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Old 05-13-2015, 11:53 AM
 
10,331 posts, read 11,311,733 times
Reputation: 7679

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Quote:
Originally Posted by alco89 View Post
On a normal weekday, it's not quite as bad as Gwinnett. The difference is the weekends when you have all the travelers heading to or from Florida. I can't even count how many times I've sat in traffic there on Fridays and Sundays. I-85 in Gwinnett doesn't really have that....or the sheer amount of lanes probably allow weekend travelers to be overlooked.
This is an excellent point.

It is the very high volume of interstate and transcontinental vacation/tourist/resort traffic heading to and from Florida, as well as the growing volumes of truck traffic heading to and from the Port of Savannah (and Florida) that makes traffic very sluggish on I-75 south of the I-675 interchange through Henry County....Even on weekends and especially around and during holiday and vacation periods.

There is actually a section of the Interstate system in Southern California that deals with some logistical challenges that are somewhat very similar to the logistical challenges that I-75 deals with south of the I-675 interchange in Henry County.

That section of the Interstate system in Southern California that deals with some logistical challenges that are somewhat very similar to the ones seen on I-75 in Henry County is along Interstate 5 in Orange County, California where a "Y-shaped" interchange similar to the one at Interstates 75 and 675 is formed at the junction of Interstates 5 and 405 south of Los Angeles.

This interchange is known as "The El Toro Y" interchange where very heavy southbound traffic from both the I-5 and 405 roadways merge into one roadway on southbound I-5 heading towards San Diego.

By the early 1990's the El Toro Y had become one of the most-congested interchanges on the entire planet....So Caltrans (the California Department of Transportation) executed a massive $166 million (probably about $500-800 million in 2015 dollars) reconstruction of the interchange through the mid 1990's that expanded Interstate 5 from 12 lanes to as many as 26 lanes in width just south of the I-5/I-405 interchange.

GDOT (the Georgia Department of Transportation) most likely is NOT going to double the width of the I-75 roadway south of I-675 anytime soon, if ever, to accommodate the increasing volumes of traffic south of the Y-shaped I-75/I-675 interchange.

The best that we can hope for from GDOT and the State of Georgia are the reversible toll lanes that are being put in place along I-75 south of the Y-shaped I-75/I-675 interchange which basically merges heavy southbound traffic from the 2 southbound lanes on I-675 and the 4 southbound lanes on I-75 down into one 3-4 lane directional roadway south of the I-75/I-675 interchange.

Maybe even somewhere down the line we will get some kind of high-capacity transit (bus or rail...something substantially more than the very-limited express bus service there now) implemented in the I-75 South corridor through Henry County....But for the time being (and for the foreseeable future), reversible toll lanes are the only thing that we will getting in and through that increasingly congested corridor anytime soon.
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Old 05-13-2015, 12:32 PM
 
142 posts, read 166,592 times
Reputation: 194
I think it is BS that this is the best they will do. I don't think they need to double the width, but at a minimum they should be adding an additional non-pay lane in both directions. I-75 literally bottlenecks through Henry County with only 3 lanes in each direction. Forsyth (south of Henry Co.) has 4 lanes each direction, then it narrows down to 3 lanes through Henry. I think it goes back and forth between 3-4 lanes between 675 and 285 and does not open to 5 lanes until 285. Meanwhile, there are 5-7 lanes northbound of the perimeter to 575 and 4 lanes to Kennesaw. Peachtree city area of 85 has at least 4 free lanes. This bottleneck causes major delay and headache, not just for the locals but the masses that use 75. It needs to be resolved by making it 4 free lanes in each direction from 285 south through at least Locust Grove if not all the way to Forsyth. I think it is totally insufficient to add a reversible toll lane that can only be accessed at certain points and only by drivers with a peach pass (meaning its no help in regard to the bazillion out of state travelers who converge on Atlanta from every direction and then all take 75 south to Florida). DOT is putting a bandaid on this problem (while lining its pockets of course), and local leaders failed to advocate for a better solution.
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Old 05-16-2015, 05:38 PM
 
