New stadium should mean quicker trips for many Braves fans

Average daily traffic on future Braves stadium access routes

• Cobb Parkway (near Windy Hill Road) — 32,040
• Cobb Parkway (near Cumberland Boulevard) — 20,840
• Cumberland Parkway — 17,580
• I-285 (east of I-75 interchange) — 205,880
• I-285 (west of I-75 interchange) — 170,050
• I-75 (north of Delk Road) — 254,800
• I-75 (at Cobb/Fulton county line) — 176,160
• Powers Ferry Road (north of Delk Road) — 14,380
• Spring Hill Parkway — n/a
• Spring Road — 32,970
• Terrell Mill Road (south of Paper Mill Road) — 31,210
• Windy Hill Road (east of Cobb Parkway) 28,760
• Windy Hill Road (west of Cobb Parkway) 37,150
• Windy Ridge Parkway: n/a

* Source: Georgia’s State Traffic and Report Statistics (2012 Published Data)

Travel times to current and future Braves stadium sites

Starting point/ Travel time to Turner Field/ Travel time to new stadium

• Gwinnett County (Beaver Ruin Road)/ 40 min/ 32 min
• N. Fulton County (Holcomb Bridge Road)/ 1 hour 6 min/ 39 min
• Cobb County (I-75/575 interchange)/ 32 min/ 10 min
• Midtown Atlanta/ 12 min/ 11 min
• Rockdale County (Conyers)/ 24 min/ 44 min
• Stockbridge/ Ga. 138/ 18 min/ 39 min

Note: Times are freeway travel times only. Not included is the time it takes to get from your door to the freeway entrance and the time it takes to get from the freeway exit to your parking space at the stadium. Those times are presumed to be roughly equal for the old stadium and new stadium.

* Times shown above are weeknight averages between 5:30 and 6 p.m. in 2012.

Source: Georgia Department of Transportation, Traffic Operations

Road projects under development in Cumberland Mall area

Cobb County’s current transportation plan and SPLOST included several projects addressing current and future transportation needs in the vicinity of the proposed stadium site. They include:

• Windy Hill Road: Diverging diamond interchange and corridor improvements extending from U.S. 41 to Powers Ferry Road. This would open to traffic in the spring of 2017. Funded through the county's penny sales tax or Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST).
• Windy Hill Road West: Widening of road from U.S. 41/Cobb Parkway to I-75 from five lanes to six lanes divided by a raised landscaped median. Traffic signals will be upgraded, and all new pedestrian accommodations will be included. Funded through SPLOST.
• Windy Hill Road East: Additional eastbound and westbound lanes will be added. Additional turn lanes will also be added to Windy Hill Road east of Powers Ferry Road. A SPLOST project.
• Cobb Parkway: Widening from four to six lanes between Akers Mill and Paces Mill roads, currently under contract.
• Cobb Parkway/Chattahoochee River Bridge, currently under construction.
• Northwest Corridor I-75: Two optional, reversible toll lanes from I-285 north to the I-575 split. One reversible toll lane will continue on I-75 to Hickory Grove Road and one lane will run alongside I-575 up to Sixes Road. They will open to traffic in 2018.
• Windy Hill-Terrell Mill Connector, which is SPLOST funded.

Improvements that are unfunded but being studied:

• Windy Ridge Parkway Connector
• Cobb Parkway/I-285 diverging diamond interchange
• Cobb Parkway/Cumberland/Spring split diamond
• I-285 access to Circle 75 Parkway roundabout

As plans move forward on the proposed Braves ballpark in Cobb County, questions linger about how game-goers will affect the area’s already bottlenecked roads.

But a comparison of trip times to the old and new stadium locations suggests the weeknight drive to the game for the largest share of Braves fans could be the same or even better when the new stadium opens in 2017.

Cobb County officials say it will be months before they can complete a traffic study. So they don’t know what impact the addition of thousands of vehicles — nobody can say how many vehicles typically travel to a Braves game — would have on metro Atlanta’s mobility.

But the Georgia Department of Transportation does know how long it currently takes to get to the proposed stadium site, which is sandwiched between Cobb Parkway, I-285 and I-75 just outside the Perimeter. It also collects information about how long it takes to get to Turner Field now.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution obtained exclusive information from GDOT about average trip times on several routes for the 5:30 to 6 p.m. time window on weekdays, when traffic would be the worst.

