Expect Labor Day weekend traffic mess on connector

Labor Day is taking no holiday on the Downtown Connector this weekend.

On the bright side, the closure of huge chunks of I-75/I-85 for state Department of Transportation projects may come to an end for the year, if work goes well this week.

Unfortunately, getting to that point will be a mess. A mess held on a big travel weekend starting this Friday, with major events scheduled for downtown Atlanta to bring tens of thousands of tourists. All while Atlanta is on national television.

The Clemson-Alabama kickoff game is slated for the Georgia Dome and will be featured on ESPN’s College GameDay.

Atlanta Black Gay Pride, which bills itself as the world’s largest African-American gay pride celebration, is to be held in Midtown and expects 75,000 attendees, according to organizers.

Dragon Con, the science fiction convention, may bring 30,000 Star Trek-costumed, comic book loving fans to at least four downtown Atlanta hotels.

“The Goodyear blimp will provide great views of lane closings and miles of cars going no where,” said Brian Moran, vice president of the local chamber of Alabama alumni, in an e-mail. Billy Gordon, security manager for the Georgia Dome, said the dome is expecting a sellout crowd of more than 70,000.

On a map, the Downtown Connector looks like the most logical way to get to all three. This weekend, said DOT spokeswoman Crystal Paulk-Buchanan, it isn’t.

“We’re anticipating it to be extremely congested,” said Paulk-Buchanan. DOT suggests people take the MARTA train.

For roads, Paulk-Buchanan recommended taking I-285 to get around Atlanta. To get to downtown events, she said try I-285 to I-20, and coming downtown via I-20.

The northbound lanes shouldn’t be affected much, with just an HOV lane closed so trucks can get in and out of the 14th Street Bridge area. But southbound is another story.

At the Brookwood merge, I-75 is slated to be reduced to one lane.

I-85 should be narrowed to two, starting at Ga. 400.

The lanes re-open south of 10th Street.

“There’s no good way of doing this,” said Mickey McGee, DOT’s district construction engineer over Atlanta. McGee said that the contractor and DOT officials had studied what had to be done and determined that by working through the weekend, they could spare Atlantans worse traffic over a much longer period of time.

If rains are too heavy, none of it will happen on the long weekend. But that’s not an outcome drivers should hope for, Paulk-Buchanan said. Connector lane closures are limited to nights and weekends, and a three-day weekend allows crews to get a lot more work done.

Every time they start and stop the job, Paulk-Buchanan said, the crews have go through a time-consuming process of taking out temporary paving they had put in for drivers to use the road during the week, then at the end of the work spurt putting the temporary paving back in.

If the work gets rained out this holiday weekend, that work may have to be spread out over as many as six weekends.

“It’s all about the rain,” she said.

But if it does go well, big lane closures for the 14th Street Bridge project may be done for the year. That project continues again next year, but the Connector re-paving doesn’t.

For the re-paving, the light at the end of the tunnel is getting brighter, and it doesn’t seem to be another train headed at us. DOT crews have finished the major multiple lane closures for the re-paving, and now are doing smaller closures for painting stripes on the road.

For this weekend, “The message is, plan ahead,” said McGee. And if you’re determined to try the southbound Connector anyway, “be aware of what you may be getting into.”