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That was the thing about Gwinnett Place Mall when it was in vogue. It is actually well-connected to local streets going to every direction in the county. Now to be fair... it took decades to get them all built. I'd still like to see some changes there.
The overall problem with MoG isn't a car vs walk/transit one. It isn't that it was designed for a car. It is that it overly relies on a single road between I-85 and I-985. Everything funnels down one main drag.
The fact it was built between the freeways was almost a bad thing. It raised the cost of connecting local roads, because of all the bridges that would need to be built. That is an existing problem abound GP today. It took a great deal of time to save up the money to build all the existing flyover bridges across I-85 and there are still more on the agenda to build.
As for cars driving between shops vs. walking.... That is not the problem 'nor the answer.
The problem is getting in and out of the area as a whole. Once you're there.... you're there. The parking lots north and south of GA 20 often let you go across the the road at individual traffic lights. You can use Mall of Georgia Blvd and Woodward Crossing Blvd to get around the various developments. The problem is getting to those streets in the first place.
The only good local road access I know of is Gravel Springs Road to the East/Northeast.
What will help is the Sugarloaf Pkwy extension in the future. It will let all those from the central and southern part of the county access the mall and side Boulevards without going through the existing freeway exits on GA 20.
Then they need a good arterial road to the west/southwest, which at this point will be hard to implement and costly.
As for cars driving between shops vs. walking.... That is not the problem 'nor the answer.
The problem is getting in and out of the area as a whole. Once you're there.... you're there. The parking lots north and south of GA 20 often let you go across the the road at individual traffic lights. You can use Mall of Georgia Blvd and Woodward Crossing Blvd to get around the various developments. The problem is getting to those streets in the first place.
.... and that has nothing to do with my point or the OP.
If you'd stop pushing your agenda so much sometimes you'd actually look at the original point of the OP and me, which you're completely skipping over.
Yes, everyone who is a regular on this forum knows you only want to be in an older walkable area yada yada yada.
However, the ability to walk from shop to shop isn't the cause or the fix to the traffic problem the OP is addressing.
Once you're there you can drive just about anywhere w/o problem, because you can entirely avoid GA 20 going from store to store using the Blvds that don't connect to anywhere other than the shopping developments.
The problem is battling the GA 20 to get there from I-85, I-985, Buford, or Satellite Blvd.
What will help is the Sugarloaf Pkwy extension in the future. It will let all those from the central and southern part of the county access the mall and side Boulevards without going through the existing freeway exits on GA 20.
The future construction and completion of the section of the Sugarloaf Parkway extension that runs between GA 316 and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard by way of the Mall of Georgia area is actually increasingly very-much in doubt after Gwinnett County tried to fund the project with funds from the failed T-SPLOST referendum.
Gwinnett County had originally planned to fund the 316-PIB Mall of Georgia portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension by making the road a toll road, but Gwinnett County backed-off of the idea of funding the road with tolls after the very-angry public backlash to the conversion of the I-85 HOV lanes to HOT lanes in October 2011.
Instead of funding the 316-PIB Mall of Georgia portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension as a toll road as originally planned, Gwinnett hurriedly placed the project on the list of projects to be funded with revenues from the T-SPLOST referendum.
When Gwinnett placed the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension on the T-SPLOST list, all hell broke loose because the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension is proposed to be built in the right-of-way of the highly-controversial cancelled Northern Arc Highway (...which Gwinnett County has intentionally mostly kept free of development since the cancellation of the Northern Arc because Gwinnett County intended to build an extension of Sugarloaf Parkway between 316 and PIB as a way of taking some heavy traffic off of severely-congested GA 20 through the Mall of Georgia area and between Lawrenceville and Buford).
Because the 316-PIB Sugarloaf Parkway Extension project is proposed to be built in the right-of-way of the cancelled Northern Arc, many of the same anti-roadbuilding interests that opposed the Northern Arc back in the late 1990's and early 2000's mistakenly thought that the Sugarloaf Pkwy Extension was a resurrection of the Northern Arc.
Those anti-Northern Arc interests also thought that the T-SPLOST referendum was a backdoor way to fund the construction of the Northern Arc.
...This made the presence of the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway on the list of projects to be funded by the Atlanta region T-SPLOST a lightning rod for opposition from environmentalists and anti-roadbuilding interests all around the state and the country.
