Today marks the culmination of four-and-a-half years of construction for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta’s new Arthur M. Blank Hospital and support buildings at North Druid Hills and I-85 in Brookhaven. An armada of employees and equipment is scheduled to transfer pediatric patients between the current Egleston at Emory location and the new, sprawling campus. This effort requires incredible logistics, intermittent traffic interruptions, and massive cooperation from first responders and citizens along the corridor.
The Children’s Egleston campus sits on Clifton Road, across from Emory University Hospital. Roads here are narrow and crowded and the Children’s team has spent months planning this transfer with authorities.
“Children’s has been coordinating with more than 15 state and local agencies,” Linda Matzigkeit, the hospital’s chief administrative officer told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution via email. The police departments from Emory University, Brookhaven, Sandy Springs and DeKalb County, along with the Georgia State Patrol, are assisting in this massive transfer.
Starting at 7:30 a.m. today and running approximately 12 hours, a group of 65 ambulances are scheduled to move the hospital’s patients. The transports will depart roughly every five minutes, Matzigkeit said. “There will be no road closures,” she said. Various police departments, instead, will “assist with traffic control that day to ensure ambulances can travel throughout intersections without interruption,” she said.
Roads will stay open, but police will regularly stop traffic at intersections along the route. Drivers with business or errands along the Egleston-Arthur M. Blank route will need to plan extra time along Clifton Road, North Decatur Road, Clairmont Road, and North Druid Hills Road.
“Businesses, churches and the community around the North Druid Hills area have been extremely accommodating and helpful as Children’s prepares for move day,” Matzigkeit said. “Many local churches around Clairmont Road agreed to host virtual services to limit the number of cars on the road that morning.”
Matzigkeit said that, weather permitting, the Children’s medical helicopters will also give lifts in the process. Medical flights are more cumbersome, in part because there’s a more intricate process for hooking and unhooking patients from medical equipment.
Children’s will also ferry some patients between their Scottish Rite Hospital campus in Sandy Springs to the new Blank hospital. Scottish Rite will remain open, but the 30 or so AFLAC Cancer and Blood Disorders Center patients there will move in with the others at the Arthur M. Blank Hospital.
The transfers will make for extra emergency vehicle traffic on Johnson Ferry Road — which Sandy Springs commuters are used to in the “Pill Hill” area where Scottish Rite, Northside Hospital, and Emory Saint Joseph’s Hospital all stand.
The route the Children’s contingency from Sandy Springs will take will likely also involve the Glenridge Connector, GA-400, and I-85, before landing at the North Druid Hills Road site. While roads will not be fully closed for this 12-hour stretch, people are definitely encouraged to avoid unnecessary travel on them.
Making the movements smooth for all involved takes a village. The hospital employees and various police are working together. Churches are shifting locations or moving virtual for a day. And the rest of us drivers can endeavor to stay off these roads, as we can help it.
If we do have to drive, we need to remember to yield to ambulances and other rescue vehicles with their lights on. We should stay out of their lanes on GA-400 and I-85 and smoothly pull over if they are trying to navigate past us at a higher speed on surface streets.
“Move Day” today will be good practice for how all drivers should behave around rescue vehicles. Lives depend on that cooperation.
Doug Turnbull has covered Atlanta traffic for over 20 years. Contact him at fireballturnbull@gmail.com.
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