Tara Boulevard LCI Unlocks $13.4 Million in Safety Grants

Clayton County accepted $13.4 million in Atlanta Regional Commission grants in September 2026 for Tara Boulevard walking safety and a new county bus garage. The package landed more than four years after a $400,000 Livable Centers Initiative study sold the same road as a future gateway.

The new cash pays for right-of-way work on Tara Boulevard and a Multipurpose Operations and Maintenance Facility for county buses. The mixed-use “gateway” drawn in the 2024 corridor plan is still on paper, and MARTA’s Southlake rapid bus line is not due to start construction until 2029.

Four Years After the Grant, the Money Arrives

On September 2, 2026, the Clayton County Board of Commissioners voted to take two ARC awards: $5.4 million for a Right-of-Way pedestrian project on Tara Boulevard and $8 million to build a bus operations hub the county called “zero emission ready.” Chairwoman Dr. Alieka Anderson-Henry said the awards show a commitment to county transit and pedestrian safety and to “move Clayton forward to create a better place for our residents.”

ARC Executive Director and CEO Anna Roach tied the grants to safety, mobility, jobs, and quality of life. Commissioner Demont Davis, who pushed the $5.4 million award, has called Tara Boulevard a dangerous corridor that draws constant resident complaints.

That $13.4 million sits on top of an older, larger job already in the region’s plan. ARC’s CL-349 sheet programs an 11.5-mile sidewalk and lighting project from the Henry County line to Upper Riverdale Road, filling sidewalk gaps on both sides, replacing substandard ADA ramps, and adding street and pedestrian lights. Design money is dated 2024, local right-of-way money 2025, and construction 2027. The programmed total is $17,493,335, with $7,647,104 federal and $9,846,231 local. The sheet keeps the road at 4 or 6 through lanes. It is a walking job, not a widening.

THE MONEY STACKED ON TARA BOULEVARD

The 2022 planning grants were the cheap ticket. ARC’s LCI program pays 80 percent of a study or transportation project, with a 20 percent local match, and a finished study is what makes a city eligible for the construction money. Since 2000 the program has put nearly $390 million into 126 communities, and the ARC board has allocated $1 billion through 2050 for projects that grow out of completed plans.

Old Dixie Highway Still Tops the Crash Count

The study was never abstract. Lovejoy’s 2022 grant notice put Tara Boulevard and Upper Riverdale Road among Georgia’s top 10 most fatal roadways. Clayton County’s 2024 Comprehensive Plan later published the intersection toll for 2018 through 2022.

CRASH TOTALS ON TARA BOULEVARD, 2018-2022

• Old Dixie at Tara: 877 crashes, the worst pair in the county tally.
• Lake Spivey at Tara: 475 crashes at the second-ranked pair.
• The road class: Tara Boulevard and Upper Riverdale Road sit on the state’s most fatal corridor list.

Eugene Murray Jr. sells produce from DM Fruit and Produce on a Jonesboro stretch of the road and will not cross it.

A lot of people have died on here.

Eugene Murray Jr., DM Fruit and Produce, Jonesboro

Davis has said sidewalks and lighting will force drivers to slow down. That is the bet inside the $5.4 million award: paint, ramps, and lights on a state highway that still runs six lanes through retail strips, bus stops, and people who already walk it because they have no other way.

The Tara Gateway Study Became a Corridor Plan

On May 16, 2022, ARC announced $1.9 million for nine studies across metro Atlanta. Clayton County, with Jonesboro and Lovejoy, took $400,000 for the Tara Gateway Study, aimed at pedestrian safety, bus access, and new development at Upper Riverdale Road, Jonesboro, and Lovejoy. The City of Riverdale took $200,000 to update its own LCI around bus rapid transit work MARTA had already started.

Pond & Company led the Clayton study, with MXD Development Strategists on the real estate analysis. The county adopted the Tara Boulevard LCI on July 16, 2024. ARC posted the 2024 corridor plan that July as an 11-mile study of US 41 south of downtown Atlanta, with railroad history and the Flint River as the shared spine, and three nodes: Tara Gateway, Jonesboro, and Lovejoy. The plan covers more than 5,600 acres.

