More of a Problem Doesn’t Solve the Problem

The Georgia Department of Transportation is studying the addition of express lanes along the northern half of the loop around Atlanta. We think the money could be better spent…

Atlanta has terrible traffic. It’s stressful for drivers, time consuming and often dangerous. It’s also proven.

We Like Bottles, But Only the Necks
The American Transportation Research Institute has collected and processed GPS data from trucks since 2002. That data is used to quantify the impact of traffic congestion on freight moved by trucks.

The Institute ranks the top 100 bottlenecks (points of traffic congestion) in the United States. The Atlanta area has six bottlenecks in the top twenty, including the fourth and fifth worse bottlenecks in the nation. You can see them depicted in the map below.

Part of Atlanta’s challenge is our highway system. It concentrates an immense amount of traffic in a small area - combining two major interstates (I-75 and I-85) into one road through Atlanta, “the connector”. The only relief is I-285, a ring road around the city dubbed “the perimeter”.

Other sprawling cities like Dallas have a series of major roads running parallel to create options for drivers and allow traffic to find alternate routes in the case of an accident or emergency. In Atlanta’s case, an emergency would be having to close an entire interstate due to a fire under a bridge as happened in 2017 when a 92-foot-long section of I-85 collapsed.

Let’s Force Trucks Into Traffic and Then Complain About Them
Another part of our challenge is having no way for trucks to bypass the metro area. Trucks trying to drive through/across the state are routed onto the same crowded roads as our cars when those trucks reach Atlanta.

Trucks struggle in the stop-and-go traffic jams common in the metro area so more vehicles get stuck in traffic and congestion takes longer to clear. The tail-pipe emissions from these traffic jams directly contribute to lower air quality for metro residents.

What to do? At one time, Atlanta had a vision for an “outer perimeter”. I-285, our existing perimeter, is 64-miles long. That’s to say the loop around Atlanta is 64 miles in total. The outer perimeter was planned twenty to twenty-five miles outside I-285. The outer perimeter would have been just over 210 miles.

Other Examples
That sounds like a long road though it makes sense if you’re trying to get from one interstate to another and don’t want to drive into/through town. Other, similar loops have been built in neighboring states like Tennessee.

For example, the 8-40 loop on the south side of Nashville connects three major interstates (I-24, I-40 and I-65) without requiring traffic to drive into Nashville. Why can’t Atlanta have that?

To complicate matters, tractor trailers aren’t allowed on I-75 or I-85 inside the perimeter (I-285) unless they have business such as a delivery or pick up to complete. Thus, an enormous amount of truck traffic is routed onto I-285 with those of us driving cars. The result, as we’ve already noted, is some world-class terrible traffic for which Atlanta has a national reputation.

In the image above, tractor trailers inside the perimeter make their way to delivery or pick-up locations among cars. Trucks are allowed in all but the farthest left lane. The trucks spread out among the traffic rather than keeping to the right lanes yet the trucks often drive more slowly than cars.

This encourages frustrated drivers of cars to drive recklessly around the trucks as they try to get around or ahead of the trucks. You may have noticed the adjustable speed limit signs in this image have been lowered to 35 miles per hour due to the congestion.

Why Not Add a Lane?
Robert Moses, the urban planner responsible for many of New York City’s roads and bridges, demonstrated in the 1900s that building more lanes isn’t the solution to traffic congestion. Building more lanes just results in more cars on the road without ever seeming to alleviate the congestion.

To solve Atlanta’s traffic congestion, the Georgia Department of Transportation has proposed express lanes along the northern half of I-285. We feel it would be much more impactful to prioritize and build the outer loop as earlier envisioned so truck traffic will have an alternate route.

That would reduce the number of tractor trailers mixed in traffic with cars. That would have three effects: 1) make us safer through avoiding collisions with heavy trucks, 2) speed up the flow of traffic - getting rid of our bottlenecks, and 3) allowing hazardous freight to bypass one of the most populous areas of the southeast completely.

An outer perimeter would be expensive through probably not much more than the cost of express lanes proposed along I-285. We suggest the benefits such as a chance to create a series of hubs along the outer perimeter for development makes the new road much more valuable than jamming more lanes along an existing road.

Atlanta has a poor history of doubling down on its infrastructure. For example, we’re one of few major cities with only one airport. Many cities have multiple airports which gives commuters options and encourages competition among airlines which can result in lower airfares.

Atlanta forces people to spend time in awful traffic trying to get to the south side of town for a flight. Many of us have missed flights after finding ourselves trapped on I-285 in traffic stopped for an accident or emergency ahead. A recent effort to establish a second commercial airport in Bartow County, northwest of Atlanta, was trampled by parties interested in maintaining the monopoly of the Atlanta airport.