In the aftermath of the failure of the T-SPLOST referendum in the Atlanta region, the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension has no way of being funded on an accelerated timeline as construction of the project is currently slated to be completed sometime between 2018 and 2040.
Because the roadway is proposed to run through the corporate limits of the City of Dacula, the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension project also has some opposition from with the City of Dacula (which would be cut in half by the project), including from Dacula Mayor Jimmy Wilbanks who would be personally affected by the project by losing 30 acres of land to the roadway when it is built.
I think your overplaying the old arguments about the northern arc.
It wasn't discussed all that much about the T-splost. I actually had a huge problem getting most people in Gwinnett to acknowledge its existence as many seemed to be busy complaining about the Beltline and the Emory LRT.
The Sugarloaf Pkwy ext in Gwinnett's SPLOST typically has done pretty well w/o huge controversy. Most like the idea of it as a county road. The main exception I've found is a narrow group of people who bought houses that didn't realize it backed up to the property the county owns for the ROW.
The problem is they can only build it so fast using the county splost alone....just one section at a time.
I think your overplaying the old arguments about the northern arc.
It wasn't discussed all that much about the T-splost. I actually had a huge problem getting most people in Gwinnett to acknowledge its existence as many seemed to be busy complaining about the Beltline and the Emory LRT.
The Sugarloaf Pkwy ext in Gwinnett's SPLOST typically has done pretty well w/o huge controversy. Most like the idea of it as a county road. The main exception I've found is a narrow group of people who bought houses that didn't realize it backed up to the property the county owns for the ROW.
The problem is they can only build it so fast using the county splost alone....just one section at a time.
Oh no, I actually know that the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension is not a resurrection of the Northern Arc.
But because the road is proposed to be built in the right-of-way of the cancelled Northern Arc, many groups who opposed the original Northern Arc over a decade ago mistakenly jumped to the conclusion that the road is a resurrection of the Northern Arc.
The presence of the proposed Sugarloaf Parkway Extension in the right-of-way of the abandoned Northern Arc on the T-SPLOST project list was controversial enough to draw the opposition of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club which joined with the Tea Party, the NAACP and South Metro Atlantans (who were unhappy because they thought that the transportation needs of the Northside was getting much more attention than the transportation needs of the Southside) to oppose and defeat the Atlanta region T-SPLOST largely because they thought that the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension was a resurrection of the much-hated Northern Arc from a decade ago.
Here is a link to an article in the Sierra Club Georgia Chapter's newsletter about their concern that the T-SPLOST was being used to fund a resurrected Northern Arc: http://georgia.sierraclub.org/article.aspx?r=905
Here is a link to another article by the Director of the Georgia Chapter of the Sierra Club, Colleen Kiernan about why the Sierra Club and other pro-transit and environmental groups were displeased with the placement of a Sugarloaf Pkwy Extension project on what they thought was a road-heavy T-SPLOST list and a way to resurrect the Northern Arc: http://saportareport.com/blog/2011/10/metro-atlanta-turning-winning-season-for-transit-into-a-losing-one/
From the link:
Quote:
But the most troubling element of the TIA draft list is that a segment of the Northern Arc expressway, an intensely controversial road that was repeatedly contested finally defeated by a diverse coalition of organizations (including Sierra Club) nearly a decade ago, was quietly slipped onto the list as project TIA-GW-060 with little public discussion regarding the true impact and ramifications of this decision.
The connection between TIA-GW-060 and the historical Outer Perimeter / Northern Arc concept is undeniable when properly articulated (click here for a visual explanation), and we are concerned that once voters fully appreciate the magnitude of the decision to resurrect a divisive proposal that was resoundingly rejected by the public years ago, this project will become a poison pill that could endanger passage of the tax next year.
The fact that many voters, both in Metro Atlanta and through the Northern part of the state, thought that T-SPLOST funding of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension was a resurrection of the old Northern Arc played a major role in the defeat of the T-SPLOST in and throughout North Georgia.
The refusal of the Gwinnett County government to finance the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension with tolls and the potential for building opposition from those who live along the proposed Dacula portion of the project (roughly between US 29 and I-85 where more existing residential development backs up closer to the right-of-way of the road than it does to any other part of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension between GA 20 south of L'ville and PIB in Sugar Hill) means that the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Pkwy Extension may very-likely be much more difficult to construct and complete than the GA 20-GA 316 portion of the roadway was.
