Let’s Get Georgia Moving

Georgia is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, with a population exceeding 11 million, and the Atlanta region is projected to add another 1.8 million residents by 2050. Increasingly, that growth is occurring beyond Atlanta’s urban core, with suburban, exurban, and coastal communities emerging as important economic centers.

As Georgia grows, so does its transportation challenges. In many communities, particularly rural areas and rapidly developing suburbs, access to jobs, health care, education, and other essential services often depends on owning a personal vehicle. This creates barriers for older adults, people with disabilities, young people, and working families who cannot drive or afford the high cost of car ownership. Meanwhile, traffic congestion continues to worsen across many of the state’s fastest-growing regions.

Georgia has invested billions of dollars to build and maintain its highway system, but roadway expansion alone cannot keep pace with long-term growth. The recent Transform I-285/GA-400 project, for example, grew from an estimated $596 million to nearly $800 million. Yet while the state continues to invest heavily in highways, it provides virtually no dedicated funding for public transit operations.

As Georgia plans for the future, the question is not whether to invest in roads or transit; it is whether the state will build a balanced transportation system that gives residents more ways to access jobs, education, health care, and economic opportunity.

The efficient movement of people and goods is fundamental to Georgia’s economy, and maintaining a safe, reliable transportation network requires continued investment in our infrastructure. Highways and roads will always play a critical role in that system. However, expanding highway capacity alone cannot keep pace with Georgia’s rapid population growth or provide lasting relief from traffic congestion.

Transportation research has consistently shown that adding roadway capacity often leads to induced demand, the well-documented phenomenon in which additional lanes initially reduce congestion but ultimately encourage more driving, shifting travel patterns and generating new vehicle trips until congestion returns. As a result, communities are left with larger, more expensive highway systems that require increasing levels of public investment while delivering only temporary congestion relief.

The most effective way to create lasting transportation capacity is to give people more choices. Reliable public transit moves far more people using existing roadway space, reduces pressure on congested highways, and provides an alternative to driving for commuters who have the option to leave their cars at home. Rather than viewing highways and transit as competing priorities, Georgia should invest in a balanced transportation system that maintains our road network while expanding public transportation options to meet the needs of a growing state.

Public transportation is more than a transportation service—it is essential infrastructure that connects people to opportunities and keeps Georgia’s economy moving. Every day, public transit helps workers reach their jobs, students get to school, patients access health care, seniors maintain their independence, and businesses connect with employees and customers. Like highways, ports, airports, and freight rail, public transportation is a critical component of Georgia’s transportation network that supports commerce, workforce mobility, and long-term economic growth.

For decades, federal and state governments have recognized the importance of operating other transportation systems by investing in air traffic control, ports, freight rail, and inland waterways. Public transportation deserves the same recognition. Reliable transit service is essential to connecting people with employment, education, health care, and other daily necessities while giving employers access to the workforce they need to grow.

This need extends well beyond Georgia’s metropolitan areas. Rural communities are increasingly central to the state’s economic development strategy, attracting advanced manufacturing, logistics, health care, and agricultural investment. Yet these communities often face a unique transportation challenge: Jobs, health care providers, schools, and essential services are spread across large geographic areas with few transportation alternatives. In many parts of rural Georgia, there are no viable private mobility options (like Uber or Lyft), making public transportation the backbone of regional workforce mobility.

Georgia’s network of 114 rural transit systems provides approximately 1.7 million passenger trips each year, connecting residents across the state to jobs, medical appointments, education, and essential services. These systems are not simply a social service; they are economic infrastructure that helps employers access workers, supports hospitals and educational institutions, and allows rural communities to compete for new investment. As Georgia continues to recruit employers beyond its major metropolitan areas, ensuring those businesses can connect with a reliable workforce will be critical to maximizing the state’s economic development investments.

Dedicated operating support would allow transit providers to do more than maintain existing service. Stable funding would enable agencies to increase service frequency, expand operating hours, improve regional connections between neighboring communities, strengthen workforce recruitment and retention, and better coordinate transportation for employment, health care, and education. For rural Georgia, these investments would unlock new economic opportunities by connecting more workers to jobs, helping businesses reach a broader labor market, and making communities more competitive for future investment.

Access to transportation is not the same as access to a personal vehicle. An estimated 37 percent of Georgians over the age of 10 do not or cannot rely on a personal vehicle to meet their daily travel needs, including more than 370,000 Georgians of driving age who live in households without a vehicle. These Georgians include older adults, people with disabilities, students, veterans, caregivers, low-income households, and many workers who depend on public transportation every day. Investing in transit operations is ultimately about ensuring that every Georgian, regardless of where they live, has access to opportunity and that every community has the transportation infrastructure needed to support long-term economic growth.

Public transit investments generally fall into two categories: capital and operations. Put simply, capital funding buys the bus, while operations funding keeps the bus running. Operations support the people and services that riders rely on every day, including bus operators, mechanics, dispatchers, fuel, maintenance, security, customer service, and the frequent, reliable service that connects people to work, school, health care, and other daily destinations.

