Traffic. It's as Atlanta as Coca-Cola, Outkast and baseball teams fleeing to the suburbs combined, and it routinely ruins your life — or your commute, at least.
And while all ATLiens are keenly aware of traffic's existence, it's safe to bet they are also curious about where the logjams happen most often — and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via data from the Atlanta Regional Commission) is here to please.
And depress, because we've got a ranking of metro Atlanta's 10 most consistently terrible traffic hotspots in the month of September.
To compile this data, the ARC charted the average duration, average length and frequency of bottlenecks — defined in a pretty graphic below — at key metro Atlanta locations. It then multiplied all those numbers together to come up with an "impact factor." Which is really just a misery factor, if we're being honest.
It's important to note that "duration" refers to how long a bottleneck was classified a bottleneck, not how long it took drivers to pass through — but don't worry.
There's plenty of pain to go around.
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10. I-285 east at I-85/Exit 33: Leaving the Perimeter at Spaghetti Junction, guys? Really? You know better than this.
Average duration: 2 hours, 53 minutes
Average length: 5 miles
Occurrences: 71
9. I-85 south at I-285/Exit 95: And getting on to the Perimeter at Spaghetti Junction? Even more of a noob maneuver, noob.
Average duration: 2 hours, 27 minutes
Average length: 6.6 miles
Occurrences: 67
8. I-85/I-75 north at Exit 251: The Connector? The Connector? Hahahaha.
Average duration: 3 hours, 52 minutes
Average length: 4.2 miles
Occurrences: 70
7. I-85 south at I-75/I-85, Exit 85: See above, genius.
Average duration: 2 hours, 38 minutes
Average length: 3.6 miles
Occurrences: 130
6. I-75 south at Windy Hill Road/Exit 260: Cobb County stand up! Er, actually, sit down. In your car. For a long time. Because traffic.
Average duration: 2 hours, 4 minutes
Average length: 5.9 miles
Occurrences: 108
5. I-285 south at I-20: With apologies to Tupac Shakur: The westside is decidedly not the best side.
Average duration: 2 hours, 44 minutes
Average length: 6.2 miles
Occurrences: 89
4. I-285 north at Chamblee-Tucker Road: Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross. Gross.
Average duration: 1 hour, 49 minutes
Average length: 8.1 miles
Occurrences: 108
3. I-285 west at I-75/Exit 20: Good thing they're not, like, building a baseball stadium here or anything.
Average duration: 2 hours, 42 minutes
Average length: 5.7 miles
Occurrences: 109
2. I-75 north at Chastain Road/Exit 271: Nah, playa. Just nah.
Average duration: 2 hours, 18 minutes
Average length: 9.1 miles
Occurrences: 84
1. I-85/I-75 south at I-20/Exit 247: WHAT DID I TELL YOU ABOUT THE GOD FORSAKEN CONNECTOR? What did I tell you? Five hours and 10 minutes? You see that?! What's wrong with you people? Have you no pride? Have you no shame??
Average duration: 5 hours, 10 minutes
Average length: 3.6 miles
Occurrences: 119
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