History has been made, Atlanta! A team of friends from Chicago set out to set a world record for ‘the fastest time to travel all of the Atlanta metro stations’ on MARTA on Thursday… and they got it. Keep scrolling for all the details.
Hold up… what’s going on?
Yes, you read that right. Yesterday, January 8th, 2026, a team of three friends set the world record for the fastest time to travel to all of the MARTA stations, and spread awareness for the importance of public transit while they’re at it. And they hit their goal!
Who’s set this record?
Wait… who’s set this record? Three friends from Chicago: Joabe Barbosa, who was born in Brazil and grew up in England and now lives in Chicago, Matthew Plese, from Chicago, and Omar Yousaf, who was born in New York and grew up and Mexico and now lives in Chicago to play soccer.
This isn’t their first rodeo, either. The team, except for Yousaf, who was recovering from knee surgery at the time, set the Guinness World Record for the fastest time to travel all of the stops on Chicago’s CTA. The goal: hit all 146 stops in less than 9 hours and 15 minutes. And they did it in 8 hours, 58 minutes, and 55 seconds.
And even cooler than that–this whole journey started from a dream. Literally. Plese says that the whole ordeal began because he saw Barbosa on the news, talking about a niche goal they both have: to run every single street in the city of Chicago, which is thousands and thousands of miles. From there, the two became friends, and Barbosa had a dream about visiting all of the 77 community zones in Chicago. One thing lead to another, and what started as a dream turned into visiting community zones, turned into running an ultra marathon, turned into visiting every train station. Poof. Here we are. World Record.
Plese says,
It was so successful, so fun. We thought we could just go around to other cities now because of that. It started because of a dream.
Why Atlanta? And why MARTA?
Okay, so a team living in Chicago sets a World Record on Chicago’s CTA. Makes sense. But why Atlanta, then?
Barboasa says,
We started with Chicago, and we want to do Atlanta, then move on to other cities as well. And finish off in New York, which, the current record for New York is 22 hours. So that’s the goal. Our goal is to get the world record and be the world record holder in every major U.S. city that has a record.
Atlanta was the next logical choice because there was no world record for fastest time to travel to all MARTA stations. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a time to beat. Guinness puts minimums out if there isn’t a current record, and the time to beat for ATL’s MARTA system is 2 hours.
Barbosa says, “I planned the route. Impossible to do two hours.” Guinness then agreed to accept a time that is “a good attempt.” Their goal was to hit every single MARTA stop in under 3 hours.
What’s was their exact time?
Joabe Barbosa, Matthew Plese, and Omar Yousaf, wanted to hit every MARTA station in under 3 hours. They didn’t quite hit that time, but they still set the record: 3 hours and 21 minutes.
Barbosa says,
Public transport is good. It can be reliable. And if we can get a world record in the mix, then great.
But this actually isn’t the fastest time ever recorded!
While Barbosa, Plese, and Yousaf now officially hold the Guinness World Record, a faster record was actually set by Atlanta local, Lilly the Railfan on YouTube.
Watch her speed run every MARTA station in Atlanta on her YouTube channel, here! Her final, record setting time was 3 hours and 4 seconds!