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Monday, June 9, 2008
Summer madness: A traffic nightmare looms
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Several years ago I had a friend coming in for the weekend. They were coming from the Chamblee area. That afternoon there had been an accident that shut down 400 North and all the neighborhood streets in Sandy Springs quickly filled to capacity.
This was in the days when not everyone had a mobile phone and my friend finally got as far as Sandy Springs Plaza and called from a pay phone to say that getting across Roswell Road was impossible. And they were right. Without the option of 400 everyone was using every surface street possible.
I bring this up because this summer work is going to begin that stretch of Abernathy Road that goes from Roswell Road to Johnson Ferry. Crews are going to double the lanes to four, as well as install a median and sidewalks. The city will follow afterwards and create a park.
But in the meantime let us all come to grips with the following - traffic in Sandy Springs in the morning and afternoon is going to have the potential to be a rolling 7th circle of hell.
And I’m not picking on the folks who will be doing the actual roadwork. You would have to pay me a boatload of money to put down hot asphalt in the summer. No, I’m talking about how us Sandy Springsteens are going to react.
I commute along Abernathy twice daily. Once the work begins in earnest and traffic has to be slowed or stopped, I’ll look for other routes. As will many of my fellow commuters. So we’re going to spill on to streets that other people commute on regularly. It doesn’t take a big IQ to see where this is going.
My question is, since we can see hell is coming, what can we do to turn down the temperature? More to the point, what are we willing to do?
Leave for work a little earlier? Carpool? Seek out telecommuting options? Try some deep breathing? Play some soothing music? Switch to decaf?
Or will we be our sweet selves and lean on our horns, bellow curse-soaked insults and flex that middle finger? I’d hope for the former but I ain’t betting against the latter.
Do we have it in us to pull together during as hot summer of commuting discontent?
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