Location: Undeveloped Columbia County
212 posts, read 237,127 times
Reputation: 69
Couldn't agree with you more GA5mom. I hate toll lanes. They should add more free lanes. I get that it isn't just about the money, but it bothers me that their solution requires commuters to pay daily.
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Old 05-16-2015, 10:06 PM
 
Location: Georgia
4,209 posts, read 4,699,997 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GA5mom View Post
I think it is BS that this is the best they will do. I don't think they need to double the width, but at a minimum they should be adding an additional non-pay lane in both directions. I-75 literally bottlenecks through Henry County with only 3 lanes in each direction. Forsyth (south of Henry Co.) has 4 lanes each direction, then it narrows down to 3 lanes through Henry. I think it goes back and forth between 3-4 lanes between 675 and 285 and does not open to 5 lanes until 285. Meanwhile, there are 5-7 lanes northbound of the perimeter to 575 and 4 lanes to Kennesaw. Peachtree city area of 85 has at least 4 free lanes. This bottleneck causes major delay and headache, not just for the locals but the masses that use 75. It needs to be resolved by making it 4 free lanes in each direction from 285 south through at least Locust Grove if not all the way to Forsyth. I think it is totally insufficient to add a reversible toll lane that can only be accessed at certain points and only by drivers with a peach pass (meaning its no help in regard to the bazillion out of state travelers who converge on Atlanta from every direction and then all take 75 south to Florida). DOT is putting a bandaid on this problem (while lining its pockets of course), and local leaders failed to advocate for a better solution.
Honestly, it should really be 4 lanes all the way to Macon. (With maybe a fifth hot lane).
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Old 05-17-2015, 12:12 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
5,618 posts, read 5,878,001 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by demonta4 View Post
Honestly, it should really be 4 lanes all the way to Macon. (With maybe a fifth hot lane).
There is so much traffic between Atlanta and Macon, especially during spring break season. Every day I'd check out traffic and there were red spots up and down that stretch.
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Old 05-17-2015, 01:03 PM
 
Location: Atlanta
9,818 posts, read 7,815,355 times
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I got tired of the I-75 grind to Florida years ago. It got so bad one Thanksgiving weekend that I pulled off in Valdosta and got a room.

We only fly down there now. It's worth every penny to us.
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Old 05-20-2015, 01:18 PM
 
2 posts, read 1,906 times
Reputation: 18
I live in Mcdonough as well....but I think part of the issue is that McDonough residents use 75 to go from one road to another. We do this because the roads have all been developed to go East to West....with very little way to travel North/South without 75. Someone on Hudson Bridge that wants to get to 3 Dollar Cafe would probably merge onto 75 there and then again on the way back...there are no really good alternatives. If the city/county would do some work on a viable North/South surface street, it would to wonders for the traffic on 75. Have you ever tried to take Willow/Oak Grove road instead of taking 75? Your better off sitting in the traffic.
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Old 05-20-2015, 02:13 PM
 
Location: Ca$hville via Atlanta
2,426 posts, read 2,444,408 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by serialdata View Post
I live in Mcdonough as well....but I think part of the issue is that McDonough residents use 75 to go from one road to another. We do this because the roads have all been developed to go East to West....with very little way to travel North/South without 75. Someone on Hudson Bridge that wants to get to 3 Dollar Cafe would probably merge onto 75 there and then again on the way back...there are no really good alternatives. If the city/county would do some work on a viable North/South surface street, it would to wonders for the traffic on 75. Have you ever tried to take Willow/Oak Grove road instead of taking 75? Your better off sitting in the traffic.

