NPU-W – City of Atlanta

April 10, 2020

Dear MARTA Stakeholder,

I wanted to share several updates regarding MARTA and COVID-19.

• Employee Protection Measures: Today MARTA announced an agreement with ATU 732 granting all employees an additional 80 hours of Emergency Sick Paid Leave. See news release attached for details. In response to the updated CDC guidelines, masks will be distributed to all employees not able to work from home starting Friday, 4/10. We continue to discuss and evaluate hazard pay for MARTA frontline employees. 

• Crowding on Buses: Bus operators have received notice of our protocol to alert the Bus Communications Center when the bus reaches 50% capacity and to not board additional customers when the bus is 70% full and to display the BUS FULL header (see attached memo from 4/1/2020). Starting Friday 4/10, customers will be able to call 404-848-5000 and follow the menu options to report a full bus directly to Bus Communications so that an additional bus can be dispatched. Starting Monday, 4/13 placards will be added to 50% bus seats to help enforce social distancing (see also attached).

• Service Levels: Ridership levels have dropped dramatically.  Rail is down by 77% and Bus is down by 42%. MARTA continues to review service levels and make adjustments to provide necessary service for essential trips while protecting employees and customers. MARTA Mobility (paratransit) continues to operate as usual.

• Cleaning Schedules: MARTA service generally operates 20 hours/day. Just because a customer, employee or member of the media does not observe it happening doesn’t mean that it’s not. You can see and share videos of our enhanced bus cleaning and rail cleaning. 

• Diagnosed Employees: As of today, we have 14 employees who have self-reported a positive COVID-19 diagnosis and 183 employees off work due to risk of exposure. Updated information on diagnosed and exposed employees can be found at our online dashboard: www.itsmarta.com/covid-19-public-info.aspx

As always, please let me know if you have any questions or need more information.

Erica Pines

Senior Director

Office of Stakeholder and Public Engagement