A March 3, 2025 briefing for Jonesboro put the vision in one line: a vibrant, cohesive corridor that provides safe connections for all, attracts a diverse mix of uses, and helps activate inclusive places. Corridor-wide, the team split the road into a transit corridor with complete-street work on cross streets and transit-oriented overlay zones, a parkway of linked greenspace and pedestrian-priority stretches, and a connector with better crossings, including GDOT’s planned Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons.

THREE NODES ON THE 11-MILE PLAN

• Tara Gateway: Strong retail and services, low vacancies, closest to the airport job market, drawn as a commercial and mixed-use hub.
• Jonesboro: Civic and cultural core, with Smith Street as a catalytic site for 3- to 4-storey retail and mixed-use next to new housing.
• Lovejoy: The residential growth node, where new housing is supposed to meet better walking and bus access.

Those nodes are the “gateway” the 2022 grant described. They are also the part of the file that still needs private building, zoning overlays, and a rapid bus line that does not yet run. The money that has cleared is for sidewalks, lights, a garage, and signals.

Jonesboro, Lovejoy and a Task Force Share the Road

On October 27, 2025, ARC named Clayton County the 2025 Visionary Planning award winner for the Tara Boulevard LCI. The citation called the study an attempt to turn an 11-mile, car-centric corridor into a multimodal, people-focused destination, built with Aerotropolis Atlanta, Jonesboro, Lovejoy, and ARC. Anderson-Henry said the prize showed that “people do recognize our great county is on the move.”

The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) names Clayton County as the 2025 Regional Excellence Award Visionary Planning winner for the Tara Boulevard Livable Centers Initiative (LCI) Study. #Claytonconnected pic.twitter.com/ySlao0kahA

— Clayton County Government (Board of Commissioners) (@ClaytonCountyGA) October 27, 2025

Pond later took a 2025 Georgia ASLA Merit Award in Analysis and Planning for the same study. County staff told commissioners the first local implementation item would be a coordinated sign ordinance along the corridor, with draft language headed to a work session before a board vote. A Tara Boulevard Task Force with Jonesboro and Lovejoy was stood up to keep the three governments on one work program. Trail money the county had treated as lost was also described as a way to connect into the Tara Boulevard and Arrowhead area toward the Atlanta BeltLine.

Lovejoy Mayor Marci Fluellyn has framed 2026 as the year that task force advocates for construction money. The $5.4 million award is the first large answer to that pitch. A sign code will not stop a six-lane crash. It is the cheap, local piece while GDOT and ARC handle concrete.

The earlier Tara Boulevard LCI vision was the planning brief. The 2026 grants are the first construction-scale reply.

Riverdale Tied Its LCI to Bus Rapid Transit

Riverdale’s $200,000 grant was a different map. TSW led an update of the city’s 2007 LCI, run next to the 2023-2033 comprehensive plan that Mayor and Council adopted on October 23, 2023. Planning staff took the new LCI, branded “Moving Forward; City Center Plan,” to the Planning Commission on November 8, 2023. Council adopted the adopted Riverdale LCI plan on December 11, 2023.

The city plan covers the LCI study area plus a Church Street subarea west of SR 85. It calls for more housing types, new office and retail on Church and Powers, slower lanes, wider sidewalks, and bike space. Transportation items in the first 100 days after adoption were small on purpose: static calming signs, a high-visibility crosswalk at Church and Bethsaida, and lane striping, with a later push for LCI construction money on Church Street and Powers Street rebuilds.

The larger bet in that file is MARTA Rapid Southlake, now branded the B-Line. MARTA’s late-2024 Clayton briefing listed a $356 million project with projected revenue service in 2030, a selected final designer, an FTA categorical exclusion, and a pending federal funding rating. Project leaders at Riverdale City Hall on September 30, 2026, described a 13.6-mile line from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to Southlake Mall. Construction is expected to start in 2029.

