Should more lanes be added to the downtown connector (Atlanta: 2014, home)

[bu2]

Originally Posted by atler8

No. Absolutely not!
I ride on the connector every day via a commuter bus which also takes me onto various city streets that often overlook or run parallel to the connector. I get a really good look at the space already used for the roadway as well as the adjacent spaces by virtue of my method of transport.
In downtown & in midtown it is not just near the capitol building that it would be virtually impossible to widen the connector but also through multiple other single tight squeeze points & general areas as well.
The stacking of the connector as a relief option should have been seriously investigated by the GDOT decades ago.
FYI: Atlanta did not make the choice in the 1950's as to where the interstate routes would go, by the way. The system was outlined & developed by the federal government & was named The Dwight Eisenhower System for a very good reason.
And what we have today in the form of a combined 85/75 in the city was not done as a means of being "cheap" & to save money. The general lay of the national routes was laid out with what was the best available means of traffic planning that were available then combined w/ state dot input.
I've seen vintage photos & video of the connector showing the old rush hour traffic. The volume was very light then as compared to that of today. So, it effectively served it's original purpose rather well early on.
No one could have ever foreseen the multitude of traffic volume that we know of here today.

Other cities did and didn't combine freeways in the city.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by jsvh

And even larger cities than Atlanta have less freeway lanes or even none at all in the core. What is your point?

Europe is different.

[sedimenjerry]

Originally Posted by afdinatl

I wonder how traffic would be if 75 and 85 didn't combine? They would have been separate but close to each other with 12 lanes for 75 and 12 lanes for 85

Occasionally when there's a wreck on 75SB north of the connector or on 85 SB before or after 400 traffic is dramatically improved on the connector. It's amazing how much better traffic is without just one of those major freeways feeding in. The connector sb to 20 is amazingly bad. It's much longer to go into the city SB than out of the city NB. The problem is all that traffic that needs to get to 20 has just 2 lanes to choose. All those lanes up near 14th street mean nothing because so much traffic has to be reduced to 1 lane. It's the problem that all the major interchanges have. 85SB to 285 backs up from it in the morning. It's a huge reason for 285EB backing up to 85 in the afternoon. It's like a clogged drain. Eventually the backup drains out after 7 pm to nearly 8. That's the problem and I just don't know of any other way to fix it.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

This is an excellent point. Though with the freeway system effectively being built-out both physically and politically, one of the few options that a major metro area like Atlanta has to help traffic flow on major roads like the Downtown Connector is for more money to be invested in improving, upgrading and expanding transit....That's because a high-quality transit network is an absolute necessity in a very large major metro area of 6 million people with an extremely limited road network.

They did enough damage to the city with the construction of the one single 14-16 lane Downtown Connector roadway through densely developed urban neighborhoods. We don't need two 12-lane freeways running through the city side by side. We can't widen freeways forever, particularly through densely developed and densely populated urban neighborhoods. At some point, a very large major metro area/region of 6 million people with extremely limited space for roadways does absolutely critically need to invest in and utilize transit at a high level, particularly after the road network has reached build-out.

Instead of foolishly and futilely attempting to knockdown and destroy more densely developed and populated urban neighborhoods to build more multi-lane freeways, what we need is a better and larger transit system with more train and bus service for the most heavily populated parts of the region. We particularly need much more transit service through the center of the Atlanta metro region (inside of the I-285 Perimeter and parallel to major Interstate and surface routes).


Like some other posters pointed out, it was not Atlanta that routed a multiplexed Downtown Connector through the city. It was the federal and state governments that made the decision to route the road through the city because of a limited amount of funding with which to build the road with and a limited amount of land on which to build the road through the densely developed core of a major urban area.

The same decision to funnel expressway traffic from two interstates onto one roadway through the densely developed core of a major urban area was done in many major cities including:
I'm talking about now-Don't know if you are talking about past-but past is irrelevant because things have changed elsewhere-they don't have 7 miles of the major road running together.
> Minneapolis (Interstates 35W and 94)...less than a mile-also see 35E and 35W

> St. Paul (Interstates 35E and 94)..less than a mile-also see 35E and 35W.

> Dallas (Interstates 30 and 35E)... for about 1/4 mile around downtown

> Birmingham (Interstates 20 and 59)...this is true-its also the smallest city you've got listed

> Nashville (Interstates 24 and 40; Interstates 24 and 65)..for only a couple of miles and Tennessee is the only state that spends less on transportation than Georgia. Knoxville combines 40 and 75 and its one of the worst spots in any city its size.

> Indianapolis (Interstates 65 and 70)...again, less than a mile

> Kansas City (Interstates 35 and 70)...doesn't look like it on the map

> Los Angeles (Interstates 5 and 10)...looks like about a mile-LA is one massive freeway-haven't you heard the songs?

> Cincinnati (Interstates 71 and 75)...actually a Kentucky thing. In Cincinnati, they are together basically just over the bridge. And there is a 471 which is an alternative crossing.

