Interesting developments in Clayton County with two new county commissioners who support putting a referendum before county residents to join Fulton and DeKalb in contributing to the penny sales tax, which supports MARTA.

WABE reports that new commissioners Jeff Turner and Shana Rooks support the measure.  This is in sharp contrast to the two recently ousted incumbents who were opposed to such a measure.

A majority of Clayton’s five commissioners would have to support a measure to get it onto the November ballot.   Since the defeat of T-SPLOST last month, transit advocates have been lobbying Clayton to join MARTA.

As reported in the AJC, MARTA’s board will make a final determination today on the route and type of rail for the long-discussed Clifton Corridor line that would run from Lindbergh Station on MARTA’s North Line to Avondale Station on the East Line.  The suggestion before the board is light-rail through Emory’s campus, as shown in the map above.

Maybe even more interesting to those looking for specific impacts to their area are the new station maps that MARTA has posted on its website.

That’s the Suburban Plaza station above, which apparently is planned to have a direct underground connection to the proposed Walmart on the site.  Also of particular interest is the Clairmont @ N. Decatur Road Subway Station, which suggests redevelopment of the McDonalds/Chevron station and adjoining Sushi/Edward Jones/Hunan Dragon/Kaplan strip mall.

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I just received an email from MARTA detailing how the individual 10 stations along the Clifton Corridor line would be constructed if the line was built.  These details weren’t included on the website, when we talked about this back on March 21st.

According to the email from Project Manager Jason Morgan, “the actual proposal includes 3 subway stations, 2 elevated stations, and 5 surface stations”.   And here’s the construction detail for the 10 individual stations, according to Mr. Morgan:

• · Lindbergh – surface (at Lindbergh Lane elevation not MARTA Rail elevation)
• · Cheshire Bridge – surface (at CSX rail elevation, not Cheshire Bridge Rd elevation)
• · Sage Hill/Briarcliff – surface (at CSX rail elevation, not Briarcliff Rd elevation)
• · CDC/Emory Point – surface (at Clifton Rd elevation)
• · Emory-Rollins – elevated
• · Emory-Clairmont – subway
• · North Decatur – subway
• · Suburban Plaza – subway
• · DeKalb Medical – surface (at N Decatur Rd elevation)
• · Avondale – elevated (on a new bridge that abuts the existing Sam’s Crossing Bridge elevation)

You can still check out the full project on MARTA’s website HERE.

As the Medlock Park Neighborhood Association blog points out, MARTA has issued its official recommendation for the Clifton Corridor transit, after months and months of open houses and discussion with the surrounding communities.

Light Rail Option 1 would run transit from Lindbergh Center all the way to the Avondale MARTA Station.  As you can see from the map above, there would be 10 above-ground stations, including ones along the way at North Decatur and Clairmont, Suburban Plaza and DeKalb Medical Center.  In the Decatur area, there are also optional stations planned for DeKalb Industrial and at the old DeVry campus on North Arcadia.  A note from MARTA posted on the MANA site, points out that this option “would allow an alternative means of for high-capacity evacuation from the CDC in the event of an emergency situation.”

MANA has posted a more detailed map of Light Rail Option 1 on Google Docs HERE.

According to MARTA’s website, the plan is pending approval from MARTA’s Board of Directors. It will be presented to the MARTA Planning and External Relations Committee on March 26th and to the MARTA Board on April 9th.

And just an FYI: Obviously, the near-future execution of this project is entirely dependent on the outcome of the July T-SPLOST vote.

Ever since we discovered the CLIFF shuttles real-time bus locations website that shows you little icons scurrying along a map of the Decatur/Emory/Atlanta region, we wished that MARTA had something similar.  If we had a better idea of the location of buses, perhaps some of us might be more inclined to hop “the 2″ into Atlanta every once in a while.

Well, sit your walking/cycling-toned butt down, because apparently it now exists!

With no fanfare or publicity, CL’s Thomas Wheatley just happened to stumble across info that led him to report that MARTA’s iPhone app and this website now gives you real-time MARTA bus-location info. Maps, schedules, arrival times, departure times.  It’s all there.  MARTA calls it “Precision Real-Time Bus Monitoring”.

Great move by MARTA making this happen.  Not so great that there isn’t more publicity surrounding it.  Either way, get on the bus!