The data show that for a lot of fans, driving to the new stadium site on a weeknight could be quicker than driving to Turner Field. Particularly for motorists who live north of the city, where the heaviest concentration of Braves ticket buyers reside.

“That’s actually completely shocking to me,” Lee Adkins of Johns Creek said after learning how the trip times compared for him.

Adkins, who attends a few games a year, said he prefers going downtown to see the Braves, but he is open to trying the new stadium.

“I guess to me going to Cobb County for a Braves game — I don’t love it,” Adkins said. “But I’m not opposed to it.”

The data come with a couple of caveats. For one thing, they don’t account for the time it takes to get from your driveway to the nearest interstate or from the interstate exit to the stadium. Those times aren’t expected to change much for either location.

The trip times also represent the average for weeknights in 2012. That’s particularly important to keep in mind when considering Turner Field trips because the 51 weeknights when the downtown stadium hosted a game last year are a fraction of all those measured.

The comparison shows:

• It takes 32 minutes of highway driving to reach Turner Field from the I-75/I-575 interchange in Cobb. It takes only 10 minutes to go from I-75/I-575 to the site of the proposed stadium.
• From Gwinnett County, it takes 40 minutes to go from I-85 at Beaver Ruin Road to Turner Field. Reaching the new stadium takes 32 minutes.
•   North Fulton County residents traveling from Ga. 400 at Holcomb Bridge Road drive on average 1 hour and 6 minutes to Turner Field. It would take 39 minutes to reach the new stadium at the same time of day.
•   From Midtown Atlanta, trip times are almost the same — 12 minutes to Turner Field or 11 minutes to the new stadium location.
• Fans coming from Conyers on I-20 have to drive almost twice as long to reach the new site (44 minutes) compared with the old one (24 minutes).
• Fans coming from Stockbridge at Ga. 138 must drive 39 minutes to get to Cobb. It takes them only 18 minutes to reach Turner Field.

As the Braves’ faithful approach the new stadium site, there are numerous access roads to funnel them in, Cobb DOT Director Faye DiMassimo said.

Besides I-285 and I-75, there is Cobb Parkway, Cumberland Parkway, Powers Ferry Road, Spring Hill Parkway, Spring Road, Terrell Mill Road, Windy Hill Road and Windy Ridge Parkway.

Many of those roads are already bogged down in the evening, presumably because about 76,000 people work in the Cumberland Mall area’s offices and shops.

Scott Struletz, who grew up in Cobb and now lives in the Virginia-Highland neighborhood of Atlanta, wasn’t surprised that travel time for Midtown-area residents is about the same for either stadium location. He said traffic near Turner Field is awful. But the tie-ups near the new site are also “terrible.”

He said he’ll be going to fewer games.

“The fact that I don’t have the option of taking public transportation now makes it even worse,” Struletz said.

About 6 percent of fans who came to games in 2013 took MARTA. Transit-dependent people would still be able to take a Cobb County Transit bus from Arts Center station in Midtown to a transfer center at Cumberland Mall.

DiMassimo said the county would seek additional funding to add more buses to that route, as well as shuttles that can ferry people from parking lots to the stadium.

From a transportation planning standpoint, it’s not necessarily problematic or unusual that no traffic study was conducted before the selection of the new ballpark site, said Tim Lomax, a national congestion expert at the Texas Transportation Institute.

Looking at a map of average weeknight speeds on roads near Cumberland Mall, Lomax said they are about what he would expect to find in a big metropolitan region such as Atlanta.

“You can probably figure out the traffic,” Lomax said. “But the sooner you get started, the better.”

Even before the prospect of a stadium in Cobb was a twinkle in the eye of Braves President John Schuerholz, the county’s transportation plan included several projects to alleviate traffic in the vicinity. They include widening lanes and overhauling interchanges on several arterial roads.

Cobb County and the Cumberland Community Improvement District have committed an additional $24 million toward transportation improvements for the new stadium that were not already budgeted. These will include a $3.5 million pedestrian bridge from the Cobb Galleria Center over I-285.

New express toll lanes to be constructed on I-75 by the spring of 2018 should help pull some traffic off the main lanes for that interstate, DiMassimo said.

There are no swift solutions to unclog I-285. The state, however, has plans to build express toll lanes along the 13.1-mile stretch from I-75 North to I-85 North some time between 2020 and 2030.