City of Atlanta Releases Draft of New Transportation Plan (Roswell: safe, bill)

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by cqholt

So now you are supporting grade separated interchanges instead of signals intown? While signal sync may not prevent speeding between signals, it is shown to pace traffic along the corridor. If drivers want to accelerate and waste all that gas between signals, when they could just do the speed limit and reach the next signal as it turns green, thus reducing emissions from idling cars.

No, I cannot think of any in-town routes that make sense to go towards grade-separated. There are probably even some that makes sense to transition the opposite way / or even close entirely.

I do not think the current "paced" cars going up and down Spring / W Peachtree / Juniper / Piedmont at 35mph in Midtown are acceptable or safe. Despite the improvements Midtown has made over the years, those corridors remain very hostile and unsafe towards pedestrians and bikers.

I was sitting on a patio along W Peachtree the other day and first off that rush of cars going by certainly does not make for a pleasant atmosphere, but my bigger observation was that despite lots and lots of bikes and scooters going by, basically none of them were using the "bike lane" ("bike gutter" is more appropriate) on West Peachtree. They were mostly in the roadway using the smaller two-laned, two-way cross street or (illegally) using the wide sidewalk in front of new developments on W Peachtree.

And can you blame them? Trying to cruse there in anything but a car feels like taking your life in your hands (and it probably is).

I think those roads have got to transition towards becoming safer, two-way, one lane in each direction plus turns, 25 mph max design speed more focused on distributing local traffic. If you want to go quickly N/S through midtown you need to just use 75/85.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Signal synchronization is not a magic bullet.

It will not solve all the traffic problems, nor barely make an incremental dent in it.

There are no city-wide examples of traffic being solved with signal synchronization. It does not even keep up with induced demand.

Even if car thorough-put is the only metric you care about (it should not even be the primary metric), many signals are simply just not part of some massive grid where there needs to be a dedicated link to all the other lights in the city for it to function as effectively as it can.

In fact, having signals synchronized so the massive 4-5 laned one-way streets in downtown & midtown can operate as speedways is doing far more harm than good those neighborhoods and the city on the whole.

Money and effort would be much better spent on other projects such as improving safety, and cordon pricing.

It can make a HUGE difference. You've never experienced synchronized signals in Atlanta.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by jsvh

It depends on the situation and it has its uses. I just think the resources are better spent on things like road diets for intown streets or eliminating stop lights all together by building interchanges.

Signal synchronization is pretty cheap.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Ahem...I will repeat one of my sentences, and highlight a part of it for you:

"There is a lot of disused or under-utilized industrial land in the southern and western parts of town, directly rail adjacent, in which we could fit a lot of people without having to disturb our great neighborhoods."

I live in what I would consider the western part of town, affectionately known as Upper Westside. My neighborhood is surrounded right now by three separate multi-use, higher-density projects which did tear down a few houses and some old ghetto apartments. I supported all of them, and would gladly support many of the areas on my side of town which are currently disused industrial being made into higher-density projects.

Tilford Yard...build it up. The two concrete plants and trailer storage area down Marietta (decades-away Beltline adjacent)...raze them and build them up. Extend the green line to all these. Plenty of other examples near me. The reason I was pointing mostly at the southern areas is that they are filled with vast swaths of disused or far underused industrial areas.

I added "directly rail adjacent" not because I want to keep those people out of my neighborhood, but because if you're going to cram in lots of density, it should be where there is infrastructure immediately available to move them. You don't want to plop 50,000 people into an area served by a two-lane road and a bus every 45 minutes.

I agree. But this plan didn't appear to focus on such areas.

Now I disagree about high rises. Atlanta will NOT go that way. It makes no financial sense when you have as much land as Atlanta does. This is not Singapore or New York City. There will be more, but it will be limited and mostly for high incomes. Increased density will look more like the area around the skate park. Or it could include townhomes and patio homes, but there's not much of that now relative to other major US cities.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by bu2

I agree. But this plan didn't appear to focus on such areas.

Now I disagree about high rises. Atlanta will NOT go that way. It makes no financial sense when you have as much land as Atlanta does. This is not Singapore or New York City. There will be more, but it will be limited and mostly for high incomes. Increased density will look more like the area around the skate park. Or it could include townhomes and patio homes, but there's not much of that now relative to other major US cities.

I don't want a sea of high rises. I've been pretty adamant that the idea of a concrete jungle like NYC is soul-crushing. But, if they want to cram 800,000 more people in the center of town, because apparently they deserve it just by wanting it, you're not going to accomplish that with patio homes and townhomes.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by bu2

It can make a HUGE difference. You've never experienced synchronized signals in Atlanta.

More likely we have all experienced synchronized signals we just didn't realize it because there are a fair amount in Atlanta already and they are overrated.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by cqholt

So now you are supporting grade separated interchanges instead of signals intown? While signal sync may not prevent speeding between signals, it is shown to pace traffic along the corridor. If drivers want to accelerate and waste all that gas between signals, when they could just do the speed limit and reach the next signal as it turns green, thus reducing emissions from idling cars.

For example, in downtown Houston (before street level light rail complicated things), it was set so that if you drove exactly 20 mph, you didn't have to stop for any of the north-south lights. If you drove much slower or any faster, you had to stop. It encouraged people to drive the speed limit.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by jsvh

More likely we have all experienced synchronized signals we just didn't realize it because there are a fair amount in Atlanta already and they are overrated.

I've experienced synchronized signals elsewhere and they work. Roswell Road on a Saturday is the only place I've seen it in Atlanta. It worked pretty well. Here, we don't even have signals triggered for traffic. At least they don't work. You will have a long red on a major street when nobody is coming from a minor residential street.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

I don't want a sea of high rises. I've been pretty adamant that the idea of a concrete jungle like NYC is soul-crushing. But, if they want to cram 800,000 more people in the center of town, because apparently they deserve it just by wanting it, you're not going to accomplish that with patio homes and townhomes.

Well you have to do it in more than just midtown and downtown.

[bu2]

You can have a lot of density with apartments. The area around the skate park is pretty dense, but I don't know the specific numbers.

The Gulfton area in Houston is NOT the best part of town, but it shows how much density you can have. Its mainly garden style 2 story apartments and there are nearly 17,000 people per square mile (NYC is 27,000, San Francisco 19,000). The adjacent Sharpstown area with a lot of SFH is 10,000 people per square mile. The city of Atlanta as a whole was 3,134 as of the 2010 census.
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/loc...1-11170566.php