Today, most public transit funding in Georgia comes from federal grants, local governments, and passenger fares. While the state provides limited capital assistance through programs such as the Georgia Department of Transportation’s (GDOT) Transit Trust Fund Program (TTFP), these funds cannot be used to operate transit service and represent only a small share of most agencies’ budgets.
        
Georgia is an outlier. It is the largest state in the nation without a dedicated source of recurring state funding for public transit operations. As a result, transit agencies across the state must rely heavily on local governments and fare revenue to sustain service, making it difficult to expand routes, increase service frequency, extend evening and weekend operations, or respond to growing demand.

Reliable transit depends on reliable operations funding. Without it, service becomes less frequent, routes are reduced, and fewer Georgians have access to the jobs, health care, education, and economic opportunities that public transportation makes possible. Creating a dedicated state transit operations fund would provide transit agencies across Georgia with the stable, predictable resources needed to deliver the high-quality service that residents and employers deserve.

Investing in public transit operations is not simply a transportation policy, it is an economic development strategy. Reliable transit expands access to jobs, strengthens regional labor markets, reduces transportation costs for working families, and helps employers recruit and retain the workforce they need to grow.

Economic modeling conducted by the National Campaign for Transit Justice estimates that a dedicated annual investment of approximately $302 million in transit operations across Georgia would support more than 4,300 jobs statewide, including roughly 2,420 direct jobs at transit agencies and an additional 1,952 indirect and induced jobs throughout Georgia’s economy. Those jobs range from bus operators, mechanics, dispatchers, and planners to manufacturers, suppliers, construction workers, restaurant employees, and countless other businesses supported by increased economic activity.

The economic benefits extend well beyond employment. Reliable transit reduces household transportation costs, improves access to employment and health care, increases worker retention, and gives employers access to a larger labor pool. It also supports safer roadways, strengthens local tax bases by encouraging development, and creates more transportation choices for residents and visitors alike.

Transit investment consistently delivers strong returns. National research estimates that every $1 invested in public transportation generates approximately $5 in economic activity, meaning an investment of this scale could support more than $1.5 billion in economic output across Georgia. And because these estimates primarily measure employment and direct economic impacts, they likely understate the broader long-term benefits associated with improved mobility, reduced congestion, increased productivity, and stronger regional competitiveness.

As Georgia continues to attract new residents and businesses, investing in transit operations is not about choosing transit over highways, it is about ensuring the state has the transportation system needed to support sustained economic growth, a competitive workforce, and thriving communities in every region.¹

¹The investment scenario presented here is based on the funding formula proposed in the Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act and modeled by the National Campaign for Transit Justice.

Georgia’s continued economic success depends on a transportation system that moves both people and goods efficiently. While the state has made substantial investments in highways and freight infrastructure, it remains one of only a handful of states without a dedicated source of recurring state funding for public transit operations. As Georgia’s population grows and regional economies continue to expand, this funding gap will increasingly constrain workforce mobility, economic competitiveness, and transportation choice.

To address this need, Georgia should expand the existing GDOT Transit Trust Fund Program to include a dedicated, recurring operating assistance program for public transit providers. Like the current TTFP, funding should be administered by GDOT using a transparent, formula-based approach that provides predictable funding to eligible transit agencies statewide. Rather than replacing local investment, state funding should complement existing federal, local, and fare revenues while providing agencies with the stability needed to maintain and improve service.

The program should be modeled after the framework established in Congressman Hank Johnson’s Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act, adapting its best practices to Georgia’s transportation needs. Funding should support eligible operating expenses, including service expansion, increased frequency, workforce recruitment and retention, and customer information technology, safety, and security, as well as other investments that improve access to employment, education, health care, and essential services. Funding formulas should recognize both urban and rural transit providers while incorporating performance reporting through the National Transit Database and outcome-based measures that evaluate improvements in mobility, access to jobs, and service reliability.

In addition to establishing a dedicated operations program, decision-makers should consider maximizing the use of existing federal transportation resources by increasing the use of federal fund “flexing” authority. Federal law allows states to transfer eligible highway funds to Federal Transit Administration programs, freeing state transportation dollars for uses that cannot be supported with federal transit funds, including transit operations. Greater use of this flexibility would strengthen transit investment while accelerating smaller multimodal projects that improve pedestrian access, transit connectivity, and overall system performance.

Creating a dedicated transit operations fund is not simply an investment in buses or trains, it is an investment in Georgia’s workforce, economy, and long-term competitiveness. Reliable transit service helps employers access talent, reduces transportation costs for working families, strengthens regional economies, and expands opportunity in communities of every size. By pairing continued investments in highways with dedicated support for transit operations, Georgia can build a balanced transportation system that reflects the needs of a growing state and positions it for sustained economic success.