Atlanta’s relationship with the automobile is reaching a crossroads. (Boston: 2013, live)

[jsvh]

You can wish for more freeway lanes all you want but that doesn't change that even if there was the political will to build them through all these neighborhoods (there is not) those freeways do not help anything in the long run. Freeways simply cannot handle the volume of people that need to move through large cities. Not in Atlanta or any other city.

Can anyone point to an example of a metro the size of Atlanta or larger that they think effectively moves 90%+ of commuters via freeways / cars? No. It doesn't exist. It is never going to work in Atlanta either, we need to be focusing more on other alternatives.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

You can wish for more freeway lanes all you want but that doesn't change that even if there was the political will to build them through all these neighborhoods (there is not) those freeways do not help anything in the long run. Freeways simply cannot handle the volume of people that need to move through large cities. Not in Atlanta or any other city.

Do you have one of those keyboards where you only have to press one button to post the exact same phrase in every thread?

No one is suggesting that we need to rip up the city and plop huge freeways through every neighborhood. That is just your imagination playing games with yourself. What many of us have stated is that the reason Atlanta is so messed up now is because it didn't happen when it could have, and that our very weak transit system wasn't made better when it could have been.

And it is 100% total fact that if you drop nine lanes into seven, you have reduced capacity by 22%. That's what Atlanta does all over the place, and specifically on the connector. It's simply bad design. You cannot add a lane if that lane has nowhere to release it's load. That has nothing to do with roads being able to handle loads. It's simple fact.

This reminds me of when some guy on this forum posted an image of a "super wide highway in China" as proof that even large roads with 30 lanes still fill up. Of course, he neglected to show that it was only that way at the toll booth, was the return after a huge holiday weekend at said toll booth, and that it reduced back down to 2-3 lanes just 1/4 mile down the road.

Can anyone point to an example of a metro the size of Atlanta or larger that they think effectively moves 90%+ of commuters via freeways / cars? No. It doesn't exist. It is never going to work in Atlanta either, we need to be focusing more on other alternatives.

Uhhh...Atlanta moves damn near 90% via cars. Not totally effectively (via bad design and implementation), but with a few adjustments to the system, it could pretty easily. Miami, Los Angeles (much larger), Detroit, Phoenix..all have very low transit share. Plenty of metros with millions have almost none. But yeah, you've loaded the question to only areas larger than Atlanta and 90%+, solely so that you can be right about a question nobody asked.

[citidata18]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Miami, Los Angeles (much larger), Detroit, Phoenix..all have very low transit share. Plenty of metros with millions have almost none. But yeah, you've loaded the question to only areas larger than Atlanta and 90%+, solely so that you can be right about a question nobody asked.

Those aren't really the best comparisons, Detroit especially. While it has a low transit share, despite being of similar size to Atlanta, it has a damn good street grid (actually, a combination of two street grids) and arterial road system.

https://www.citylab.com/design/2016/...t-grid/487562/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mile_R...tem_(Michigan)



And of its arterial roads, they're all extremely wide to handle a ton of capacity.

8 Mile Road = 4 lanes in each direction



Mound Road = 3-4 lanes in each direction
Telegraph Road = 4 lanes in each direction
Gratiot Avenue = 3-4 lanes in each direction
Woodward Avenue = 3-4 lanes in each direction
Grand River Avenue = 3 lanes in each direction
Jefferson Avenue = 3-4 lanes in each direction
Michigan Avenue = 3 lanes in each direction
Ford Road = 3-4 lanes in each direction
M-59 / Hall Road = 3-4 lanes in each direction
Van Dyke Avenue = 3-4 lanes wide
Groesbeck Hwy = 3 lanes wide

In fact, out of the top 25 cities, Detroit has the least amount of traffic congestion in the country (tied with Pittsburgh and Phoenix)...

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...ties/98146960/

[bu2]

Originally Posted by architect77

Looking at maps of cities and trying to make assertions is ridiculous.

LA's freeways were built piece meal over decades, they didn't know in 1940s that freeways would be so prevalent or how they'd be used.

Boston's roads are so awful they're European and medieval! They are horrible and inefficient to navigate.

Looking at greater Boston's map doesn't convey how gigantic that outer loop is. It's so far away from Boston that's it isn't usable for commuting.

North Carolina has built thousands of miles of new interstates in the last 30 years and continues building loops around cities with mobility issues. Winston-Salem, Greensboro and Fayetteville and Wilmington are currently building sections of loops and freeway-grade bypasses are being built around several important routes throughout the state like US 70, US74, etc.


Originally the interstates were laid out directly connecting every city at its center. Some, like Raleigh said, 'No thank you."

