Atlanta Transit System (ATC) ran Atlanta transit from 1950 to 1972. Since the 1920s, the Georgia Railway and Power Company (now part of Southern Company), had been losing money on transit. They commissioned a study from Beeler in 1926 but the suggestions were not enough to help. In the late-1940s most years saw double-digit percentage losses of ridership: from 125 million in 1946 down to 100 million in 1948 and finally 86 million in 1949. In April 1949 they ran their last trolley and in May of the next year their drivers struck for five weeks in the Atlanta transit strike of 1950. During the strike, Georgia Power shopped for a buyer of their increasingly troubled transit business. Atlanta businessmen Clement Evans, Granger Hansell and Inman Brandon with Leland Anderson of Columbus, Georgia formed the ATC and purchased the transportation properties on June 23,1950 more than a month into the strike. More than 1,300 employees signed on to the new company and ended their strike. The system consisted of trackless trolleys, buses, mechanics, drivers and their union, Amalgamated Street Car Union Local 732. Anderson was the president and in September 1950 a Georgia Power vice president, Jackson Dick, joined to become the chairman of the board. One of their promotional drives was called Orchids for Operators where customers could nominate helpful or courteous employees for that honor. In 1962, they phased out trackless trolleys which allowed the city to remove most overhead wires. In 1965, MARTA was formed and it began planning a new rail system. By 1972 when planning was mostly finished finished and Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb Counties had signed on, MARTA purchased ATC for US$13 million making it the sole mass transit entity in the area.
References
- Forty Years on the Force (1972), Herbert Jenkins
- History of the Georgia Power Company 1855-1956 (1957), Wade H. Wright, Foote and Davies
- Mule to MARTA vol 2 (1976), Jean Martin, Atlanta Historical Society
