18 Paper No. 970133 TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD 1604 Influence of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority on Population and Employment Location ARTHUR C. NELSON AND THOMAS W. SANCHEZ A. C. Nelson, Georgia Institute of Technology, 245 Fourth Street, Atlanta, Ga. 20332-0155. T. W. Sanchez, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa. The rail system operated by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) began operating in 1979. As its 20th anniversary nears, how has it influenced land use patterns? Results are mixed. Throughout the Atlanta metropolitan area, the population continues to sprawl outward and MARTA’s facilities do not appear to attract large- scale residential development to them. On the other hand, employment also continues to decentralize, and MARTA’s rail facilities appear to have attracted employment-based development. As MARTA extends service into the affluent northern tier suburbs, its attractiveness to employment centers and perhaps higher-density residential develop- ment should improve. The downside is that MARTA is exhausting its reach because most of the region’s new development is outside its jurisdiction. Rail service has had an important influence on shaping the pattern of metropolitan development. In many metropolitan areas, the influ- ence of streetcar and railcar systems has waned. In some areas, such as San Francisco, planning has directed intensive development to rail stations. The purpose of this paper is to assess the extent to which the rail system operated by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) since 1979 influenced the distribution of population and employment centers during the 1980s. First prior research into the linkage between transit and land-use changes and economic development is reviewed. Then a brief history of MARTA is presented, its effects on population and employment are assessed, and selected areas where MARTA appears to have had an important influence are discussed. LITERATURE REVIEW AND RESEARCH QUESTION It has been reported in the literature that rail transit has important effects on urban structure and on the intensity and timing of devel- opment. The original purpose of the first electric streetcar lines was to help decentralize residences away from downtowns, ports, and other heavily industrialized areas (1–3). Most recent research, indi- cates that rail systems have facilitated deconcentration of both pop- ulation and employment (4–8). The form of deconcentration, however, tends to be linear (along rail lines) and nodal (at transit stations), especially where lines merge (9–14). Yet, as rail has facilitated deconcentration along corridors and into nodes outside downtown, it also has helped downtown areas retain their regional dominance. For example, San Francisco and Portland (Oregon) would not have been able to retain their domi- nance in regions undergoing rapid growth and suburbanization (15–17 ). In mature regions, rail has facilitated downtown growth principally by transporting most downtown workers (18). There is consensus in the literature that transit induces develop- ment toward transit stations and away from more remote areas. The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) was studied by Green and James (19), who found that areas with access to rail grew more quickly and more intensively than areas without rail access. Downtown San Francisco has grown by 28 million ft 2 (2.6 million m 2 ) of office space and by 80,000 employees since the Bay Area Rapid Transit Authority (BART) was created. It has been concluded that most of that growth is attributable to BART ( 17 ). Similar patterns have been found in suburban employment centers such as Walnut Creek and Concord (20). Three general conclusions have been offered (18) about the influ- ence of rail transit on urban form and economic development. First, development is attracted to rail stations, and if station areas are designed to accommodate large-scale development, such develop- ment is likely to follow. Second, the area of effect of rail stations is really quite small, about 0.5 mi (0.8 km), which reflects the willing- ness of people to walk from the station to nearby buildings ( 21). Third, if stations are surrounded substantially by residential devel- opment, potential nonresidential activities will be displaced. It has been suggested (22) that land-use planning around stations deter- mines which land will be preserved for residential neighborhoods and which will attract nonresidential development. Rail transit thus has served both to spread population and employ- ment outward from the central business district along corridors and into nodes and to enable greater concentration of employment in downtown areas by making the transit mode a more efficient con- veyor of people than alternative modes. Currently, regions with mature and maturing rail systems are characterized as having a regionally dominant downtown, high-intensity corridors, and major activity centers within corridors that are linked to downtowns by rail. But does this expectation hold for all metropolitan areas? Mature metropolitan areas such as Boston and Philadelphia established their land-use patterns generations ago and are no longer rapidly grow- ing. The San Francisco and Portland areas are rapidly growing areas with rail systems that were installed within the past generation, but they are also areas where land-use planning plays a key role in influ- encing development patterns (23); development near rail stations may be more a function of planning constraints than of market- driven outcomes. What about rapidly growing metropolitan areas where land-use planning is weak or nonexistent? Such an area is Atlanta, Georgia. Atlanta is the nation’s most rapidly growing metropolitan area and will continue to be so through the next decade. It will grow from 3 to 4 million people between