This is why they're barreling through downtowns.

Our downtown connector is a problem because nothing was ever built to serve as an alternate.


I still believe a parallel alternate could be carved into the industrial West side from I-75 & rejoin connector past I20.

This would be very helpful during accidents or just help since the connector crawls like an LA freeway 16 hours every day.


My complaint about 3 million people with only one East-West freeway is because...

They are taxpayers and they deserve better, more.

If Atlanta keeps welcoming newcomers to North Georgia, they it's not right for them to have to go out the way down to an already chocked I-285 to travel between Kennesaw and Duluth.

And no one has named another city so shortchanged as northern metro taxpayers.

Agreed.

[jsvh]

Y'all can keep citing all these cities that have more / bigger roads / better grid than Atlanta but there is no realistic way to implement that in Atlanta at this point in time.

Seriously, what projects are y'all holding out hope for getting built any time in the next 30 years?

All the best, most realistic chances of adding real capacity the the transportation network in the metro in the coming decades are via transit. Sure some suburban / exurban lanes will get widened and maybe the Northern Arc even get a 3rd shot at life but those are not going to make a real positive impact given the amount of growth that is happening. We need to focus more on higher capacity transit options. And thankfully, that seems to be happening in the real world outside this thread.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

Uhhh...Atlanta moves damn near 90% via cars. Not totally effectively (via bad design and implementation), but with a few adjustments to the system, it could pretty easily. Miami, Los Angeles (much larger), Detroit, Phoenix..all have very low transit share. Plenty of metros with millions have almost none. But yeah, you've loaded the question to only areas larger than Atlanta and 90%+, solely so that you can be right about a question nobody asked.

Yes, that was exactly my point. Atlanta moves ~90% of people via cars and that is what needs to change if we want to grow. There are no other larger cities that do that in the world that have that level of car dependency and move people well. Large cities simply cannot move people around effectively via such a large share of cars. A very inconvenient fact for you to be sure considering you have 77 larger metro areas in the world to choose from and you cannot find a single one that has as high or higher level of car usage as us to model our transportation system after should be telling that it is simply not a workable solution for us to both continue to grow and remain as dependant on the car as we are today.

Originally Posted by samiwas1

And it is 100% total fact that if you drop nine lanes into seven, you have reduced capacity by 22%. That's what Atlanta does all over the place, and specifically on the connector. It's simply bad design. You cannot add a lane if that lane has nowhere to release it's load. That has nothing to do with roads being able to handle loads. It's simple fact.

"And it is 100% total fact that if you drop nine lanes into seven and put LRT in that RoW, you have increased capacity by 133%. It's simple fact."

But seriously, you seem to be acknowledging somewhat here that "bad design" has constrained the amount of right-of-way we have and we cannot just bulldoze Midtown and widen the connector to meet the demand. Don't you think that means we should be putting higher capacity options in that finite RoW?

It all goes back to this:

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by citidata18

Those aren't really the best comparisons, Detroit especially. While it has a low transit share, despite being of similar size to Atlanta, it has a damn good street grid (actually, a combination of two street grids) and arterial road system.

So, when I'm asked to provide examples of large cities which effectively handle most of their transport via cars and roads, I can't use a city which does so, because it has an effective road system?

That is the point. If you have a good road and highway network, you can effectively move cars around and not generate lots of congestion. If you design a very poor network, you will reap the rewards.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Y'all can keep citing all these cities that have more / bigger roads / better grid than Atlanta but there is no realistic way to implement that in Atlanta at this point in time.

And you've missed the entire point of the discussion: Atlanta failed to prepare and designed a poor network to deal with growth.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

And you've missed the entire point of the discussion: Atlanta failed to prepare and designed a poor network to deal with growth.

Ok, sure. I will agree with that.

So what do we do about it now?

[citidata18]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

So, when I'm asked to provide examples of large cities which effectively handle most of their transport via cars and roads, I can't use a city which does so, because it has an effective road system?

That is the point. If you have a good road and highway network, you can effectively move cars around and not generate lots of congestion. If you design a very poor network, you will reap the rewards.

Sorry, I may have missed misunderstood your point.

From the way I read your post originally, it seemed as though you were saying those cities are just as bad off as Atlanta in terms of traffic because of their low transit usage.

[samiwas1]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Ok, sure. I will agree with that.

So what do we do about it now?

We work on vastly expanding our transit network while not choking our road network, possibly strengthening it as well. Note: there are places where a road can be made better by removing a travel lane and instead having turn lanes. It's not always about adding lanes. But it's not always about just plopping transit/bike lanes down wherever and saying "give us your lanes".