ATLANTA — At a recent Atlanta City Council committee meeting, recently installed CEO Jonathan Hunt addressed delays in delivering new trains for the system and a budget shortfall.
Channel 2 Action News reported on the budget issue, when an audit review of the most recent fiscal year flagged a number of monetary difficulties MARTA experienced through June.
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Among budgeting issues, Hunt told members of the Atlanta City Council that some monetary shortfalls were expected as the system worked to upgrade fare gates and ticketing.
“We did have a budget overrun last year, some of which was not planned but we planned, for example, the Better Breeze program. You’re taking down stations, the only way to have done that and keep the system closed would have been to close stations to allow the work to be done and to reopen them,” Hunt said.
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Hunt said MARTA “didn’t want to do that so we knew that we were going to take a revenue hit for that” when the gates were left open, but that “we’re addressing that and that system will be closed very, very shortly.”
A bigger impact on the budget was unexpected overtime costs in the latest fiscal year, some of which was tied to the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Atlanta, according to Hunt.
While MARTA had accounted for some overtime for the World Cup, there was also a large amount of unscheduled overtime, which contributed to cost increases and the overall budget shortfall.
Another cost factor was the agency’s capital programs, or its renovation, rehabilitation and construction projects.
Hunt told members of the city council that rather than add to costs, “under-delivery on our capital programs” will roll additional funds back into the MARTA operating budget.
“The shortfall you saw was on the operating budget side, and that’s what got the big headlines, that accounted for nearly half of it,” Hunt said, addressing recent reports about the budget shortfall.
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