Mayor Reed: "time has come" for $12.8 million pedestrian bridge over Northside Drive (SLIDESHOW) (Atlanta: landscaping, neighborhoods)

[Forhall]

This isn't a big deal, stop complaining. It's a cool looking little bridge that might reduce some pedestrian congestion during games. Don't complain about EVERYTHING the city does. There's nothing wrong with having a neat architectural bridge in the area. Unique things like that add to a city's character. We don't have to copy every other city's way of being urban - maybe Atlanta's way is unique. In this case, designing a bridge rather than a crosswalk.

[bmw335xi]

It looks like a beautiful bridge though.

[arjay57]

Originally Posted by onemanarmy

Several reasons.

1. The cost, I'm assuming this bridge will end up costing double to construct and more in maintenance.

2. The walk, it's god awful long to get from one side the next, when you can just cross the street in maybe 30 yards. This truly a bridge to NO WHERE.

3. It won't save ANY residence lives, because it will only be used during events. I'm assuming that there will not be permanent barriers on this section of Northside drive, only temp fences. So residence will just dart across the street.

4. Urban design, if you can't make a new street pedestrian friendly, you have a design problem. Northside was design with a flaw that needed a pedestrian bridge to make it safe. Think about... a newly design road is unsafe...

Those are durn good points, especially nos. 3 and 4. This bridge is an awkward way to get across the street. Why not simply make Northside drive more pedestrian friendly?

As I recall the Peachtree boulevard project in Buckhead cost about $22 million, funded mainly by GDOT and the Buckhead CID. If you could get GDOT, the downtown CID, Arthur Blank and/or the Westside TAD to throw in some money on top of this $13 million from the city, you could really work wonders.

[fourthwarden]

Originally Posted by onemanarmy

Several reasons.

1. The cost, I'm assuming this bridge will end up costing double to construct and more in maintenance.

2. The walk, it's god awful long to get from one side the next, when you can just cross the street in maybe 30 yards. This truly a bridge to NO WHERE.

3. It won't save ANY residence lives, because it will only be used during events. I'm assuming that there will not be permanent barriers on this section of Northside drive, only temp fences. So residence will just dart across the street.

4. Urban design, if you can't make a new street pedestrian friendly, you have a design problem. Northside was design with a flaw that needed a pedestrian bridge to make it safe. Think about... a newly design road is unsafe...

We're gonna be rebuilding Northside again anyway for MARTA's Bus Rapid Transit line, might as well go full complete street with it. Save the money we'd have spent on the bridge for better pedestrian facilities in general, if we can.

Originally Posted by arjay57

Those are durn good points, especially nos. 3 and 4. This bridge is an awkward way to get across the street. Why not simply make Northside drive more pedestrian friendly?

As I recall the Peachtree boulevard project in Buckhead cost about $22 million, funded mainly by GDOT and the Buckhead CID. If you could get GDOT, the downtown CID, Arthur Blank and/or the Westside TAD to throw in some money on top of this $13 million from the city, you could really work wonders.

Yeup. I'd be much more interested in what can be done with the streetscape given this much money.

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by fourthwarden

We're gonna be rebuilding Northside again anyway for MARTA's Bus Rapid Transit line, might as well go full complete street with it. Save the money we'd have spent on the bridge for better pedestrian facilities in general, if we can.



Yeup. I'd be much more interested in what can be done with the streetscape given this much money.

I agree, when you build pedestrian bridges, it's a sign of giving up on making the road safe for peds and showing vehicles won. Northside Dr can stand to be stopped for 120 seconds at a time while crowds cross, it's not an interstate highway carrying commerce.

[primaltech]

I would be far less opposed to this bridge, if it was just, simply, a bridge. This "curly-Q" design is awful looking, and pointless. Crossing the damn street would take a fraction of the time as walking around 2 big loops in the air.

[MattCW]

Originally Posted by primaltech

I would be far less opposed to this bridge, if it was just, simply, a bridge. This "curly-Q" design is awful looking, and pointless. Crossing the damn street would take a fraction of the time as walking around 2 big loops in the air.

Would you prefer maintenance-intensive elevators alongside a steeper slope to comply with ADA requirements?

[ATLTJL]

Northside Dr can stand to be stopped for 120 seconds at a time while crowds cross, it's not an interstate highway carrying commerce.

