Atlanta’s transportation woes stretch far and wide. Many major plans to relieve our region’s world infamous gridlock cost billions of dollars and involve far out ideas like tunnels, double-decker freeways, and mass transit rail service 50 miles in all directions. Executing these solutions takes years of planning, compromise, lobbying, funding, and building. But Atlanta seems to constantly spin its tires when trying to gain traction on this gridlock problem. Before the metro area can execute on a macro level, it needs to address micro details. One major transportation annoyance that fits this bill is syncing and swiftly fixing Atlanta’s traffic lights.
Syncing traffic lights is complicated. Engineers have to study a particular corridor and then determine when each light has to turn. Sizes of adjoining streets — well, the traffic volume on them — determines when the lights change. And when lights on a road get synced, there is a ripple effect on those surrounding roads, hence the complication. So timing the lights involves more than visual common sense and testimony and often costs thousands of dollars.
Metro Atlanta has got to do a better job of this. For example, I sometimes commute before 4 a.m. to work morning drive in the WSB 24-Hour Traffic Center and sit through two absolutely ridiculous lights. One is the set of lights on Shallowford Road at I-85. As soon as the light turns green at the northbound interchange, the southbound light turns red. That doesn’t even make sense during rush hour, much less when there are more streetlights than cars on the road.
Then when I get into Midtown, I sit for an extremely long time at the Peachtree Circle light at Peachtree Street, right where the Buford-Spring Connector ends. It stays red for a couple of minutes, even when there are zero cars in either direction on Peachtree St. That timing may make sense in daylight hours, but in the wee hours of the morning it’s dumbfounding.
Fixing these problems is but a paper cut compared to the region’s transportation issues, but syncing lights is a start. In fact, it’s a foundation.
Another glaring sore on the Atlanta traffic scape is how long lights stay hanging in disrepair. When left unsolved, delays and crashes ensue. Sometimes, police are even lax in choosing to direct the traffic before the repairs.
The I-85/southbound traffic light ramping to Highway 138 in Union City is a big example of this from the past week. The light was grossly mistimed, allowing very few vehicles from the afternoon rush hour direction of I-85 onto Hwy. 138 during each cycle. This jammed I-85/SB back to I-285 and then I-285/westbound back into the Airport Tunnel. Police were not there to direct traffic either. The state DOT got wind of this the first day and alerted someone in the Fulton County government. The light stayed mistimed into Tuesday evening. And it was still that way on Wednesday afternoon and caused even bigger delays. How does this go unattended for so long? Is Atlanta simply that jaded about trying to fix bad traffic? This is unacceptable.
Atlanta area governments need to pay our transportation problems more than just lip service. Starting with the details like traffic lights is key.
About the Author
The Latest
Featured
