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    1. Technology
    2. Miscellaneous

    MARTA congratulates partner jurisdictions on Georgia Smart Communities Award, will assist with projects

    Aug. 17, 2020
    Sandy Spring and Clayton County will use the Georgia Tech Grant to study traffic patterns.
    Related To: Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA)

    Sandy Springs and Clayton County, Ga., two of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority’s (MARTA) partner jurisdictions, have won the 2020 Georgia Smart Communities Challenge, and MARTA will assist in conducting studies on street and sidewalk traffic patterns.  

    The Georgia Institute of Technology awarded $100,000 in grants to both Sandy Springs and Clayton County and will provide access to its network of researchers and engineers to study infrastructure and data projects. MARTA will lend its support to Sandy Springs as it explores the application of transit signal priority (TSP) to existing bus service, and to Clayton County as it looks to make strategic decisions around pedestrian planning. 

    “MARTA looks forward to partnering with Sandy Springs and Clayton County on these important studies that use innovative technology to improve transit service reliability and the walkability of our communities,” said MARTA General Manager and CEO Jeffrey Parker.  

    Specifically, MARTA will work with Sandy Springs to enable technology on buses that alert an intersection that a bus is approaching. The intersection determines what action it will take, but the technology allows the bus to request longer green lights, or shorter red lights if safely available, when the bus schedule is heavily impacted by traffic. The project will cover Route 5 on Roswell Road/Johnson Ferry/Hammond Drive with the goal of improving consistency and reliability of travel times.  

    MARTA says it has experimented with this technology in the past, but this project will pilot a newer approach that is less hardware-intensive and, if successful, could be more easily deployed in other corridors. 

    Clayton County will use the grant money to build a decision support system for transport project prioritization to promote mobility and equity, and to identify smart technologies to support walkability throughout the community. MARTA’s role in this project is still being discussed.