Access Atlanta > The Newcomer > Archives > 2008 > May > 30 > Entry
Newcomer Q&A, v. 5: connectors and blizzards
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s that time again! Send me your questions at jgumbrecht@ajc.com or leave them in the comments, and we’ll try to get them answered next Friday. They can be anything from help finding a good dry cleaner to a historical question.
This week’s answers come from two indirect questions left in the comments sections. Maybe readers didn’t really want answers, but I did!
So here you are, a brief history of the downtown connector, that nasty combo of interstates 75 and 85, and a look back on the Blizzard of ‘93.
Question from Former Metro Atlantan: You’ll also ask yourself other questions like who decided to form a junction of two major interstate highways (75 and 85) in downtown Atlanta?
I have wondered this. Really, how did this ever seem like a good idea? (That’s the widened connector pictured above, in 1989.)
I turned to the Georgia Department of Transportation for an answer. They sent along a 33-page document produced in March 2007 titled “Historic Context of the Interstate Highway System in Georgia.”
It’s sickly fascinating, but to answer the question, Atlanta’s Interstate plan was developed in the mid-1940s by H. W. Lochner & Company, a transportation planning firm from Chicago.
From the DOT document: “The Lochner plan was hailed in the late 1940s as the solution to the worst of Atlanta’s traffic congestion and safety problems…”
Construction on what we now know as the downtown connector began in 1948, and wasn’t completed until 1964, after $33 million and the razing of some “marginal neighborhoods” had gone into it. By the time it opened, it had already reached capacity. “Amazingly,” the DOT report says, “the daily traffic counts in 1958 were greater than the Lochner plan projection for traffic volumes in 1970 with enough traffic between Fourteenth Street and the Brookwood interchance at the evening peak to justify a 16-lane-wide roadway.”
The connector was expanded years later, and that construction finished in 1989. When it opened, the AJC ran a story that said: “Atlanta’s drivers - believe it or not - are wheeling into a golden age of commuting.”
The story went on to detail how the golden age wouldn’t last long; congestion was already filling the expanded, construction-free lanes. Hard to say what the alternatives would be — the connector is now our history and our present and assuming that promise of flying cars is a lie, our future . Fascinating.
Read on for the goods on Atlanta’s very snowy 1993…
Question from Jeff: As far as bizarre weather, ever heard of the Blizzard of ‘93? Twas a March storm, but it aint too often we get snow down here, and this storm deposited several inches as far south as South GA. (I’ve been told it even snowed in ALBANY with that one!)
Blizzard? Um. Nope.
Good thing I work for a newspaper, huh?
It happened March 13, 1993, when Georgians woke up to blankets of white.
From a March 19, 1993 AJC story: “Statewide there were 15 deaths, hundreds of thousands of people without power for days, thousands stranded on ice-choked roads, lost crops and devastated commercial centers of northwest Georgia.
Overall, there were at least 238 deaths, and preliminary damage estimates run into the billions.
What made winter’s frozen-earth policy so lethal in Georgia was the nearly universal belief that things simply couldn’t get as bad as they ultimately did. Despite weather forecasters’ warnings in the afternoon of Friday, March 12, that the “Storm of the Century” was on its way, most people just pressed on with their plans for the weekend - and many others treated the coming storm as a last chance to get out and play in the snow.”
The story goes on to say that storms that were passable at 7:30 a.m. were “ice traps” by 8 a.m. “Throughout most of the northern third of Georgia, it took only minutes for what had been a chilly rain to turn into an angry blizzard. The rain was quick-frozen into heavy, wet snow, which in turn was whipped from a vertical fall into horizontally propelled bullets by gale-force winds. Standing up was a serious challenge.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Post your comment | Categories: Questions & Answers
Comments
By Rick
May 30, 2008 1:34 PM | Link to this
Me and the EX did not think it was going to really snow in town so we went to Cohutta Lodge for the weekend. Got stuck there for 4 days. Joyce Oscar with channel 2 was there. You really lean alot about people when you trap 64 of them in a building with no power or running water for 4 days.
By Lissa
May 30, 2008 2:05 PM | Link to this
Hmm… why do I not remember the snow of ‘93? I grew up in Warner Robins, so I’m sure we got some, but I guess it just wasn’t all that memorable.
Now.. you want to talk memorable - look up the snow of ‘88 (I think it was 88). The ice stayed on the ground for several days. For those of us in middle GA that never got those snow days, we had several that time!
Another one to talk about is the flood of ‘94. My family was actually on vacation in Maine at the time. We knew it was bad when we saw familiar streets in Macon flooded out in the newspaper. We weren’t even sure we’d be able to get home, but luckily they were able to reopen closed lanes on 75S and we made it home in one piece with no damages.
By LM
May 30, 2008 2:26 PM | Link to this
We first moved to Marietta from Detroit in February of 1981, there was a surprise snow storm our first year. My Brother was working down by 285 and we lived near Dobbins, he could not get home.
The snow storm of ‘93 my brother was visiting from Memphis with his wife and 10 month son. He got stuborn and had to leave Sunday morning, got stuck on the highway and did not get home until Monday.
The flood of ‘94 my SO was with the Georgia National Guard, he helped rescue people and even flew out a cow that had gotten stuck.
I was living in Myrtle Beach when Hugo, my mom was planning to come visit and I called to tell her not to come, so she rescheduled for Christmas and that year we got around a foot of snow.
Maybe it is just my family that brings out the unsual weather
By JJ
May 30, 2008 2:38 PM | Link to this
I remember the 93 blizzard. My daughter was visiting my parents the night it hit. I couldn’t get to her for 2 days……
The power was out in part of my apartment complex. I had a friend who lived in the other part of the complex, and she had power. We partied at her house for two straight days.
The best one was Snow-Jam ‘82. This city closed up for 4 days. I worked at Piedmont and Peachtree, and it took us 4 hours to get home to Stone Mountain. I was fairly shocked, as I just moved here from Colorado. “Ya call that snow?”
By Jeff
May 30, 2008 4:18 PM | Link to this
Anyone remember some snow storm in January 1983??
I was kinda too young to remember it, seeing as how I was just being born right in the middle of it and all…
How did it compare to ‘93??