Imagine humming along I-285 and then grinding to a sudden halt. The slow zone comes out of thin air and lasts…and lasts…and lasts. Barely creeping along, vehicles finally reach the front of the slow zone and start to move at a better pace. What caused it? Where’s the carnage? Some cones are set up for a mile or so in one or two lanes and hardly anyone is even working in them.
This story repeats itself multiple times an evening in the oft-maligned Transform 285/400 and it has reached a ridiculous point.
We talked last week about the trickiness of the latest ramp openings off of I-285/westbound (Outer Loop) onto GA-400 (Exit 27). Traffic pacing, where crews or responders stop or lead all lanes of traffic very slowly, often precedes the opening of a new road or ramp. A road crew may pace traffic to move a piece of big equipment into place and police will do this as they begin to open a road that has been closed for a long time after a crash.
But this safety tactic has reached a new extreme in Atlanta’s biggest work zone. Road crews regularly take 20, 30, or 40 minutes to hold and creep all lanes of stretches I-285 and GA-400 just to set up normal lane closures. The lane closures alone do not always cause big jams, but the pacing does, as motorists see these giant backups materialize out of thin air.
The construction team, in conjunction with either Sandy Springs or Dunwoody PD, then rinses and repeats when they begin to pull the cones ahead of morning rush hour. Once again, with no warning, the unlucky drivers get stuck in another grueling standstill.
Pacing traffic so often and so painstakingly long is not common. Other Metro Atlanta work zones usually materialize quickly and with little aplomb. Even if their existence causes delays, their setups don’t require such large interruptions.
There may be extenuating reasons that prompt North Perimeter Contractors (NPC) to pace traffic so often. But they seem to be overstepping their bounds.
The contract with the state allows NPC to pace traffic for only 10 minutes at a time, GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale told the AJC and 95.5 WSB. But, “allowing traffic to clear does not mean the end of those in the cue will only be delayed for 10 minutes. The slowed traffic may take longer to clear, so, being in slow moving traffic would probably exceed the initial pace,” Dale explained. She also said that traffic held up on the on-ramps is not released until the pacing in the thru lanes passes the ramps, meaning ramps get held longer.
Much like the flooding we discussed a month ago, NPC’s state contract has repercussions for going past the amount or endurance of allowed pacing. These stipulations, however, are not curbing NPC’s maneuvers.
Last Monday night, my wife Momo and I were driving home from the Atlanta Braves’ 13-1 rout of the rival New York Mets. At almost the exact moment as the game adjourned, the road crew essentially shut down I-285/eastbound (Inner Loop) between Riverside Drive (Exit 24) and Roswell Road (Exit 25) for close to a half hour. They were pacing traffic not to put a bridge beam in place but only to activate a double-right lane closure.
As soon as the road crew released traffic, another crew shut it down again right at GA-400 (Exit 27) and paced it for another half-hour or so to set up a measly left lane closure on I-285/eastbound between Ashford Dunwoody Road (Exit 29) and Chamblee Dunwoody Road (Exit 30).
So, instead of working in unison, the two parts of the road crew shut down I-285 in the direction of traffic leaving Truist Park in back-to-back stints and caused close to a one-hour hold up. Absurd.
A heavy rain shower after 8 p.m. likely delayed the start of the night’s heavy work, which usually gets set up around 9 p.m. Normally, this road work would have already been in place before the game’s end. But the game was also delayed and it all came together to make a big traffic mess.
I have written before about the complete lack of awareness in this same project. NPC chose to pace traffic on I-285/eastbound just after the 2021 Miracle Atlanta Braves clinched the National League Division Series at Truist Park. Many exuberant fans had to wait in a similar delay as my wife and I did. Buzz kill? Yes. But even worse is the fact that this is awful planning.
Would NPC trying to plan the pacing - not the single-lane closures - but the grueling half-hour shutdowns around when Braves games end be too much to ask? Would NPC sticking to a consistent time for pacing each night and early morning be possible?
That inconsistency might be the worst part. There is no guarantee that a night’s work will start right at 9 p.m. or end right at 5 a.m. The elongated pacing can drop at any moment.
Other, sometimes smaller closures come with far more warning. Road race organizers are required to get permits and alert the public of street closures. The annual GA-400 bike tour, which shuts down a stretch of GA-400 on a Sunday morning for riders, gives plenty of notice. Power companies that require full freeway closures for line maintenance give alerts days before. Local and county DOTs frequently alert motorists of small street closures.
While GDOT does a good job of alerting motorists of nightly and weekly lane closures, NPCs indiscriminate traffic pacing drops out of the ether.
This then begs one final question: does NPC really need to block entire freeways for this long to stage routine lane closures? This excessive spread and extensive inconvenience in a metro area whose biggest industry is transportation is akin to police taking hours to investigate crashes and shutting down major freeways during rush hours.
Some of the pain drivers face behind these closures is self-inflicted. The increase in, well, bad driving can arguably warrant the extra caution and breadth of closures around both road work and investigations.
Whether road crews or responders are the culprit, the idea of this extended and constant traffic pacing has to be better examined. Traffic is bad enough without unforced errors like routinely shutting interstates nightly. Demanding extra resources to pace the traffic and heavily inconveniencing thousands of drivers each time seems archaic at best and damaging at worst.
Transform 285/400 is supposed to make traffic move better long term but is doing so at too much of a cost short term. There are still at least several months left in this mammoth project to start doing that part right.
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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