An Atlanta Braves executive expressed confidence that the plan put together to manage traffic to and from the new SunTrust Park stadium will work well.
Mike Plant, president of development, lauded the Atlanta Braves' traffic management plan as "very effective." He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the plan will be revealed in phases leading up the the first pitch in April. Plant made the comments Thursday during the forum Transit Talk: Cobb, hosted by the advocacy group Advance Atlanta at the Braves new office overlooking SunTrust Park.
“I’m very confident that this is going to work really well,” Plant said.
“You don’t want to talk to somebody about a movie premiere eight months in advance,” Plant said. “That’s why the phases (include) more and more details that become more and more relevant and get a lot more attention at the time you’re going to use them.”
The Braves unveiled the first part of their traffic plan in August. It includes a later start time of 7:30 p.m. The second phase is scheduled to be made public before the end of the year, and the third and final phase is expected to roll out in the first quarter of 2017.
Plant acknowledged that many are nervous about how traffic will be handled with the addition to the stadium to an already busy corridor.
The potential impact of the stadium seemed to be on the minds of the forum’s organizers, who said the event’s location was no accident.
“We purposely chose to be here on a Thursday night during rush hour to make a point,” Advance Atlanta’s vice president Danielle Elkins told the crowd, eliciting chuckles. “It’s difficult to get here. It’s a challenge, and it’s something that needs to be talked about.”
Speakers included Cobb Commission Chairman Tim Lee, who talked about the need to convince voters that spending money on transit infrastructure is a solid investment.
“I’m a champion of transit expansion,” Lee said, recalling his support for a study of a bus rapid transit system in Cobb that appears to have stalled. “I learned the hard way that it’s not up to me. … This is a bottom-up discussion.”
Lee said the MARTA expansion proposal on the ballot November 8, if it were to pass, would be a “huge step forward.”
Others also spoke about the need for Cobb to embrace transit expansion in order to lure large corporations to the county.
“I’m glad to know there is a group interested” in transit, said Linda Bell, a Cobb resident and environmentalist who attended the forum. “I didn’t really get anything I could sink my teeth into in terms of ‘So, what do we do, where are we going?’”
Anna Nord, a master’s student studying engineering and planning at Georgia Tech, said she was encouraged to see there was an appetite for expanding transit options in metro Atlanta, but still had questions about the Braves traffic.
“I thought they were detailed and at the same time left a lot hidden,” Nord said of the presentations from Braves representatives. “I would be interested in seeing more of how people will get to the Braves.”
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