Maintenance Really Hurts
Maintenance delays are one of the other enormous penalties Atlanta pays for funneling all vehicles onto very few roads. Those roads need routine maintenance such as resurfacing. That requires closures which, even when done over night, are incredibly disruptive to the flow of traffic.

The traffic caused by road work is so bad, there’s a running joke about the “trafficonis” (traffic cone) being the state flower of Georgia. The “trafficonis” blooms heavily in warm weather. Here’s a photo of them…

Ryan recently drove to Clayton and Blairsville for site visits. We take care not to work nights and weekends to maintain some semblance of work-life balance. Ryan chose to drive up on a Saturday to avoid traffic only to find the Georgia DOT had four lanes (in each direction) on I-85 closed for resurfacing in the middle of the day on a Saturday. The maintenance added an hour to what should have been a two-hour trip.

The section of road on which Ryan was driving is six lanes in each direction yet it still routinely clogs with traffic to the point come to a complete stop. We don’t need wider roads or more lanes built above our existing roads. We need more roads so we have more choices and the city can be more resilient to traffic woes.

Adding Load
The average Georgian may not be aware of Georgia’s inland port developments. There are presently three designed to allow shipping containers to travel by truck for shorter distances. The containers are moved from a seaport (Savannah) by rail to an inland port - a place where the containers are removed from the train and eventually transferred to a truck.

Some of these terminals are huge with plans to grow larger. The Appalachian Regional Port which opened in August 2018 was built for 50,000 containers with the goal of doubling that capacity within ten years. Georgia is opening another inland port just north of Atlanta in Hall County - close to Gainesville.

If one truck can carry one container, we’re looking at tens of thousands of trucks moving through the metro Atlanta area. Yes, some of the trucks will travel north without driving into town though we still need to move goods from inland ports to the west side of the state. That means traffic traveling through Atlanta. Some politicians have noted there will be “an explosion” of rail and truck traffic around the Gainesville port.

These shifting routes (moving more containers inland via train before the containers are transferred to trucks) plus the population growth projections for the Atlanta metro area suggest we’ll have to deal with much more traffic than we do presently. Adding separate capacity seems the only way to protect Atlanta’s ability to grow and thrive. Businesses and the people who drive them won’t open in Atlanta if we don’t proactively address our future traffic issues now.

Why Does An Architecture Firm Care About Express Lanes?
We care because not everyone can afford to live in town. The cost of buying or renting a home in the downtown Atlanta, midtown Atlanta or Cumberland business districts has gotten tremendously expensive.

Transportation becomes a housing issue when the cost of housing pushes people with lower incomes out into the suburbs. Those people (we) pay what are essentially a series of transportation taxes: lost time traveling, the increased expense of owning/operating a vehicle plus the increased cost of insurance that results from driving more miles each year. Those costs can be many thousands of dollars and they are very difficult to predict (budget for) because fuel and insurance costs fluctuate.

We have repeatedly advocated for diversity in our housing stock achieved largely through zoning reforms that allow different house sizes and create flexibility in parking requirements. Building transit can also unlock immense potential when it’s well planned and executed.

We’ve already mentioned the huge opportunities in placing new developments along an outer perimeter. Those could be connected with transit to other key nodes that mix business, housing, civic and entertainment in districts. Sadly, the metro Atlanta area seems to be retreating by reducing the Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority’s Xpress commuter bus services that connect existing nodes.

We’re not advocating for heavy rail or street cars. Moving people can be done safely and comfortably via bus services so that flexibility can be balanced with low cost. We like rail systems yet think we should test the waters with rapid bus services first before building expensive “Field of Dreams” rail projects - they might not come if we build something that’s not evolved gradually.

In Conclusion
We should build more choices rather than more lanes. We should also connect those choices with alternate transportation. One of Ryan’s mentors notes the Georgia Department of Transportation isn’t really focused on transportation. It would be more aptly named the Georgia Department of Roads and Bridges as we don’t seem to be developing any other solutions than those for more automobile traffic.

You can find a significant amount of information about the proposed express lanes on the Georgia DOT website. You can also find means of contacting the Georgia DOT through their project hotline at (404) 978-7490 or via email: topendexpresslanes@dot.ga.gov

We encourage you to make your opinion known. These projects are often well in excess of one billion dollars in cost, so it takes a groundswell of citizens pushing back against the business interests who want to build these enormous projects. We hope you’ll lend your voice to the discussion.

Should Atlanta build more “express” lanes or different roads? Has your city or a city you’ve visited developed a better solution? Leave a comment below to let us know your thoughts!

Other Posts of Interest:

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