Some traffic trends go unexplained. There could be a string of wrong-way crashes or overturned big rigs in Metro Atlanta that may have nothing to do with each other. They are just strangely coincidental in happening in such a short time.
Others, such as the pattern of road-rage shootings and the closing of intersections by street racers, could be explained by sociological and psychological factors. In those cases, the pandemic-driven sense of angst and lawlessness are believed to have fed all sorts of bad behavior.
Still, other repeated traffic mishaps can be chalked to bad signage, planning, or road design.
A heavily traveled stretch of I-75 between Acworth and Kennesaw is seeing phenomena possibly influenced by all three phases.
From December into mid-January, crews have blocked a right lane in the midday hours of each weekday to remove trees. That single-lane closure routinely caused miles of delays, snarling freight and commuters alike. The delays were especially bad when the right-lane closure was northbound, meaning the slow traffic pushed back into Kennesaw.
As the crews were staying out into the beginning of PM drive, sometimes until 3:30 or 4 p.m., the backups easily stretched eight to ten miles back and never really recovered for the rest of the afternoon rush.
The consequences of a seemingly harmless midday, single-lane closure reverberated far past that. Put that in the poor planning bucket.
The incident count has also seemed to increase on this span between Wade Green Road (Exit 273) and Lake Allatoona, and the reasoning for that may be more nebulous.
A large number of problems on I-75 in this area involve tractor trailers. This is most likely simply due to the fact that freight is a huge presence all through the state. And as I-75 stretches to the far north or far south of the metro area, the freight percentage increases.
Of course, any incident involving a big rig is prone to causing a larger blockage and more numerous delays. But even small wrecks on the shoulders have seemed to throw I-75 in Cobb, Cherokee, and Bartow counties into a greater tizzy than some other places. Traffic in this area seems especially sensitive to any kind of hiccup.
But is there something at play daily on I-75 in Acworth that is making the traffic so bad?
“What I have seen in the morning is a great deal of impatience among the large volume of drivers from Paulding and Cobb Counties accessing I-75 from both Allatoona Gateway (formerly Glade Road) and Highway 92 on ramps,” daily Acworth commuter and 95.5 WSB Traffic Trooper Dene Sheheane said. He calls in his traffic info every weekday to the WSB 24-Hour Traffic Center.
“So you have two heavily used commuter on-ramps within a mile of each other and then everyone is fighting to merge into the far left lane to access the upcoming Express Lanes,” Sheheane observed.
So a flurry of drivers enter the freeway via the two exits below Lake Allatoona. They are fighting for position to enter the Express Lanes/Peach Pass Lanes, which begin to the left before Wade Green. But then the far right slow lane disappears before that same exit.
“You also have impatient drivers absolutely flying in the far right truck lane that appears at the Cherokee line but suddenly disappears before Wade Green Road. Mix all of that together and it’s a recipe that does not taste very good and results in regular problems,” Sheheane explained.
This jostling on I-75/southbound, combined with the estuary of large big rigs and small passenger cars, does create a toxic blend.
On a cold Wednesday morning nearly two weeks ago, the Peach Pass/Express Lanes did not open for AM drive. These reversible pay lanes begin just south of the aforementioned trouble zone.
The lack of these pay lanes for a day was a reminder to Cobb and Cherokee drivers of how much help the added capacity has been since the lanes opened in September of 2018. The jams on I-75/southbound and I-575/southbound were more painful than the bone-chilling cold.
With the coldest temperatures in more than a year chilling Atlanta, there was some speculation that the lanes did not open because of icing problems. That was not the case.
“We had hardware failures at two access points, Terrell Mill and Roswell Road. It took longer than anticipated to mobilize our maintenance crews and get the equipment repaired,” GDOT spokesperson Natalie Dale told the AJC and 95.5 WSB. “There were continued issues with a message sign at Terrell Mill once the other failures were addressed. We were not able to repair the hardware issues with the sign at Terrell Mill in time to complete a reversal for the AM peak.”
Because a reversal of lanes takes at least 45 minutes, the state chose to simply open the lanes in the northbound direction by 9:30 a.m. that day, hours ahead of the PM rush.
Dale said she is still checking with other officials on the timeline of the tree-removal project along I-75 and what exactly that project’s goal is. GDOT’s project page does not list an end date for this and only lists the project as maintenance — no specifics. The closures were not in place for the week of January 22nd, for some reason.
I-75 at the Cobb-Cherokee line is going through it these days. Some bad planning and coincidence, combined from some very bad driver behavior, creates the perfect storm of incidents and delays on this segment. Hopefully, the tree project wraps up soon and disappears as an ingredient in this awful recipe.
Either way, drivers should never move blindly on the Atlanta roads. They should always check conditions before they leave on 95.5 WSB and our Triple Team Traffic Alerts App. The cost of not planning a trip is too high.
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.