Excellent Point
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Old 05-20-2015, 02:59 PM
 
10,331 posts, read 11,311,733 times
Reputation: 7679
Quote:
Originally Posted by serialdata View Post
I live in Mcdonough as well....but I think part of the issue is that McDonough residents use 75 to go from one road to another. We do this because the roads have all been developed to go East to West....with very little way to travel North/South without 75. Someone on Hudson Bridge that wants to get to 3 Dollar Cafe would probably merge onto 75 there and then again on the way back...there are no really good alternatives. If the city/county would do some work on a viable North/South surface street, it would to wonders for the traffic on 75. Have you ever tried to take Willow/Oak Grove road instead of taking 75? Your better off sitting in the traffic.
Quote:
Originally Posted by oobanks View Post
Excellent Point
I agree with oobanks that serialdata makes some excellent points about the need for increased north-south intra-county connectivity within Henry County so that local residents will not be so dependent upon I-75 for local trips.

But even with increased north-south connectivity within Henry County, severe traffic congestion on I-75 would still be a problem.

That's because I-75 is part of a MAJOR north-south transcontinental transportation corridor that carries much transcontinental shipping, resort and vacation traffic between the Midwest/Great Lakes and Florida. I-75 also carries much shipping traffic to and from the very fast-growing international seaport at the Port of Savannah as well as carrying much regional and commuter traffic to and from Atlanta during peak hours.

All of that regional, interstate and transcontinental traffic and the continuing growth in volume on an I-75 roadway that has not grown in volume along with the increasing Interstate traffic is the major reason that I-75 South through Henry County often sees so much severe traffic congestion and even outright gridlock.

The only major thing that could likely truly be done to alleviate the intensity of the severe traffic congestion along I-75 through Henry County would be to widen the I-75 roadway to at least 14-16 lanes (at least 7 lanes in each direction) just south of the I-675 split/merge interchange.

...And, as has been demonstrated in the past with the massive widenings of Interstates 75 and 85 on the Northside back in the 1980's and 1990's, widening the road to 14-16 lanes would likely only serve to attract more traffic as it did on the Northside to the point to where the 14-16 lane sections of highway on the Northside are frequently gridlocked during peak traffic hours.

The filling up of newly-constructed travel lanes with traffic and gridlock is one of the major reasons why (in addition to an acutely severe lack of road construction funds and sky-high land acquisition costs) the Georgia Department of Transportation is increasingly extremely reluctant to add new un-tolled general purpose lanes to Atlanta-area freeways and has instead turned to only building new through lanes with variable tolls on them....Because the newly-constructed un-tolled general purpose lanes just seem to fill up with traffic and gridlock shortly after they are built.

At this point in time, because of the increasingly severe lack of transportation funding and because of the lack of political will for the government to keep acquiring private property so that new lanes can keep being added to major roadways, the focus for the state has shifted to attempting to make sure that any new through lanes that are added to Atlanta-area freeways can be kept free of gridlock....And the only way to ensure that new freeway lanes don't become gridlocked (often shortly after they are built) is to place exorbitantly-high variable tolls on each new through lane that is built.


Because the state is short on transportation money and because the public is short on political will to keep expanding highways to accommodate growing volumes of traffic, the only new through lanes that we will most likely see built on freeways from here on out will most likely be toll lanes like the variable toll lanes being built on Interstate 75 north and south of Atlanta.

Because the population of the Atlanta region has exploded over the last 2-3 decades and continues to grow at a relatively extremely high rate while the amount of road space pretty much stays the same, the road space that we all used to take for granted has now become an increasingly valuable commodity that we all likely going to have to pay more and more to use.

Welcome to the big leagues, folks! These toll lanes (which will be exorbitantly high to use during peak traffic hours) are here to stay and are only the beginning of the rising (and spiking) transportation costs that are to come.
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Old 04-11-2016, 03:25 PM
 
Location: Ca$hville via Atlanta
2,426 posts, read 2,444,408 times
Reputation: 2209
This project is over Halfway Complete, can't believe Time flew by that quick. Jodeco Crossing is Also in the works which is Exciting news. Dramatic Changes are coming to the South Suburbs, just hoping the Express Lanes really relieve this Traffic.
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