I take it you have never had the joy of working in an office that is located near a venue like this. So let me enlighten you: pedestrians crossing the street can tie you up for 10, 20, and even 30 minutes if the police directing traffic don't know what they're doing.

Think about where this venue is and how many nearby buildings need to conduct some semblance of normal business while events are going on (not to mention emergency vehicles).

Events tie up things for WAY MORE than 120 seconds. This is just spoken by someone who has never had to get to work or get home while an event is happening.

With your logic, why do we even have a Beltline? We already had a network of sidewalks, who needs right of way?

If this was some new bridge to expand that project, you all would be all about it.

[cwkimbro]

I think the negative reaction to this has been an over-reaction.

I do blame the city for bad/false messaging. It was a large mistake for this project to ever have been called something for the communities further west. It is clearly for moving mass crowds to and from the stadium across the largest North-South arterial alignment the city has on the westside.

I agree with many of the criticisms when it comes to people's day to day lives. Most people are best just crossing the street at street level.

Now here is where I disagree. This is an area of mass-events, not just the new stadium. It is also Phillips Arena and the entire the GWCC complex nearby.

Whenever the area holds large events there are also moments of peak surges in traffic, pedestrians, and everything. These two surges also hold up both pedestrian and car traffic During those time periods a bridge is the best way to separate the surge of crowds from the surge of car, bus, and truck traffic associated with these events. People are conveniently quiet about this.

I also believe locals will find a few times during the year the bridge is a better way to go, largely from the large events.

What I will fault about the design.... The curly Q on the west is the main way to go to maintain ADA compliance, but the design on the stadium side to the east suffers from this project being an afterthought and the stadium design did not incorporate it.

I feel like the eastern side could be a sloping ramp that goes further east, furthermore it could have been a part of a mini viaduct that met the concourse level of the stadium on the eastern side and the Viaduct that is the at the GWCC/Phillips over the railroad tracks.

Now the problem is that would be more expensive and the stadium design would need to be slightly different and they would still need to build a ramp down to the eastern side of Northside Drive.

This is hardly going to stop or hinder good urbanism in this part of town. This is not anti-urban in the least. It also does not stop the number of other crosswalks across Northside Drive. It is opening up a pedestrian option that will mostly likely only be a pedestrian mandate at peak event moments. Furthermore, the only purpose for cross the street right there is going to the stadium of the GWCC. If someone is walking to Downtown from there, they really need to walk a bit further south. So nothing about this bridge is anti-crosswalk or deterring people from using crosswalks on a day to day basis.

It is, however, about crowd/traffic management during key peak periods. It is about preventing a large mass of continuous pedestrians from holding up cars for prolonged periods of time and about preventing cars from holding up pedestrians for prolonged periods of time. It isn't going to nowhere. It is a longer walk, but without it thousands of pedestrians will be waiting longer than the time it takes to walk it for a traffic cop to stop traffic and let them cross. Inversely, the same thing for cars waiting on pedestrians. It is also about helping split up the passenger load on the MARTA stations.

[primaltech]

Originally Posted by MattCW

Would you prefer maintenance-intensive elevators alongside a steeper slope to comply with ADA requirements?

Fine, well. If this ugly, indirect, sky-monstrosity is the only ADA-legal way they can design a bridge (or having elevators, which is even stupider), then I prefer that the bridge idea be scrapped entirely.

As others have said, 2 of these 6 car lanes are planned to be converted to bus-only, anyway. So how about at least for this one-block stretch, put in wide, colored pedestrian crossing, and a special red light cycle on game days, that gives plenty of time for lots of people to cross. As well as have a crossing guard watching.

This isn't even the main MARTA station for the stadium, anyway. This is a bridge to the second-closest MARTA station, while the closest station- the main one people will use- is literally right there at the stadium.

Ridiculous, all around. Like I said, this would be somewhat understandable for the Braves in Cobb, but this is supposed to be the pedestrian-friendly core of the city.

It's actually ironic, here, because if the city is favoring cars over pedestrians, then why build a pedestrian bridge? If the city's apparent goal is to maximize car travel speed and capacity on Northside Dr for people to get to the football/soccer games, don't they realize all those people will not have any use for this bridge?