The mention of the term “multiple choice” might give any current or former student hives: “Dear Lord, please do not make me take the SATs again.”
The No. 2 pencils can stay in the backpacks. Or rather, the center consoles.
Last Wednesday’s PM drive could have taught many drivers a plethora of lessons, given the amount of problems, the gravity of the lives changed, and the intensity of the delays.
One such moral from these melees is that Atlanta needs more ways around town. This is not a revolutionary insight, as the majority of people I talk to say they wish MARTA was more expansive. Other metro areas have varying amounts of mass transit routes, and people often point to Chicago and New York, whose extensive networks keep a lot of commuters out of cars.
Atlanta just doesn’t have that.
The afternoon traffic trouble spots on October 18th were numerous and widespread, but two lowlights that caused the most unusual jams were on busy I-285.
At approximately 2:30 p.m., a truck with a tall load appeared to have clipped the overhead sign on I-285/southbound (Outer Loop) just north of Highway 166 (Exit 5). A green, rectangular piece hung awry, and GDOT HERO units had to block two right lanes for nearly three hours to protect underpassing drivers.
Blocking half of I-285 for more than half of rush hour absolutely shellacked the drive all the way back to Sandy Springs, which sent droves of drivers down I-75/southbound into Downtown Atlanta.
At about 4:20 p.m., a terrible, concussive crash in Spaghetti Junction blocked almost all of I-285/eastbound (Inner Loop) just west of the I-85 ramps (Exit 33). The crash scene — a flipped-over SUV, a big rig, another SUV hard into the wall, and a couple of other cars — blocked all but the right shoulder for hours. Traffic was basically stopped all the way back to Roswell Road (Exit 25).
Like the other Perimeter problem, the WSB Traffic RED ALERT in DeKalb County prompted hundreds of motorists to take I-75/southbound and GA-400/southbound inside I-285 to pick up I-85/northbound as an alternate.
So I-75, GA-400, and I-85 were skunked going ITP. Then I-75 saw problems in lanes in both directions at Moores Mill (Exit 254), and I-85/northbound saw a rollover crash in the 6 p.m. hour just north of 17th Street (Exit 84), leaving Midtown.
The I-85/northbound rollover was just after where extra I-75/southbound traffic was merging in, seeking reprieve from the Spaghetti Junction mess.
MARTA or various regional busing services would not keep drivers from sitting in those backups last Wednesday. MARTA rail is not in enough areas, and buses sit in the same traffic as cars.
Atlanta needs more options, if driving options A, B, and maybe C dissolve. Any commuter in the western half of metro Atlanta who had to catch a flight had no other way to the World’s Busiest Airport but on wheels.
Drivers in the eastern half of the metro who live too far from the MARTA lines would have lost their driving route with one of the World’s Busiest Freight Bottlenecks (Spaghetti Junction) all but shut.
Yeah, that freight was late, too.
The idea of multimodal transportation usually first brings the idea of the expansion of mass transit. As we have covered, Atlanta needs much more of that. But the cost of heavy rail is too high to rapidly expand it any time soon. MARTA is working on Bus Rapid Transit — where buses travel largely in their own lanes — on multiple corridors. But those are not pervasive in this Atlanta transportation multiplex.
On the local level, cities are getting their acts together by expanding bike lanes, multi-use trails, and by making their downtown areas more pedestrian-friendly. But someone who is traveling 20 miles home from work or has other business across town is not going to walk or bike there.
Carpooling at least decreases the automobile footprint on the roads and frees up several other people from having to drive, giving them time to read, work, or socialize. But they still would have had a horribly slow commute last Hump Day.
Riding a regional bus in from the suburbs offers the same perks to many more people at once. But, again, they would have been late for dinner last week.
Another alternative mode is one that many adapted during COVID is maybe the cheapest and most profound: remote working. Decreasing or eliminating the trips into the office is a great option that certain industries can implement quickly to reduce the pain for their drivers — and others — nearly immediately. With the pandemic emergency over, increasing numbers of companies are encouraging employees to return to mostly in-office hours.
In-person time with coworkers and bosses is invaluable, no doubt. But continuing to allow some version of flexible scheduling and teleworking, even post-COVID, is a key way to take a bit of pressure off of the roads and to add value to employees’ lives.
There is no surefire way to avoid transportation delays, when two portions of I-285 are nearly shut down for hours. And people who had already chosen to drive to work that day were probably not going to take the train home. But if more commuters were out of their cars to begin with, then those people would have potentially had less friction on the way home.
Atlanta drivers should be pro-choice about their commutes. If driving is the only daily option for the vast majority, any fissure in that continuum can have a damning ripple effect.
Doug Turnbull, the PM drive Skycopter anchor for Triple Team Traffic on 95.5 WSB, is the Gridlock Guy. Download the Triple Team Traffic Alerts App to hear reports from the WSB Traffic Team automatically when you drive near trouble spots. Contact him at Doug.Turnbull@cmg.com.
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