GDOT conducting 3-year study on fixing the Downtown Connector (Atlanta: hotel, neighborhoods)

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Or, and I know this is a crazy concept, but we could offer alternative means of transportation for people to get into the core city with.

Like building a new I-85 west of downtown that doesn't merge with I-75?

[bu2]

Originally Posted by MattCW

And force the people from Midtown/Downtown/Buckhead headed onto I-20 onto the side roads instead? No thank you.

Kind of like DeKalb people have to do now to get to a freeway?

Downtown and midtown wouldn't have any problem getting to I-20. They would use roads through downtown which are about the only section of adequate arterial roads in Atlanta.

It would be inconvenient for the Southern half of Buckhead. The Northern half would just go to 285 N.

Another alternative would be to separate I-20 traffic until the 75/85 split and have it merge there (and have the exit to I-20 early also so it doesn't mix with the downtown exits of the Connector.)

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

Like building a new I-85 west of downtown that doesn't merge with I-75?

Ugh, that sounds like an awful waste of time, money, and potential. It'll just clog up a few years after it gets built, anyway.


Far better to implement things like, oh I dunno, commuter rail, heavy rail, bus rapid transit, and express bus services to provide alternatives to the then tolled roads coming into the city.


Use the money from tolls to pay for many of those alternatives, and even some freeway improvements beyond a state of good repair.

Originally Posted by bu2

Kind of like DeKalb people have to do now to get to a freeway?

Downtown and midtown wouldn't have any problem getting to I-20. They would use roads through downtown which are about the only section of adequate arterial roads in Atlanta.

It would be inconvenient for the Southern half of Buckhead. The Northern half would just go to 285 N.

Another alternative would be to separate I-20 traffic until the 75/85 split and have it merge there (and have the exit to I-20 early also so it doesn't mix with the downtown exits of the Connector.)

Oh, you mean the roads that are (rightfully) being redesigned into far more neighborhood-friendly streets to facilitate growth, both population and economic, within the city's core?


Yeah, I wouldn't count on them being a through-way kind of road for much longer.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

That is one of the worst ideas proposed yet. How do people from east/west get into town? How do I get out to the studio off I20 east from NW Atlanta? Adding 15 miles to the trip?



No! The only way to get alternative methods going is to take away the other options first!!!

I-20 DOES have exits.

[fourthwarden]

Attached to this post is a (very simple) break down of the traffic counts on the freeways coming inside I-285. At a $2.50 per vehicle per day toll, the 1,182,950 daily vehicles would generate a revenue of $2,957,375. If you cut either the toll or the volume coming into the city in half, that's still $1,478,688 per day.


Over 40 years, that's $43,177,675,000 or $21,588,837,500, respectively. To put that into perspective, that's enough money to build GDOT's original regional commuter rail plan, adjusted for inflation, 14 times over with the full toll, and 7 times over with the half toll.

Of course, not all that money would go to Commuter Rail Transit. Some would go to heavy rail, some to light rail, some to bus rapid transit, some to express buses, and plenty to road maintenance.


Additional toll points could, and perhaps should, be put in at arterials and large roads coming inside the perimeter, with the potential for additional congestion charges to get off / onto the highways in the core of the city. Variable tolls could respond to congestion in real time as they do on the HOT lanes now, going up or down depending on the level of traffic. Additional price points could be established for more damaging vehicles, like heavy trucks and certain SUVs, based on the vehicle weight.


Everything could be done via NFC / Radio scanners as the HOT lanes are now. High Occupancy Vehicle lanes could be maintained for 3+ occupied vehicles and motor cycles. Additional transit only lanes could be implemented, with some of the funding going to building bus only exits at critical transfer points, like Armor, Cumberland, Arts Center, 5-Points, etc. as well as an expanded set of HOV only exits.


I-285 would remain as an untolled bypass route to the city itself.




Thoughts?

[bu2]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Ugh, that sounds like an awful waste of time, money, and potential. It'll just clog up a few years after it gets built, anyway.


Far better to implement things like, oh I dunno, commuter rail, heavy rail, bus rapid transit, and express bus services to provide alternatives to the then tolled roads coming into the city.


Use the money from tolls to pay for many of those alternatives, and even some freeway improvements beyond a state of good repair.







Oh, you mean the roads that are (rightfully) being redesigned into far more neighborhood-friendly streets to facilitate growth, both population and economic, within the city's core?


Yeah, I wouldn't count on them being a through-way kind of road for much longer.

Chicago and New York have streets like that. Its kind of essential in a dense downtown.

And if your next comment is to compare it to Paris, central Paris has no high rises. The only high rises are out in LaDefense. Europe has a totally different scale.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by bu2

Chicago and New York have streets like that. Its kind of essential in a dense downtown.

The area would be, and is, better used by transit lanes and bike ways, as well as wider sidewalks in NYC's case.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

Attached to this post is a (very simple) break down of the traffic counts on the freeways coming inside I-285. At a $2.50 per vehicle per day toll, the 1,182,950 daily vehicles would generate a revenue of $2,957,375. If you cut either the toll or the volume coming into the city in half, that's still $1,478,688 per day.


Over 40 years, that's $43,177,675,000 or $21,588,837,500, respectively. To put that into perspective, that's enough money to build GDOT's original regional commuter rail plan, adjusted for inflation, 14 times over with the full toll, and 7 times over with the half toll.

I am a longtime fan of toll roads. However, I'd start with $.50 toll. That worked great on GA400 and I never heard any serious grumbling about it.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by arjay57

I am a longtime fan of toll roads. However, I'd start with $.50 toll. That worked great on GA400 and I never heard any serious grumbling about it.

The toll point is high, yeah. Something that was being discussed in the reddit thread was applying discounts based on resident status, and various other classifications. London has such a system.


Additionally, the real-time tolls would go up or down depending on congestion levels.


The average toll could be lower, depending on how much was going to be handled with the revenue, though it should be priced to also allow transit to be competitive.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by demonta4

It's obviously a joke, but in all honesty , if we had adequate alternatives we wouldn't need the connector at all. It serves little purpose unless your intention is to completely pass through Downtown and Midtown. If you're destination is in the core, you shouldn't need a freeway to get you there.

For a city drawing tourists from surrounding states every weekend and a convention/ sports hub,

out-of-towners only understand the interstates and what they see from the interstates.

Hotels alongside I-75/I-85 off of 10th and 14th St. are beacons to unfamiliar visitors.

I'm not defending the Connector, but most cities do have an interstate very close to downtown.

I wish that another alternative parallel to the connector could be improvised on an existing surface street by eliminating left turns, and increasing through-put North to South. This would relieve the connector and aid in bypassing incidents.

Northside Drive might be a candidate.

Also, it's no mystery that the entrances and exits to downtown streets are what slows everything down, along with semi-sharp curves.

Closing almost all downtown entrances/exits and creating a service road to access downtown streets similar to elevated xpress lanes on I-75 in Cobb would....


increase throughput & average speeds on connector substantially.