The best Gridlock Guy columns often come from your insights, questions or concerns. Several tantalizing subjects recently fell in the hopper, so we are going to clear the board this week. As always, please reach out.
Shoulder width: It’s complicated
Reader Mark Whitaker reached out a few weeks ago after the piece on steering and clearing vehicles from traffic. Like many of us, Whitaker drives through interstate construction zones and sees how narrow emergency lanes can be. He wanted to know if there were strict rules on the dimensions of shoulders and if the state ignores them in the name of road expansion.
I reached out to GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale, who pointed me toward their guidelines — and with a proper emphasis on that last word. Guidelines are what they aim for, but are not hard rules.
Basically, according to the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials “Green Book,” permanent shoulder widths vary based on the amount of traffic, type of road and road speeds. For example, a neighborhood street often doesn’t have a shoulder at all.
Moreover, the permanent emergency lane dimensions do not apply to work zones. The state is justified in changing those widths for construction, because work zones are marked, and have reduced speed limits and police presence. Dale explained that the state also has to consider the environmental impact of expanding a shoulder in a work zone. But she said that GDOT never completely eliminates the shoulders in work zones, narrow as they may be.
All of that said, this is a reminder that work zones inherently see more crashes, move more slowly and have less space in which to clear these problems. So drive carefully.
Cheshire Bridge will again live up to its name
More than 11 months after fire damage required the demolition of the Cheshire Bridge Road span over the South Fork of Peachtree Creek, Atlanta’s DOT has finally announced a timeline for completion.
ATL DOT announced on July 8th that Cheshire’s bridge is set for an October 31, 2022 finish. C.W. Matthews, the same contractor that rebuilt the fire-ridden I-85 bridge south of GA-400 in 2017, is the company the city has hired for this job.
In comparing the two bridge outages, one has to ask: Why has the Cheshire Bridge rebuild taken so long?
Looking back at press releases during the last year, the City of Atlanta has taken months in each step of the process. The bridge wasn’t fully taken down until late in 2021. The contract bidding process moved at the speed of smell. Meanwhile, motorists and businesses in the area suffered.
The I-85 bridge rebuild five years ago was a masterclass in the public and private sector working hand-in-hand. With tens of thousands of motorists using that freeway span daily, GDOT incentivized C.W. Matthews by paying them for achieving benchmarks early. C.W. Matthews had also built the bridge decades before and still had the original blueprints. The company worked around the clock to fix the vital artery.
Cheshire Bridge, on the other hand, sat nearly forgotten in Northeast Atlanta — except by the people who depended on it. Several of them have reached out to the WSB Traffic Team, wondering about the lack of progress. But now, at least, there is light at the end of this year-long tunnel. Crews are currently preparing the foundation and footings. Let’s hope the city and C.W. Matthews hit their Halloween target.
Missing the point on pedestrian victims
Last week’s column on the tragic death of a refugee mother hit by a vehicle drew the ire of some readers. Several people wrote in upset that I didn’t know whether Sajida Hussaini crossed the street legally or safely. They also — erroneously — thought that I was assuming the driver in that situation was to blame for the tragedy.
Those are valid points and those details were not determined at the time of that writing.
Gwinnett PD told me Thursday that the investigation continues, but that multiple witnesses indicated Hussaini entered the roadway in front of traffic and did not yield. Georgia law requires pedestrians to yield to traffic when they cross the road and a crosswalk isn’t nearby.
But regardless of who was at fault in that particular instance, the point of highlighting it was to show that some people have no choice but to use a form of transportation that leaves them more vulnerable when anyone makes a mistake. Their lot in life, whether they made certain choices to end up there or not, has led them to use more laborious, more time-consuming, more dangerous ways to travel.
And, yes, some people just choose to walk.
Drivers are much more likely to survive their mistakes than are the non-vehicled people at the other end of them. Driving is a privilege and not a right. And it carries heavy responsibility.
Many motorists take the act so flippantly and so much for granted, that their maneuvers become reckless and dangerous. Hussaini’s death is another example that brings the disparity between many drivers and pedestrians to light, regardless of whether she crossed the street properly.
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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