MARTA

MARTA operates the only heavy-rail rapid transit system in the southeastern United States, connecting Atlanta's airport — the busiest in the world by passenger count — to the city's employment cores and surrounding neighbourhoods. Founded in 1971 and opening its rail system in 1979, MARTA serves Fulton and DeKalb counties through a cross-shaped rail network of four lines converging at Five Points station in downtown Atlanta, supplemented by an extensive bus network. The agency has faced decades of political challenges around expansion, as neighbouring counties chose not to join the authority — a decision that has left Atlanta's transit network smaller than the metro area's size would typically support.

The Breeze card and Breeze app form the foundation of MARTA's fare payment system. Riders load value, weekly passes, or monthly passes onto their Breeze card at station kiosks, online, or in the app. The MARTA app provides real-time train arrival predictions, service alerts, bus tracking, and trip planning across the combined rail and bus network. The agency publishes GTFS and GTFS-RT data that feeds into Google Maps and Apple Maps for Atlanta, making MARTA's real-time data feeds a dependency of the navigation tools that most riders use in practice, even if they do not interact directly with the MARTA app.

MARTA digital failures create particular problems at Hartsfield-Jackson Airport, where the Gold and Red rail lines connect international and domestic terminals to the main terminal and downtown Atlanta. Travellers arriving at the airport and attempting to purchase or reload Breeze cards when kiosk systems are down face an immediate challenge getting into the city. Real-time arrival information failures on the airport station platforms — where travellers are making time-sensitive transit decisions — create stress that is disproportionate compared to the same failure at a residential station where alternative options exist. Bus tracking failures affect the bus-dependent riders who form a significant share of MARTA's daily customer base.

Outage.gg tracks MARTA service disruptions using community reports from Atlanta-area transit riders. If the Breeze app is unavailable, real-time arrivals are not loading, or Breeze card services are experiencing issues, the live status page shows current impact from the MARTA rider community.