.