> Chicago where Interstates 90 and 94 (famously or infamously, depending on one's viewpoint) merge and multiplex through the center of Chicago for about 16 miles).Chicago has a massive freeway system and 90/94 are but 1 of many

Chicago is the most notable example of two major mainline transcontinental interstates being merged and multiplexed onto a single roadway for several miles through the heart of very large major metro area.

Chicago is such a notable example because the metro region (with the help of at least two state governments in Illinois and Indiana) has had no choice but to lean heavily on mass transit as an option to driving on its main central arterial expressway road, the I-90/I-94 Dan Ryan/Kennedy Expressway.

If anything, Atlanta's biggest mistake was not knocking down more homes, schools, parks and businesses to build more freeways through densely developed Intown neighborhoods.

Atlanta's biggest mistake was that the State of Georgia did not invest much more in a viable high-capacity transit alternative at the time that the state was building out the then-massive "Freeing-the-Freeways" widening project of the 1980's.


The I-20 interchange was fixed in a major way during the "Freeing-the-Freeways" project of the 1980's when the I-20 interchange was completely rebuilt to eliminate the left-hand exits and merges and the exit and merge ramps were lengthened along with the mainline interstate roadways being widened through the interchange.

At this point, the reality likely is that nothing more can be done to improve traffic flow on the Downtown Connector.

I-20, the I-75/I-85 Downtown Connector and all of the interchanges along the Downtown Connector are effectively built-out, both physically (in terms of a total lack of available land to further expand the road) and politically (all hell would break loose politically if the state even dared to suggest spending what at this point would probably be billions of dollars to knockdown more dense urban development to further expand a roadway that already features as many as 16 lanes in many spots).

So Birmingham is the only city on your list who does anything on the scale of what Atlanta did. Most are very short distances, not 7 miles.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

These are some excellent points.

Though, if the Connector was to have been stacked, it likely would have had to have been stacked back about 30 years ago during the "Freeing-the-Freeways" widening project of the 1980's when the political will to massively expand the freeway system might have still existed and the costs of doing such a project were likely only a fraction of what such a massive freeway expansion project would cost today.

Today, the political will to further expand the Downtown Connector or any major roadway inside of the I-285 Perimeter (and even many roadways outside of the I-285 Perimeter) has basically completely dried up and no longer exists....A political will for freeway expansion that began to dry up in earnest after the successful freeway revolts of the 1960's and '70's against planned freeway construction through Intown neighborhoods in East Atlanta....And a political will for freeway expansion that effectively completely dried up after the controversial expansion of Georgia 400 through Buckhead and the successful pushback against the proposed Outer Perimeter and Northern Arc highways of the late 1990's and early 2000's.

At this point and moving forward, the only expansion of the Downtown Connector or any other roadway that is likely to take place inside of the I-285 Perimeter is the expansion of rail transit service along new and existing rail lines and the expansion of bus service along existing roadways. Any substantial roadway expansions is most likely effectively completely out of the question at this point.

No politician is willing to lead on transportation. Mayor Reed made that point in another thread here.
Many other states have leaders on that issue.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Those roads don't have any more ROW.

Other places don't build roads ONLY where there is vacant land. That is a non-issue. I hear that so much on here and its totally non-sensical.

You may choose not to do it because you don't think its desirable-that's a valid argument, but Atlanta has vast amounts of capability for expanding roads and highways.

[bu2]

Originally Posted by sedimenjerry

Occasionally when there's a wreck on 75SB north of the connector or on 85 SB before or after 400 traffic is dramatically improved on the connector. It's amazing how much better traffic is without just one of those major freeways feeding in. The connector sb to 20 is amazingly bad. It's much longer to go into the city SB than out of the city NB. The problem is all that traffic that needs to get to 20 has just 2 lanes to choose. All those lanes up near 14th street mean nothing because so much traffic has to be reduced to 1 lane. It's the problem that all the major interchanges have. 85SB to 285 backs up from it in the morning. It's a huge reason for 285EB backing up to 85 in the afternoon. It's like a clogged drain. Eventually the backup drains out after 7 pm to nearly 8. That's the problem and I just don't know of any other way to fix it.

The biggest backups on freeways are due to merges. And 75/85 is one of the biggest merges anywhere.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by bu2

Many other states have leaders on that issue.

Michigan's Republican Governor just come out swinging for transportation infrastructure.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by bu2

Other places don't build roads ONLY where there is vacant land. That is a non-issue. I hear that so much on here and its totally non-sensical.

You may choose not to do it because you don't think its desirable-that's a valid argument, but Atlanta has vast amounts of capability for expanding roads and highways.

Where exactly would this capability be?

[jsvh]

Originally Posted by bu2

Europe is different.

There are American cities too. But I challenge your implication that somehow cities and people function different outside the US. The only reason US has so many more freeways is because we subsidized them much more than elsewhere.