75 Southbound before Windy Hill Rd (Atlanta, Albany: safety, suburbs, rated)

[billl]

Originally Posted by samiwas1

God, I hate those stupid intersections.

I hate the construction work needed on Windy Hill to get us there. I have to sit through it every day.

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by PKCorey

I figured as much. It seems to make more sense to do 2 lanes in each direction rather reversal lanes or adding more HOT lanes in the future especially with the issues with traffic on the Southside.

I was in the Mid-Atlantic a couple weeks ago and on the 495 in DMV, they have HOT/HOV lanes on portions of the Capital Beltway in both directions through VA. In Baltimore, they just rebuilt 95/895 area about the same length as the Southside project and they added 2 HOT lanes in each direction.

Do you not get tired of posting the same vitriol over and over? Goodness, relax for once.

Triggered?

[toll_booth]

Originally Posted by Born 2 Roll

netdragon makes an excellent point that the new lanes being added to I-75 are not general purpose lanes but are reversible lanes.

But one thing that should to be noted is that the new reversible lanes being added to I-75 will not be HOT lanes (High Occupancy Toll lanes) like the ones on I-85 Northeast where vehicles with 3 or more occupants ride for free and only the vehicles with 1 or 2 occupants pay variable tolls.

The new reversible lanes being added to Interstates 75 and 575 Northwest will be tolled express lanes where virtually all vehicles will have to pay a toll to use the lanes regardless of the number of occupants.

The only high-occupancy vehicles that will be exempt from having to pay tolls to use the I-75/I-575 express reversible lanes will be public transit buses and registered vanpools. All other vehicles will have to pay variable tolls to use the reversible lanes.

The state appears to have adopted this policy of charging tolls on all vehicles except public transit buses and registered vanpools in the I-75/I-575 Northwest express lanes in an attempt to keep the lanes from being crowded with the excess traffic that free 3+ occupant vehicles seem to have brought to the HOT/HOV-3 lanes on I-85 Northeast.

Well that sucks. Way to reward carpooling, GADOT.

[architect77]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Yes, because adding more lanes has solved our congestion issues in the past; eg: Freeing the Freeways

I am so tired of hearing this.

When "Freeing the Freeways" was completed, metro Atlanta's population was about 2.5 million. So it's doing an incredible job serving 6 million people and counting.

All states want to grow and flourish which means they'll need to ADD CAPACITY to the transportation network.

But, Atlanta doomed itself by only adding lanes to the simple hub and spoke layout of the interstates.

A better solution would have been to build separate new routes that were loosely parallel with the interstates providing alternatives.

Every fender bender and accident affects everyone with our current configuration.

Imagine if we had a competent DOT like Texas, Florida or North Carolina do. We could choose between 3 or 4 ways to get anywhere.

"Solving Congestion" has never in itself been the sole reasoning for widening highways.

[Born 2 Roll]

Originally Posted by toll_booth

Well that sucks. Way to reward carpooling, GADOT.

That's a good point that the disallowance of free 3+ occupant carpools in the I-75/I-575 Northwest express lanes will not do much (if anything) to promote and foster increased carpooling through what is often a severely-congested I-75/I-575 Northwest corridor.

But when the State of Georgia implemented the HOT/HOV-3 lane setup on I-85 Northeast (officially as a demonstration project), they found that permitting 3+ occupant vehicles to ride for free makes it very difficult to keep the lanes moving at the 45 mph average speed that the lanes are supposed to maintain with variable tolls.

Instead of promoting increasing carpooling, the aim of the I-75/I-575 Northwest express lanes seems to be just to keep two lanes passable through a severely-congested corridor that continues to explode with development, population and traffic on an extremely-limited road infrastructure.

The state just basically wants to make sure that those two reversible lanes are kept moving at all times during peak traffic periods, which is most likely why they are making all vehicles pay tolls except public transit buses and registered vanpools.

[Gulch]

Originally Posted by architect77

I am so tired of hearing this.

When "Freeing the Freeways" was completed, metro Atlanta's population was about 2.5 million. So it's doing an incredible job serving 6 million people and counting.

All states want to grow and flourish which means they'll need to ADD CAPACITY to the transportation network.

But, Atlanta doomed itself by only adding lanes to the simple hub and spoke layout of the interstates.

Freeing the Freeways was implemented after a bunch of intown freeway projects (I-485, I-420, and the Stone Mountain Tollway) were killed because the local residents would've seen their neighborhoods decimated. Also, Atlanta doomed itself by having its largest suburban counties reject MARTA.

