The second completed ramp revamp in the Transform I-285/GA-400 project is set to open in time for Thanksgiving. GDOT crews are on track to open a new, longer GA-400/southbound ramp to Abernathy Road on Monday, November 23rd at 5 a.m. Weather delayed the scheduled opening by a week.
“All that changes with that is that you need to make that decision a little further [back],” GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale told the AJC and 95.5 WSB.
The new exit ramp to Abernathy Road in Sandy Springs will now begin just south of the North Springs MARTA Station overpass — about a half-mile north of where the Abernathy exit is now. Just as is the case with the new GA-400/southbound flyover ramp to I-285/eastbound, drivers will have to commit earlier to exiting at Abernathy. "Right after you pass the exit to the North Springs MARTA Station, you’ll want to get to the right, if you want to take the Abernathy exit,' Dale explained.
One reason the new Abernathy Road exit ramp will be longer is to allow for more traffic to queue up at the traffic light and not interrupt the GA-400/southbound travel lanes.
Architects and engineers designed the entire I-285/GA-400 interchange to handle the traffic volumes of the 1980s and 1990s, not the 21st century. So that has created bigger backups over the years and the friction that indecision and procrastination both cause.
“You have people who take this interchange every day - it’s part of their everyday routine and they still wait until the last minute to make decisions, whether that’s sort of wanting to jockey for that better spot in line or whether they’re not paying attention, maybe they’re on their phone, maybe they’re zoned out,” Dale offered. “What you have is so many problems long term with merging and weaving, which causes accidents, which cause secondary accidents, which cause backups.”
This new exit ramp to Abernathy Road will do the same as many features in this revamped interchange, Dale said. By forcing drivers to decide to exit earlier, the longer ramp will separate that slower, exiting traffic from the faster through traffic. That eliminates the last minute weaves and merges, thus decreasing the aforementioned crashes and delays.
The first new major ramp opening in the Transform I-285/GA-400 project a few weeks ago did not go smoothly for many motorists. Crews opened the brand new GA-400/southbound ramp to I-285/eastbound, which starts close to a half-mile before the older one, in the 5 a.m. hour on a Monday. Some drivers did not realize the change and missed the exit. GDOT assessed how that rollout went and felt they could have used more signage, spread the word a bit earlier, and shied away from debuting a new ramp early on the first day of the work week.
But, Dale said, they have still decided to open the new southbound exit to Abernathy early on a Monday for a shrewd reason. “The opening of this ramp requires some full closures and some detours surrounding full closures that need to be done over a two-day period. And so we have chosen to do that over the weekend, with the opening being on a Monday morning, rather than having that full detour and a closure on a Monday and Tuesday for a Wednesday opening.”
Not every ramp opening in this project is the same. Dale said they take each one on a case-by-case basis to determine the best rollout to motorists. GDOT does know that an early Monday commute change requires multi-faceted messaging. “We will work through y’all to get the message out. We will enhance signage out there to let people know it’s coming.” Dale said. “We will all have eyes on it Monday morning to see how it goes.”
The WSB Traffic Team will be all over this weekend closure and then the scheduled Monday morning opening on November 23rd. Be sure and tune in on 95.5 WSB, Channel 2 Action News, and our Triple Team Traffic Alerts App to get appraised of any difficulties or the lack thereof that day.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. He also hosts a traffic podcast with Smilin' Mark McKay on wsbradio.com. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com .
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