Commute back to normal: ‘Just plain awful’

Traffic is an unforgiving force of nature in Metro Atlanta. We have one of the worst commutes in the nation — as I was reminded just days after SnowJam.

“How was your drive?” my wife asked as I walked in the door.

“Things were pretty much back to normal,” I said nonchalantly. “It was just plain awful.”

I bet a lot of couples in metro Atlanta have similar conversations at the end of the day, or with their co-workers when they arrive in the morning. Much divides us, but the abject loathing of our daily commute is a glue that binds metro residents in a sort of grinding, communal misery.

A sizable chunk of our lives are lived out in cars and trucks and SUVs, clutching coffee mugs and serenaded by the staccato rattle of “triple team traffic” radio reports. The view from our windshields is numbingly the same: a slow-moving river of red brake lights stretching to the horizon, our exit somewhere in the mess ahead.

“So, why don’t you just take MARTA?” a friend asked.

And I could. I could walk the half mile to a MARTA bus stop and take a 20-minute ride to the nearest MARTA train station. From there I could take the train to the Five Points station and transfer to the north line to Dunwoody. That’s a two-hour adventure door-to-door if the trains and buses are running on time.

Some days, when rain or snow is forecast, I opt for the bus-train route. Most days I drive, hoping for a 45-minute-to-one-hour, one-way commute. Some days the gamble pays off. Other days, not so much.

A few weeks back I left the office at 6 p.m. A light rain was falling. An hour later I had not even made it to I-285 on gridlocked surface streets. I did a U-turn and stopped at a restaurant to eat dinner. About 7 p.m. I got back on the road, and this time made it to I-285 in about 10 minutes. Then, the interstate locked up. I made it to my house sometime after 8:30 p.m. just in time to give my 5-year-old son a goodnight kiss.

On another recent afternoon, traffic suddenly locked up as I approached Spaghetti Junction. An hour later, I slowly drove around an injured motorcyclist lying in the road, wrapped in a blanket by motorists who were standing around him as they awaited an ambulance, also stuck in the traffic.

And then there was the dog.

Traffic was frozen. Brake lights winked off and on for a mile or so ahead. I drove for a few feet. Then stopped. Then drove a few more feet. It had taken me 45 minutes to go six miles.

Suddenly this shaggy dog, an ID tag dangling from its collar, was walking toward me in the narrow space between the cars ahead and the concrete barrier that divided us from oncoming traffic. I rolled down my window and called out, but the dog walked quickly past. I watched in my sideview mirror as the four-legged stranger disappeared in the distance. Traffic eased. I was home 40 minutes later.

Not only is traffic awful, I’m convinced it’s getting worse. And I’m not alone. I mentioned my theory recently to WSB 750 AM’s Scott Slade. He agreed, noting that the queues to exit at major arteries, which used to back up an exit or so during rush-hour, now regularly back up two or more exits.

Maybe it’s the improving economy — more drivers on the road going to work. Maybe a few thousand more people moved to the region and shoved the fragile traffic calculus right over the edge. Maybe we’ve had more rainy commutes than usual.

Everybody agrees there is too little mass transit for a region this sprawling. Nobody can agree on how to fund it. Everyone talks about increased telecommuting, allowing employees to work from home some days. But the jammed roadways suggest that it’s just talk.

I don’t know what the answer is.

But as I stared out my windshield on an gridlocked morning last week, I had this recurring plea: “I sure hope somebody does something about this soon.”

And I sure hope that shaggy dog made it home okay.