Drivers on Ga. 400 are about to get a desperately needed new travel lane — but it could come with a price:
Safety.
A new project, announced by Gov. Nathan Deal in his State of the State address this week, plans to convert the highway’s shoulder into a new travel lane between Holcomb Bridge Road and the North Springs MARTA station.
The pilot project breaks a new path for easing congestion on Georgia’s highways. But it means the loss of a speedy bypass route for ambulances, police cars and firetrucks that drive on the wide right shoulder when the road is congested.
Emergency services operators in the area expressed alarm.
“It’s the obvious,” said Sandy Springs Police Chief Terry Sult, talking about the ability to quickly respond to calls or safely patrolling Ga. 400. “Where do you stop a car if everybody’s using that lane?”
“My immediate thought is, anything we do that’s going to eliminate a shoulder is going to be dangerous,” said Reg James, division general manager for the Rural/Metro ambulance company, which responds to about 3,000 emergencies a month in north Fulton County.
And Eddie White, a board member of the Georgia State Firefighters Association who worked in eastern metro Atlanta, called the proposal “absolutely horrific.”
If the project works, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation, the state would move to spread such lanes elsewhere in the region. It has drawn up a list of candidates, including I-85 in northern Gwinnett County, according to a Georgia DOT official.
If it doesn’t work on Ga. 400, the state would reassess the idea.
“The governor asked us what we could do quickly and efficiently and relatively inexpensively, given our budget situation,” to address traffic, said Georgia DOT spokesman David Spear. “And this is one of the things we’ve identified.”
Spear said the plan isn’t ideal, and he acknowledged “there is some cost associated with it, and it’s ... emergency vehicle movements, which are few and far between but critical when they need to occur.”
Emergency vehicles, he said, might be able to use the center median shoulder, but Sult said that center median isn’t big enough for officers to safely make traffic stops.
In that stretch of Ga. 400, by the right shoulder, there are sometimes grassy slopes where someone might be able to pull off, but in some instances, that space is blocked by bridge supports, a steep drop-off, or some sort of wall.
Many of the details, such as the hours the lane would open and whether to build special pull-off spots, have not been worked out. The project schedule is not set yet, but DOT hopes to have it finished this year, Spear said.
A spokeswoman for Deal, Stephanie Mayfield, echoed that it was a trial, and she wrote in an e-mail that the governor’s “utmost concern” was public safety.
“If emergency vehicles need the shoulder, they will take it and do their business while all traffic returns to regular lanes,” she wrote.
The difficult choice puts Deal’s initial stamp on transportation planning, along with his opposition to contracting with private companies for a major toll road project and his support for a referendum campaign already under way.
It also underscores that Georgia no longer has the kind of money it takes to sufficiently widen urban highways in the traditional sense.
Those highways — including Ga. 400 — could see more changes if voters in 10 metro counties approve a 1 percent sales tax this summer to fund $6.14 billion in projects. The project list includes a new interchange at I-285 and Ga. 400 that could dramatically help commuters.
Idea studied 6 years ago
The idea of using the shoulder to alleviate congestion has been talked about in Georgia for years, but Deal is the first leader to put it into action.
The DOT studied the idea six years ago, but Spear said the agency could not locate a report or any other written analysis that would have looked at areas such as safety and the benefits to commuters.
And Ga. 400 rush-hour drivers are intimately familiar with traffic jams. An adjacent part of Ga. 400 was recently ranked the nation’s most unreliable commute, veering between passable and stop-and-go. The road serves Perimeter businesses, one of the Southeast’s largest employment centers. And traffic congestion could stand in the way of attracting jobs to the region.
But some commuters thought the congestion wouldn’t lessen that much.
“I appreciate them trying to work something out,” said Brian McElroy, a regional sales manager from Milton who drives Ga. 400 in rush hour a couple of times a week. However, he said, “I think you need to have the shoulder for emergencies.”
Kathy Raible, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention contractor who lives in Peachtree Corners, agreed: “It might be a little quicker. It wouldn’t be worth my safety.”
But the cost savings compared to building a new lane are clear, Spear said. Building a new lane could cost $3 million a mile — $6 million per mile if done in both directions like the shoulder project — whereas the entire 5.5-mile shoulder project (11 miles of work) should cost perhaps $1 million, Spear said.
That’s partly because expensive work has already been done, strengthening the shoulders so that emergency vehicles can use them as a regular lane, as well as transit buses when congestion reaches 35 mph. MARTA says it runs three routes in that corridor and has not assessed this plan’s impact.
The project’s true costs won’t be known until bids come in.
Farther north on Ga. 400 — from McFarland Road to Holcomb Bridge Road — the DOT has another idea: Converting dedicated entrance and exit lanes to travel lanes for southbound drivers.
That would only cost “maybe tens of thousands” of dollars, Spear said.
Last, the DOT would also make improvements to a more complicated portion of the road — from Holcomb Bridge Road to the Chattahoochee River.
A handful of cities across the United States have paved the way for using road shoulders.
On U.S. 2 near Everett, Wash., the shoulder lane works well, said Mark Leth, region traffic engineer for Washington DOT. However, he said, the road was not very congested to begin with; the project eliminated a traffic pinch point and eased congestion on an adjoining interstate.
---------------------------
More room for commuters
A pilot project plans to create more lanes for rush-hour traffic by using shoulders and auxiliary lanes on Ga. 400. The project on a stretch north of I-285 would be in three phases.
- Phase 1: McFarland Road to Holcomb Bridge Road. Southbound only. Exit/entrance lanes would be joined into one travel lane.
- Phase 2: Holcomb Bridge Road to North Springs MARTA station. Both northbound and southbound. Right-hand shoulders would be regular lanes during rush hour.
- Phase 3: Holcomb Bridge Road to Chattahoochee River. Final design not determined.
Source: DOT
About the Author
