When Atlanta hosted the 1996 Olympics, cars weren't banned from the roads and industries weren't shut down, as the Chinese government is doing to clear the air for the Beijing Games.

But for 17 glorious days, the smog over metro Atlanta lifted anyway.

Tom Weyandt, who was working on transportation planning for the Paralympic Games at the time, watched the skyline dramatically change from his office in the old IBM Tower in Midtown.

"I remember this so clearly because before the games started, it was kind of hazy," Weyandt said. "You couldn't see Stone Mountain. And about a day or two into the games, it just cleared up. Stone Mountain stood out in a nice, neat line on the horizon."

Twenty-four hour traffic counts declined less than 3 percent during Atlanta's games. But peak traffic on weekday mornings, when smog-forming pollutants begin to build, fell 22.5 percent. An often quoted study published in 2001 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linked the traffic reduction to cleaner air and to 11 percent to 44 percent fewer hospital visits for children with asthma.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG) relied on the Olympic spirit to move businesses and individuals to change their schedules to avoid what many skeptics feared would be a traffic nightmare with 18 million spectators, commuters and party goers. Plus, Olympic spectators could ride MARTA free, which helped the transit system set records for passengers.

And while it was far from perfect, especially for those stuck on stalled trains and buses, the system seemed to work.

In Beijing, with the Opening Ceremony still 16 days away, news reports describe government-imposed controls to clear the heavy smog that blankets the city most days. Construction activities have been halted, some factories have been moved and others closed. Private cars in the city of 16 million people can only be driven every other day, depending on license plate numbers. Violators face a $14 per day fine.

Beijing has also staggered work hours and added buses and subway lines.

"In this country, we don't demand those kind of things," said Joel Stone, who directed transportation operations for ACOG and is now a consultant. "We asked people to stay home from their job, to telework or travel in non-peak periods and they really volunteered to do it."

Stone said a full-time crew that did nothing for 18 months but meet with businesses as small as five-person shops to talk about how to avoid Olympic traffic jams. Then the Atlanta media kicked in, regularly sending out messages on which areas to avoid and how to manage their commutes through the games.

Stone said reducing smog was never the primary motivation. "We just didn't have that level of smog problems" as Beijing.

The messages got through. Many metro Atlantans chose to leave town. Others stayed and rode MARTA for the first time or took vacation and worked as Olympic volunteers.

Lamar Birckbichler, an information technology analyst for the Social Security Administration, spent the first week of the Olympics working in Decatur instead of his downtown Atlanta office. When he realized traffic wasn't so bad, he started taking MARTA to get to work by 6 a.m., ahead of crowds.

Birckbichler said most people were motivated by self-preservation, much like when the occasional winter storm blows through.

"It was one of those rare times when everything worked and came together," he said. "The repaving of the Downtown Connector has been more challenging then what we went through those couple of weeks."