A better solution would have been to build separate new routes that were loosely parallel with the interstates providing alternatives.

See my first comment. We'd still have just as much congestion if additional intown freeways had been built.

Every fender bender and accident affects everyone with our current configuration.

Fender benders and accidents are never go away no matter how many new roads are added.

Imagine if we had a competent DOT like Texas, Florida or North Carolina do. We could choose between 3 or 4 ways to get anywhere.

How is GDOT "incompetent" for not wiping out neighborhoods just so that suburban commuters might save a few minutes driving to work?

"Solving Congestion" has never in itself been the sole reasoning for widening highways.

Tell that to every state highway department (including ours) pushing that mantra since the end of World War II.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by Gulch

Fender benders and accidents are never go away no matter how many new roads are added.

No, but I don't think you understand just how bad Atlanta is compared with some other metros. I-285 across the northern metro is a prime example. Last week (Thursday?), there was a car fire near Roswell Road that caused eastbound 285 traffic to stall almost all the way back to 75. There are no parallel routes for that, so people traveling in that direction who weren't aware of the accident had no recourse at all once they were past the 75 intersection. That is pretty typical here. One accident can take out that entire interstate for one or two hours.

I drove in the Twin Cities for over 20 years before I came here, and while that type of shutdown was not unheard of, there were almost always parallel routes to take. Multiple parallel routes.

If East/West I-494 through Bloomington has an accident and gets shut down, people can take the Crosstown, or Hwy 7, or even 394 into town and through it. Or 13 on the south side of the river.

If North/South 35W through the center of Minneapolis gets shut down, there is 35 E on the St. Paul side, or highway 100, or US 169, or even 494 around the west side and up.

Atlanta does not have those alternatives. Look at a map and compare the freeway grids. We are way behind here for the population. Most freeways (75/85/20) are spokes into downtown, and the ONLY major road that goes across the suburbs is 285. At least on the north side.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

No, but I don't think you understand just how bad Atlanta is compared with some other metros. I-285 across the northern metro is a prime example. Last week (Thursday?), there was a car fire near Roswell Road that caused eastbound 285 traffic to stall almost all the way back to 75. There are no parallel routes for that, so people traveling in that direction who weren't aware of the accident had no recourse at all once they were past the 75 intersection. That is pretty typical here. One accident can take out that entire interstate for one or two hours.

I drove in the Twin Cities for over 20 years before I came here, and while that type of shutdown was not unheard of, there were almost always parallel routes to take. Multiple parallel routes.

If East/West I-494 through Bloomington has an accident and gets shut down, people can take the Crosstown, or Hwy 7, or even 394 into town and through it. Or 13 on the south side of the river.

If North/South 35W through the center of Minneapolis gets shut down, there is 35 E on the St. Paul side, or highway 100, or US 169, or even 494 around the west side and up.

Atlanta does not have those alternatives. Look at a map and compare the freeway grids. We are way behind here for the population.

But in comparison we are ahead of the Twin Cities in rail transit.

[PKCorey]

Originally Posted by rcsteiner

No, but I don't think you understand just how bad Atlanta is compared with some other metros. I-285 across the northern metro is a prime example. Last week (Thursday?), there was a car fire near Roswell Road that caused eastbound 285 traffic to stall almost all the way back to 75. There are no parallel routes for that, so people traveling in that direction who weren't aware of the accident had no recourse at all once they were past the 75 intersection. That is pretty typical here. One accident can take out that entire interstate for one or two hours.

You have a couple non highway options (Powers Ferry and Heard Ferry) on both sides of 285. 2 lanes so they aren't the best option but what I've used when 285 has been jammed and they feed into other roads to give you various options.

I do agree, pretty much here, you are stuck if they are incidents on the highway. Plenty of times when I worked in your neck of the woods, Google would recommended going down on 75 and coming back up 85 to avoid delays on 285.

[rcsteiner]

Originally Posted by cqholt

But in comparison we are ahead of the Twin Cities in rail transit.

Yes, Atlanta is way ahead of the Twin Cities in rail, but the Twin Cities has better bus and bike systems (it's one of the best metros in the country for bike commuters even in wintertime ... they even PLOW the bike paths when there is snow!).

Both metro areas had comparable (and huge) streetcar networks back in the day.

I should also add that the Twin Cities has plans. The fact that they have two cities connected to the airport by LRT already in roughly 12 years shows that metro can move quickly when it wants to. Here is a future map: