More Highway Widening (Atlanta, Villa Rica, Lavonia: buy, subsidized, taxi)

[DJDeadParrot]

Originally Posted by cwkimbro

Either way, it is too short-sighted to keep using this anti-roads arguments applied to every single thing. This is about an inter-regional road network and your mind is stuck on this make-believe mentality that people living near the Gwinnett/Hall Border are driving downtown in mass... they aren't. The arguments are tired. We are growing region and the world doesn't magically function the way you would like it to.

^^ This

Honestly, jsvh, I'm not totally averse to the counter-intuitive logic of induced demand, and how it facilitates sprawl, etc, etc. There is some merit to it, in some situations.

This is not one of them.

I implore you to look at this not from the standpoint of day-to-day commuting habits of exurbanites trying to live a suburban lifestyle, but of inter-regional connectivity on a road that connects to the Northeast Megalopolis. The roadway out beyond Gwinnett is nothing at all like what you see down around Jimmy Carter or Indian Trail. For 12 years, the 43-mile stretch of I-85 from L'ville-Suwanee Rd to Martin Br Rd was part of my commute. To say that I'm intimately familiar with that road, and the type of traffic that dominates it, is an understatement. Widening it is very much needed, and is most definitely not being done as a means to facilitate sprawl.

BTW, I believe the question was asked earlier in the thread if SC would be widening I-85 from the GA line to Anderson; this, too, is in the plans. After that is done, the only two sections of that corridor that will still be 2-lane are the sections from Spartanburg to Gastonia, and Durham to I-95.

[cqholt]

With the amount of interstate travel along I-85 corridor, widening I-85 to SC to 6 lanes is a good move, but I would like to see this offset by some sort of transit investment within metro Atlanta, paid for by GDOT/State of Georgia. It's not that we don't need road investment, it's just that it can't be the only transportation investment we have.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by cqholt

With the amount of interstate travel along I-85 corridor, widening I-85 to SC to 6 lanes is a good move, but I would like to see this offset by some sort of transit investment within metro Atlanta, paid for by GDOT/State of Georgia. It's not that we don't need road investment, it's just that it can't be the only transportation investment we have.

Get the constitutional restrictions removed and you'd probably see GDOT be more than willing to do just that.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by jsvh

GDOT seeks input on widening I-85 in Gwinnett County



Hasn't worked for the last 60 years, but GDOT still keeps trying to defy induced demand. So get ready for even more cars getting funneled down I-85.

Also like how the cost often gets left off when we talk about highway projects, yet is the central focus of transit projects. But from looking at comparable highway costs, this project is at least on the same scale at the downtown streetcar, if not many times more expensive especially considering that it requires multiple overpasses to be rebuilt. Yet, even once completed it will still have less capacity that the streetcar / light rail.

Here is hoping this is just a bit of the last winding down of building wider and wider freeways which only exacerbate the problem. We need to be focused on higher capacity /density transportation solutions.

I'm so tired of this moronic argument taking a talking point (that's true in some instances) and applying it to every road project on the planet.

Widening HAS WORKED for the last 60 years to allow 6 million people to live in Atlanta.

The widening in Gwinnett is just a tiny fraction of what should have been built to save Atlanta's billion dollar LOGISTICS industry and Southeast LOGISTICS HUB STATUS.

The I-85 industrial corridor from Atlanta to Raleigh/Durham is in the top 5 in the whole country and traverses through a population of over 22 million people.

Just past that is the Northeast corridor, the biggest economic powerhouse in the country.

Georgia should have built a complete outer loop of bypasses catering to trucks moving goods, food, constuction materials, etc. to almost separate long distance traffic from local commuters.

Look at a map, we are the nexus of all east-west and north-south traffic for the populous Southeast.

Texas, Florida and North Carolina would have finished 3 loops around the region, growing The economic output.

North Carolina hasn't ever stopped building new highways and interstates during the last 40 years.

NCDOT has recently been awarded about 10 new interstate designations including I-587, I-42, I-495, etc.

Your plan will work when you turn everyone away at all of Georgia's borders.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by architect77

I'm so tired of this moronic argument taking a talking point (that's true in some instances) and applying it to every road project on the planet.

Widening HAS WORKED for the last 60 years to allow 6 million people to live in Atlanta.

The widening in Gwinnett is just a tiny fraction of what should have been built to save Atlanta's billion dollar LOGISTICS industry and Southeast LOGISTICS HUB STATUS.

The I-85 industrial corridor from Atlanta to Raleigh/Durham is in the top 5 in the whole country and traverses through a population of over 22 million people.

Just past that is the Northeast corridor, the biggest economic powerhouse in the country.

Georgia should have built a complete outer loop of bypasses catering to trucks moving goods, food, constuction materials, etc. to almost separate long distance traffic from local commuters.

Look at a map, we are the nexus of all east-west and north-south traffic for the populous Southeast.

Texas, Florida and North Carolina would have finished 3 loops around the region, growing The economic output.

North Carolina hasn't ever stopped building new highways and interstates during the last 40 years.

NCDOT has recently been awarded about 10 new interstate designations including I-587, I-42, I-495, etc.

Your plan will work when you turn everyone away at all of Georgia's borders.

While I agree we need to continue to invest in roads, Georgia has invested in it's road network thru GRIP. While not freeways it has helped connect rural areas. But building new freeways is not needed, we should maintain our existing ones first and balance the transportation investment between roads/bridges and alternative transportation. While yes widening has occurred in the past 60 years, solely focusing on it has given Atlanta the crippling congestion we have today. Which is why we need a balanced approach to transportation investment in metro Atlanta.

[Atlwarrior]

Originally Posted by primaltech

So if tonight they narrowed I-85 through the Atlanta metro, back to the 2 lanes a side that it was originally, the traffic congestion and delays tomorrow would not be 10 times worse?

Of course it has worked. The widening over the last 60 years has worked, in that it's added lots of capacity, which has allowed all the heavy daily traffic (traffic, not congestion), and all the residential growth in Gwinnett. It's just that the growth catches up and then some, and they haven't widened it by much in a while. And/or there are other bottlenecks down the road in DeKalb (such as the interchange with I-285, etc.)

If they doubled the capacity of all the metro freeways tomorrow, the congestion would be reduced heavily. But that would lead to more residential and commercial growth, and also more people long-range commuting thru the area, and probably more out of state shipping trucks. So within probably 15-20 years, the congestion would be back to the same again. But we'd have tons more metro population and a larger economy.

Induced demand doesn't make widening not work, it makes it not work forever. If they regularly added more capacity enough to meet the increased demand, then that would be a good enough solution to eliminating congestion. But they can't do that, obviously.

But that doesn't mean that widening doesn't help, or can't be part of the solution. It just needs to only be part of the solution, which is the part that Georgia never seems to figure out. There needs to be better/more usage of the existing lane capacity via space efficiency via higher occupancy vehicles (especially transit). Also, there needs to be a commuter train system totally independent of the freeway system. Need options.



I know bothering to read things is too much to ask of a Trump voter/ internet troll, but this is talking about widening a 2-lane section up in the rural north part of Gwinnett. To 3 lanes.

Damn! You said that! Hahahaha!

[ATLTJL]

With the amount of interstate travel along I-85 corridor, widening I-85 to SC to 6 lanes is a good move, but I would like to see this offset by some sort of transit investment within metro Atlanta, paid for by GDOT/State of Georgia.

Yes, I think we would *ALL* like to see this. But given GDOT's history, is it even worth bringing up anymore?

Widening HAS WORKED for the last 60 years to allow 6 million people to live in Atlanta.

Indeed. I was in Birmingham, AL last week, and what a pleasant place. So easy to get around! We could have been a Birmingham. Maybe should have been....but it isn't the economic force we are. Keeping the roads narrow would force Birmingham status upon us.

Georgia should have built a complete outer loop of bypasses catering to trucks moving goods, food, constuction materials, etc. to almost separate long distance traffic from local commuters.

It's absolutely ridiculous that we haven't. Even if it's 100 miles outside the city, we need to divert all those long haul trucks from our roads.

North Carolina hasn't ever stopped building new highways and interstates during the last 40 years.

But...but...but....that induces demand! Yet, magically, North Carolina doesn't have worse traffic than we do.

Your plan will work when you turn everyone away at all of Georgia's borders.

Hmmm, not a bad idea. Can we have a moratorium on new residents until we figure out how to serve the ones we already have? Maybe Trump can help us build our own wall!

[architect77]

Originally Posted by cqholt

While I agree we need to continue to invest in roads, Georgia has invested in it's road network thru GRIP. While not freeways it has helped connect rural areas. But building new freeways is not needed, we should maintain our existing ones first and balance the transportation investment between roads/bridges and alternative transportation. While yes widening has occurred in the past 60 years, solely focusing on it has given Atlanta the crippling congestion we have today. Which is why we need a balanced approach to transportation investment in metro Atlanta.

Georgia sat back and watched North Georgia's population triple from 1990 to now and did nothing.

This is the reason for why things are so bad.

There should a semi- decent parallel alternate route for each leg of our simple hub and spoke interstate layout.

Two smaller separate highways are far better than one 12-lane "trunk".

Isn't it obvious that our problem is all traffic being hindered by a single fender-bender?

Sadly, Georgia won't evolve into a proactive rather than a reactive mindset in our lifetimes.

The other top ten states think and operate in a different stratosphere from Georgia.

Today I'll be sending GDOT a request and photos of overlooked, completely faded, peeling signs at the just-completed "Capt. Herb Emory" flyover on Sidney Marcus Blvd.

How on God's green earth can you completely rebuild an interchange and leave 30 year old unreadable signs at the entrance ramps?

Georgia's level of oversight and indifference is in a league of its own.

[jsvh]

The alternative to these widening projects is not scrapping all roads and all cars.


Let people vote with their wallet what transportation and lifestyle they want. I bet a lot of people would prefer to spend the money on living closer to work than having to spend it on tolls to directly pay for these expansions.

[TheTravelinMan]

Originally Posted by alco89

Not gonna lie, I yell-laughed at this.

Seriously though, anyone who's EVER driven in from South Carolina on 85 knows that 2-lane section needs to be widened. At least in Gwinnett County.

Exactly!