AJC > Sandy Springs > Blog > Archives > 2008 > June > 09 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USSummer 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?
Permalink | Comments (4) | Post your comment | Categories: Jim Osterman
Comments
By Steve
June 10, 2008 2:34 PM | Link to this
The police in Doraville seem to go out of their way to make traffic even worse. Why stop drivers for talking on their cellphones? It’s not illegal in Georgia yet the traffic stops were being made in Doraville for that yesterday.
Doraville has long been known as the worst of the “traps” along Buford Highway but this is a new low for them.
By Bubba Bluffton
June 15, 2008 12:23 AM | Link to this
Hey, Steve. Sorry about your ADD acting up again. The topic is about the upcoming problems facing the residents of Sandy Springs and others who use the Abernathy Road area to travel, not the Doraville Police Department. So while we are off topic, hang up and drive, you self-indulgent, overly important, elitist whiner. Driving while using a cellphone without a handsfree device SHOULD be illegal in Georgia because you and thousands of others are too consumed with your self-righteous entitlement mentality. Now to combine the two topics, any area suffering from congestion due to road construction or any other community improvement is bad enough, especially when half of Cobb County travels the route to reach Georgia 400. Add to that those who refuse to signal lane changes, those who are lost or simply bewildered, elderly, young, alien and new residents attempting to find their individual ways to work, school or shopping. Then toss in the phone snobs who chatter away while multi-tasking and Dante’s Inferno will look like a weenie roast. Doraville has been a backwater leech on Atlanta for years and you know it. So take your Blackberry, stick in your ear, stop whining and stay the heck away from those of us who will be attempting to SAFELY negotiate the Roswell-Abernathy-Johnsons Ferry-400 universe and shut the hell up. Go live in Norcross, you poser.
By Tom Osterman (yep)
June 17, 2008 8:43 PM | Link to this
Cheap or green? Take this simple test:
Did you decide to buy a Toyota Prius to reduce emissions and conserve oil? Then you’re GREEN
Did you decide NOT to buy a Toyota Prius, as opposed to, say, a Corolla, because it would cost more than you would save at the pump? Then you’re CHEAP (Though the way gas prices are going, this may change.)
If you scored CHEAP, don’t feel bad. You’re just one of millions who figured out long ago that conserving electricity, gasoline and water also conserves that valuable GREEN money. Good work! (Cheapskate!)
By christy
June 29, 2008 8:23 AM | Link to this
Forget the traffic that will take place on Abernathy..please report and make the CofSS embarrassed as to how Abernathy looks! How long does it take to knock down houses? Of course, we could let them burn like one did this week but unfortunately the fire dept. put it out! My co-workers who live in Cobb County just laugh at me for living in a City that has had abandoned homes for over a year! My children asked if they were “crack” homes? What can you answer them when anything could be happening in those “homes”. Come on…write about it, maybe every week until they come down…it is disgusting that a City wanted to show up Fulton County has allowed this to take place! Thanks for listening…?