DEKALB COUNTY, Ga. — Rolling out the new train fleet for MARTA has been delayed months and months.
When the new trains were first announced, Channel 2 Action News reported that MARTA said they’d hit the tracks in 2025.
Then, MARTA said the new trains would be in use before the FIFA World Cup over the summer.
Now in October, CEO Jonathan Hunt wasn’t able to tell the Atlanta City Council if the new trains, built by Stadler, would be in operation by Valentine’s Day.
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Channel 2’s Steve Gehlbach was at the Edgewood-Candler Park Station in DeKalb County, where riders might have been able to catch a view of MARTA testing out their new railcars.
While a vague update for city leaders was all Hunt could give during Wednesday’s Atlanta City Council Transportation Committee meeting, a spokesman for MARTA told Channel 2 Action News that the delivery timeline for the new trains hasn’t changed.
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For riders excited for the fleet upgrades, they can’t come soon enough.
“They look like fire, like a monorail train,” one rider told Gehlbach. “I just want to ride it.”
An exact timeline for new railcars to get on the tracks wasn’t available, Hunt told the city council committee that “the trains will be ready when they are ready, but that being said, we are extremely close.”
Asked if by “close,” Hunt meant in operation by Halloween, Thanksgiving or Valentine’s Day, the general manager and CEO demurred but said “we won’t be having this conversation in six to eight months.”
Hunt said one of the delays was due to a safety certification document that he needed to sign, then give it to the Georgia Department of Transportation to approve, then send to the Federal Transit Administration for yet more approval before the updated fleet can roll in.
MARTA ordered 56 new four-car train sets, a total of 224, years ago, spending more than $600 million for the upgrade.
The first shells of the updated railcars arrived from Europe about four years ago, at the end of 2022.
Channel 2 Action News was there when the new cars were unveiled to the public for the first time in early 2025, where officials showed off how much more space there was, and that riders could actually walk between cars.
“This is what the citizens, what the people of Atlanta deserve,” officials said at the time.
Once the new trains do go into service, MARTA said it will roll out new cars in phases.
Instead of months, MARTA told Gehlbach replacing the whole fleet will take years, not months, to complete.
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