Regarding The Recorded Announcements That Customers Hear On MARTA

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Dear MARTA,

My name is Armando, and I’m a community advocate from the Middle Georgia area who visits Atlanta as a tourist and to advocate for legislative priorities.

While I enjoy riding MARTA, I’d like to bring up something that needs attention regarding the recorded announcements at MARTA stations and on the trains.

As you may be aware, the announcements are recorded and generated using text-to-speech. For example, for the MARTA trains where each upcoming station is announced as you’re arriving, the text-to-speech voice that’s used is Ava. While you’re at a station, the announcements for the arriving southbound trains uses the Acapela™ text-to-speech voice named Sharon, while the arriving northbound trains uses the Acapela™ text-to-speech voice named Ryan. Also, for some public service announcements, the text-to-speech voice that’s used at MARTA stations is Microsoft Zira. These announcements sound like a robot talking to customers, meaning that it doesn’t have any emotions or the tone of a human voice.

Since you’re updating the system with new trains and fare gates, I’d like to hear new and updated recordings with clear, human-like voices. An example of a transit system that’s using clear announcements for their trains is Austin’s Cap Metro in Austin, Texas, where each station announcement on trains is recorded by humans. Also, if human operators are driving the trains, buses, and the streetcar, all station announcements, train arrivals, and other information should be recorded by humans instead of putting a so-called script into a program to have it easily generated by text-to-speech. This also goes for the recordings in Spanish as well.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reply to this email. I’d be happy to provide you with more information regarding adding a human touch across MARTA with real, human-like voices.

Thank you.

Respectfully,
Armando Vias
Community Advocate

Last Updated: Saturday, February 7th, 2026 @ 10:40 pm

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