Congestion along busy Clifton Road, one of the Atlanta metro’s largest employment centers without access to high-speed transit, is likely to worsen soon with the Trump administration’s new return-to-office mandate for Centers for Disease Control and Prevention employees.
So many employees have been assigned to return to the CDC’s headquarters that it’s expected there won’t be enough parking for everyone, a CDC spokesperson said.
Parking woes at the CDC’s Roybal campus aren’t new — nearly a decade ago, the agency said its headquarters was at full capacity and urged telecommuting. Officials warned that exceeding parking capacity could lead to “failure conditions” and long delays at intersections along Clifton, Briarcliff, Houston Mill, LaVista, Clairmont and North Decatur roads.
An additional parking deck has been built on campus since then, but the number of spots available isn’t expected to accommodate every employee ordered back to headquarters. The spokesperson said the agency is exploring off-site parking options.
Uncertainty about the parking situation and the potential for a stressful commute is filling employees with dread. In posts on social media, employees have shared concerns about limited office space, too.
Outside of the CDC, the potential ramifications seem to have flown largely under the radar.
Multiple neighborhood leaders and elected officials in the area said they weren’t aware of the agency’s plans, which call for some employees to begin returning as early as next week. Most are expected to return in mid-March.
The spokesperson said the CDC has scheduled a meeting with officials at nearby Emory University to discuss the potential increase in traffic. They haven’t reached out yet to transit agencies with bus service to the campus, which might see ridership increase as employees seek to sidestep the parking issue.
Telecommuting became more common at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but many employees at the CDC were working remotely even before that.
“People at the CDC are working well, they’re working hard and they don’t necessarily need to be on-site in Atlanta,” former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told Congress in 2022. “In fact, oftentimes, they’re more productive off-site.”
Like many private companies, the CDC has terminated leases across metro Atlanta — seven in all — since the pandemic’s start, leaving fewer offices left to house employees. Currently, the CDC has four leased offices along with the buildings owned on Clifton Road and at campuses in Chamblee and Lawrenceville.
Out of nearly 14,000 employees, just 998 work in-person currently, the spokesperson said. About 4,100 are fully remote, with the rest on hybrid schedules.
The number of employees reporting to Roybal is expected to more than double.
Approximately 4,800 employees are expected to work daily at Roybal going forward, the spokesperson said. The agency did not respond to repeated requests asking how much of a parking shortage is expected.
The latest campus master plan, written in 2014, identifies 3,300 parking spots across three decks and three other surface lots. A fourth deck replaced one of the surface lots in 2021, adding a net 1,500 spots.
That would suggest a roughly 1:1 employee parking ratio but doesn’t account for an unknown number of contractors who also work on the campus.
President Donald Trump has made in-office work a top priority. He issued an executive order on his first day requiring federal employees to return to offices.
In remarks from the Oval Office last week, Trump said most people don’t do their jobs when they’re working remote.
“Nobody’s going to work from home. They’re going to be going out, they’re gonna play tennis, they’re gonna play golf,” Trump said. “They’re gonna do a lot of things — they’re not working.”
Federal employees at the CDC and elsewhere have disputed that characterization. They’ve also said the administration’s plans have been made without consideration for the lack of available office space.
The return-to-office orders are coming alongside efforts to dramatically decrease the size of the federal workforce. CDC leaders learned last week that one-tenth of its employees — a mix of recent hires and newly promoted veterans — would be laid off. Similar moves are being made at other federal agencies.
Experts have said the office changes are likely to push additional employees to quit.
At a neighborhood level, extra traffic around the CDC campus will add stress to the crowded Clifton Corridor that runs from Buckhead to Decatur.
Home to the CDC and Emory University, it’s one of the biggest employment centers in MARTA’s service area and the metro region with no direct access to high-speed transit. Light rail has been proposed for the area, but MARTA backed off the latest proposal in favor of rapid buses a few years ago.
Those rapid bus routes remain far off. The project website hasn’t been updated since June 2023. A MARTA spokesperson said the agency is in the technical analysis stage of planning.
For now, two MARTA routes serve the CDC headquarters: Route 6, which runs between Lindbergh and Inman Park stations; and Route 816, which runs from Five Points station to the CDC. Ride Gwinnett also runs a commuter shuttle to the CDC campus.
The CDC also provides shuttle service from the Lindbergh MARTA station. And the Clifton Corridor Transportation Management Association, of which the CDC is a member, runs a shuttle along Clifton Road between Emory and downtown Decatur.
The CDC offers subsidies to employees who opt for transit, up to $325 per month. It also maintains a list of van pools to help facilitate carpooling.
Employees have limited time to make alternate arrangements: Supervisors were told to return to the office Feb. 24, with all other employees living within 50 miles told to return March 17. Employees living more than 50 miles away must return April 28.
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