The closure period was selected to be during a slower air travel period between spring break and Memorial Day, according to MARTA.
Officials are advising passengers to allow an extra 30 minutes to catch the shuttle as part of their MARTA trip to the airport. An extra half-hour is nearly as long as it takes to get to the airport from many MARTA stations.
Atlanta is one of few major cities in the country with direct rail service into the airport, said MARTA CEO Collie Greenwood.
The MARTA Airport station handles about 11,000 passengers a day, many of them airport workers and some of them visitors to Atlanta.
The station is temporarily closing to allow MARTA to replace floor tiles and prepare for installation of a new canopy, which is intended to complement the airport curbside canopies.
“This is the first impression for many people coming into the city, coming into this country,” Greenwood said. “When you look around you at the world’s busiest airport, there’s a level of professionalism, a level of quality in the finishes. … We want to make sure that that transition (to the MARTA station) is seamless.”
The $55 million station rehabilitation project started in June 2022. By closing the station for this phase instead of operating around the construction work, MARTA said the overall construction time can be reduced by 17 months.
But the work won’t be complete when the station reopens May 19. More work will be done during nightly closures over 10 months in 2025. And there could be a second six-week closure at the end to install the new…
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