Another potential obstacle to the construction and completion of the final sections of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension is that for some inexplicable reason, Gwinnett County has began permitting residential development to be built in the right-of-way of a proposed road that the county had previously kept totally free of development since the abandonment and cancellation of the Northern Arc by the State of Georgia in 2002-2003.
Needless to say, the lack of funding and potential building opposition to the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension means that completing the road will likely be very-challenging, much more challenging than completing the 20-316 portion of the road ever was.
Well people are just gonna have to get over it and do what needs to be done. Personally I don't care how much the people hate tolls, if it gets the road built, toll it up! There's actually way too little tolling going on in comparison to tax money that could go to roads. I don't see any other way to change that unless tax revenues are focused back more towards infrastructure. And I bet you this road would still be heavily used toll or not if it meant having a second option to get in.
Well people are just gonna have to get over it and do what needs to be done. Personally I don't care how much the people hate tolls, if it gets the road built, toll it up! There's actually way too little tolling going on in comparison to tax money that could go to roads. I don't see any other way to change that unless tax revenues are focused back more towards infrastructure. And I bet you this road would still be heavily used toll or not if it meant having a second option to get in.
In light of rapidly-shrinking revenues from traditional transportation funding sources (like sales taxes on fuel and retail items) I completely agree that not enough revenues are collected from user fee sources (like distance-based tolling on roads and distance-based fares on transit).
I also completely agree that a place with a fast-growing population and increasing transportation needs and demands like Georgia (and America in general) needs to invest much more in its critically-important transportation infrastructure.
And I also completely agree that the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension should be funded with tolls (in light of a total lack of other ways to fund the construction and completion of the project on an accelerated timeline), and that the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension will be heavily-used after it is completed.
The only problem is that in this post-Northern Arc political environment where large-scale road construction projects are becoming increasingly-difficult to execute due to rapidly-evaporating public support, the longer that Gwinnett County waits to build the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension, the more difficult it will be to complete the road.
It will particularly be difficult to complete the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension if Gwinnett County lets the land along (and even in) the right-of-way of the proposed road continue to fill up with residential development.
...That's because the more residents living along the proposed right-of-way of the road means that the more residents there will be to oppose the completion of the road before construction can even begin.
However difficult it may be to construct and complete the road at present, it will be even more difficult (and maybe even totally impossible) to construct and complete road in 10-15 more years after the area that the road is proposed to run through fills up with residential development.
The fact that Gwinnett County has taken so much time and continues to take so much time to even start construction on the completion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension in an era when public opinion is rapidly and sharply shifting away from supporting large-scale road construction projects, particularly in the increasingly road construction-averse Atlanta region, makes it appear that the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway likely will never be built at this point.
When the recent series of shady land deal corruption scandals that have happened in Gwinnett County government are added in to the equation, the conditions at this particular point in time just don't seem to be quite right for the 316-PIB portion of the Sugarloaf Parkway Extension to be built and completed in the near-future, if ever.
.... and that has nothing to do with my point or the OP.
If you'd stop pushing your agenda so much sometimes you'd actually look at the original point of the OP and me, which you're completely skipping over.
Yes, everyone who is a regular on this forum knows you only want to be in an older walkable area yada yada yada.
However, the ability to walk from shop to shop isn't the cause or the fix to the traffic problem the OP is addressing.
Once you're there you can drive just about anywhere w/o problem, because you can entirely avoid GA 20 going from store to store using the Blvds that don't connect to anywhere other than the shopping developments.
The problem is battling the GA 20 to get there from I-85, I-985, Buford, or Satellite Blvd.
Not trying to push any agenda here, just trying to present a solution to the congestion by encouraging people to park once and walk between mutliple destintations. This would keep some cars from using the congested roads.
There is no need to rude. I am just trying to get a feeling for the area.
Not trying to push any agenda here, just trying to present a solution to the congestion by encouraging people to park once and walk between mutliple destintations. This would keep some cars from using the congested roads.
There is no need to rude. I am just trying to get a feeling for the area.
But you're not reading the original argument I pitched despite replying to it....
Getting around between multiple destinations once you're there isn't the problem. It is getting in and out of the area on GA 20 that is.
So you haven't addressed the problem or offered a solution to the original problem.... instead you sound like a broken record. And... that isn't being rude.
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.... and that has nothing to do with my point or the OP.
