Top Highway Boondoggles: I-285 and SR 400 Interchange Rebuilding (Atlanta: 2014, live)

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by JoeP

What was changed? It's easy to take shots without context.

What do you mean? If you are asking how an interchange that was relived of bottlenecks and "cured of traffic woes" is again traffic packed and labeled a bottleneck again 30 years later the answer is "Induced Demand" and the reality that expanded highway capacity simply encourages more people to fill that capacity in the long run resulting in even more traffic and more strain on the transportation system than if it was never expanded.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Clearly the only option is to continue to rack up huge debt overbuilding roads and highways that simply encourage more traffic.

Only states with lousy bond ratings borrow money to build roads. Illinois, for example.

States like Virginia, NC and Georgia only build when the money is there.


And whomever wrote that article just saw the 400 interchange project's cost and deemed it questionable without any further investigation into our special situation where 6 million people are funneled onto 4 or 5 interstates without any alternate routes thus making the few very important interchanges spectacularly expensive.

I emailed them a lengthy disagreeing explanation.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by jsvh

What do you mean? If you are asking how an interchange that was relived of bottlenecks and "cured of traffic woes" is again traffic packed and labeled a bottleneck again 30 years later the answer is "Induced Demand" and the reality that expanded highway capacity simply encourages more people to fill that capacity in the long run resulting in even more traffic and more strain on the transportation system than if it was never expanded.

Growing population needs food, clothing, shelter transported on roads so CAPACITY MUST EXPAND OR EVERYONE'S QUALITY OF LIFE SUFFERS FROM more people added to same roads.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by J2rescue

Again, that doesn't answer the question. Currently 400 is three lanes until the intersection with 400, where it becomes 4 lanes. Based on the work they've done, this looks like they are adding lanes much more than 2 miles from 285.

They are building to accommodate express lanes on I-285 and GA400, both in near future.

I'm sure 25 ramps, collector/distributor lanes are necessary.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by architect77

Only states with lousy bond ratings borrow money to build roads. Illinois, for example.

States like Virginia, NC and Georgia only build when the money is there.


And whomever wrote that article just saw the 400 interchange project's cost and deemed it questionable without any further investigation into our special situation where 6 million people are funneled onto 4 or 5 interstates without any alternate routes thus making the few very important interchanges spectacularly expensive.

I emailed them a lengthy disagreeing explanation.

Um, no, GDOT is racking up plenty of debt to according to this. With the debt service of about $400M a year up from $26M in 2002. $400M in interest payments a year works out to three or four billion dollars in debt assuming a ~4% interest rate. Still a fair share of the hundreds of billions of debt racked up nationally and a 10x or 20x increase from 2002 and enough to build a half dozen boondoggles like this one on debt alone.

Also, more highways don't work either. Cities with more highways than Atlanta still have plenty of traffic too. That is not the solution if there was places to build them.

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by architect77

Growing population needs food, clothing, shelter transported on roads so CAPACITY MUST EXPAND OR EVERYONE'S QUALITY OF LIFE SUFFERS FROM more people added to same roads.

Unsubstantiated and false. Please tell me a single 1st world city that you feel suffers quality of life issues because their highways are not big enough (besides all of them because all of them have traffic, hint, hint, bigger highways don't improve traffic in the long run)

[architect77]

Originally Posted by jsvh

But I thought when we rebuilt the I-85 at I-285 interchange it was going to cure our traffic woes...

TOM MORELAND INTERCHANGE CURES ATLANTA TRAFFIC WOES

They say in their that "The Tom Moreland Interchange relieved the worst bottlneck in the Atlanta freeway system." And now you are saying it is a bottleneck again?

It's almost like no matter how many millions we dump into reliving these "bottlenecks" that they just get clogged up again in the long term...

You are crying out for attention. You keep repeating a simple "narrative" without any real solutions.

You can't be intelligent to continue with a talking point that helps our mobility problems by ZERO PERCENT.

You are just trying to elicit responses for some sort of validation issue.

Move on.

[JoeP]

If you are asking how an interchange that was relived of bottlenecks and "cured of traffic woes" is again traffic packed and labeled a bottleneck again 30 years later

Nope, that's not what I asked. I asked what was changed. What changes were done to the interchange.

the answer is "Induced Demand" and the reality that expanded highway capacity simply encourages more people to fill that capacity in the long run resulting in even more traffic and more strain on the transportation system than if it was never expanded.

Yes, it does. However, your fallacy is that you fail to see other issues surrounding traffic and other solutions.

I refer such items in my earlier comment in this thread.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by jsvh

Um, no, GDOT is racking up plenty of debt to according to this. With the debt service of about $400M a year up from $26M in 2002. $400M in interest payments a year works out to three or four billion dollars in debt assuming a ~4% interest rate. Still a fair share of the hundreds of billions of debt racked up nationally and a 10x or 20x increase from 2002 and enough to build a half dozen boondoggles like this one on debt alone.

Also, more highways don't work either. Cities with more highways than Atlanta still have plenty of traffic too. That is not the solution if there was places to build them.

IIRC most of that debt was due to the disaster known as "Fast Forward" which took place in the mid-2000s under Gov. Perdue (and nearly killed GDOT).

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by JoeP

Nope, that's not what I asked. I asked what was changed. What changes were done to the interchange.

The entire interchange was rebuilt. Probably on a bigger scale than what is now planned for 400 @ 285 (400/285 will "only" be four levels, 85/285 is five levels).

Before:


After:



Let the 85/285 interchange rebuild be a lesson. It does not solve traffic and after spending hundreds of millions of dollars we will be back to complaining about traffic there and calling it a bottleneck again and left with nothing but more debt to show for it.