🚍 Have questions about the MARTA Rapid B-Line (Southlake BRT)? Join @MARTAtransit and the City of #Riverdale for a town hall to learn about the project, future stations and transit improvements.

📅 Wed., Sept. 30 | 6–8 p.m.
📍 Riverdale City Hall, 7200 Church St. pic.twitter.com/zjwaCMBR2F

— Forest Park, GA (@ForestPark30297) September 28, 2026

Dozens of people filled 7200 Church Street that Wednesday night. Gerg Holder, the project manager, said the team is reviewing safety around schools and treating the line as a development tool as much as a bus.

We’re taking a look at safety with the schools and the school districts. We’re just making sure overall that this is for the citizens. Also, because transit kind of drives development, you’re getting more developers coming in, more residential, livable, walkable communities.

Gerg Holder, B-Line project manager, Riverdale City Hall, September 30, 2026

Clayton County District 1 Commissioner Alaina Reeves told the room the project has been years in the making. The LCI update was supposed to get the city ready for those stations. The stations are still a design-stage object.

What GDOT Will Build Along Six Lanes

County officials said in September 2026 that the Georgia Department of Transportation would start a State Route 3 / Tara Boulevard Pedestrian Safety Improvements job within 30 days, which put the first work in early October 2026. The Jonesboro LCI deck already treated those GDOT beacons as part of the corridor strategy, not a surprise add-on.

THE GDOT CROSSWALK PACKAGE

• Six intersections: Crosswalks that stop six lanes of traffic.
• Hybrid beacons: Pedestrian Hybrid Beacons, the stacked signals that go dark until a person hits the button, then hold cars with a red indication.
• Five mid-block spots: Raised concrete medians, plus ADA ramps, between Upper Riverdale Road and Robert E. Lee Parkway.

A hybrid beacon is a hard stop, not a flashing yellow suggestion. On a six-lane state route, that is the difference between a painted stripe drivers ignore and a signal they can get a ticket for beating. Davis’s hope that “once we begin to put the sidewalks in and the lights come on, folks are going to have to slow down” depends on those beacons working in real traffic, not in a rendering.

CL-349’s 11.5-mile sidewalk and lighting run is still dated to 2027 construction. The $5.4 million Right-of-Way award is the 2026 piece that buys land and access for walking work. The two should not be collapsed into one shovel. One is a programmed corridor job in the regional plan. The other is the grant the board accepted in September. Together they are the first physical answer to a 2022 study that promised a gateway and, first, has to make it possible to cross the street.

A Bus Garage Arrives Years Before the Rapid Line

FROM STUDY TO STEEL

1. May 16, 2022: ARC awards $400,000 for the Tara Gateway Study and $200,000 for Riverdale’s LCI update.
2. December 11, 2023: Riverdale adopts its LCI city-center plan.
3. July 16, 2024: Clayton County adopts the Tara Boulevard LCI.
4. October 27, 2025: ARC gives the corridor plan its Visionary Planning award.
5. September 2, 2026: The county accepts $5.4 million for Tara Boulevard right-of-way and $8 million for a bus garage.
6. 2027: CL-349 sidewalk and lighting construction is programmed.
7. 2029-2030: MARTA lists B-Line construction starting in 2029 and revenue service in 2030.

The $8 million garage is a bet on buses Clayton already runs, and on buses it wants to run, before the rapid line opens. A maintenance hub does not need a BRT station. It does need a county that intends to keep expanding service while MARTA finishes design and waits on a federal rating.

What has been won is eligibility, a prize, a task force, a sign ordinance in draft, GDOT beacons on six lanes, sidewalk money, and a garage. What has not been won is the three-node skyline in the Jonesboro slides, or a ride from the airport to Southlake on a dedicated rapid line. Murray’s refusal to cross Tara Boulevard is still a fair field test of whether the gateway exists. The beacons and the 2027 sidewalks are the first chance to change that test.