MARTA trains travel to and from the Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport on a daily schedule, with weekend rail service on a different timetable than weekday. It’s an easy connection, with the Airport MARTA station at the end of baggage claim and typically low wait times, depending on the time of day. To better plan your flight or commute to/from the airport by train, here are some key things to know about MARTA schedules:
1. MARTA Does Not Run 24 hours
Rail service starts around 5 a.m. on weekdays and 6 a.m. on weekends. Trains also stop running around 1 a.m. Avoid booking early morning flights if you want to ride a train to the airport. Also, if your flight gets in very late at night, you will need to find alternate transportation.
2. Night and Weekend Trains are normally Less Frequent
MARTA train frequency is every 20 minutes on all days of the week and all day long during the pandemic. View marta.io or the MARTA on the Go app for real-time train arrivals.
If schedules get back to normal, the 20-minute frequency is only on weekends, on holidays and at night, with trains fairly frequent on weekdays during the day.
3. There Are Two Rail Line Schedules
There are two rail lines that connect with the airport: red and gold. They each have different schedules. The good news: If you are traveling to or from any station from the Airport to Lindbergh Center (see rail map), then you can board either train, and your wait time for a train is that much lower because you can just get on the first departing train.
Otherwise, the red line (marked North Springs) goes to Dunwoody and the Perimeter and the gold line (marked Doraville) goes to Brookhaven, Chamblee and Doraville. Both stop in downtown Atlanta, Midtown and Buckhead.
For specific timetables, see the links below. Note that the red line does not go to the airport after 8:30 p.m. You’ll have to transfer to or from the gold line at the Lindbergh Center MARTA station.
4. Trains Don’t Always Follow the Printed Schedule
5. You Can View Schedules in Google Maps
For those traveling to the airport and are concerned about arriving at a specific time, we recommend planning your MARTA trip with Google Maps. You can enter your desired airport arrival time and Google will calculate which train you need to catch in order to make that happen.
Otherwise, for the most part, MARTA trains are relatively frequent on weekdays until about 7 p.m. so you can just go to the station and wait for the next train.
