Optimize transit grid for efficiency

By Rusty Paul

The Georgia Legislature has now given the state a blueprint for a 21st century transportation program.

On paper, it’s a superb plan that acknowledges that different regions of Georgia face different transportation challenges.

By allowing regional flexibility, it contains the seeds for real progress, particularly when it comes to metro Atlanta solutions.

However, the current focus on “projects,” which are important, may overlook the greatest opportunity to optimize mobility in metropolitan communities.

As regional leaders consider significant new projects, with all the political obstacles involved in retrofitting transportation solutions on mature communities, they must also look at squeezing optimum efficiency from the system that exists.

A major challenge to metropolitan mobility is the current road network’s abject inefficiency.

Any observant driver using the region’s arterials and surface streets quickly realizes that mistimed traffic signals and malfunctioning intersections are a major problem with traffic movement.

If we invest all the resources into new construction without addressing traffic management, we simply move more people more quickly into the existing bottlenecks.

We discovered this during the early transition to the city of Sandy Springs. We even developed a mailer during the incorporation referendum with the headline, “Why the 168 neighbors that don’t talk to each other are important to you!”

The piece highlighted the fact that the community’s 168 traffic lights were not synchronized and that by randomly cycling, as they were, they actually hindered — not helped — traffic flow.

After incorporation, we found signals were incapable of proper synchronization because they were worn out or relied on older technology.

Roswell Road epitomized the problem. Since incorporation, Sandy Springs, with the Georgia Department of Transportation’s very active help and resources, replaced many traffic controls.

Using existing and expanded fiber optic networks, Sandy Springs, again with GDOT’s help, installed cameras at key points along Roswell Road that feed into a traffic monitoring center.

Now, traffic managers monitor mobility along the road, altering signal timing to manage the flow in real time. Roswell Road still ain’t perfect, but its much, much better.

As a newly elected senator a decade ago, I approached the Fulton County engineers after a transportation forum with the question, “If you had a magic wand and could wave any projects into existence, which ones would you do?”

The reply was instructive. “You can’t build enough projects in this area to solve the problem.”

As more people come to this area and return to the region’s core, three things are imperative.

One, regional leaders must integrate the discrete transit programs operating across metro Atlanta into a unified, coordinated transit system that efficiently takes people where they need to go and includes a management structure that earns broad taxpayer confidence.

Two, they must be realistic in addressing the neighborhood politics of retrofitting large scale transportation projects into mature communities.

And three, unless they dedicate resources to optimizing the existing system, points one and two become pointless.

Rusty Paul is a former state senator and Sandy Springs City Council member. He heads the government affairs and public policy practice at the Atlanta law firm Arnall Golden Gregory LLP.