ATLANTA TRANSIT (Marta, Beltline, Peachtree Streetcar, LovJoy Commuter, etc...)

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by Teshadoh

^ Damn you, I should have thought of that nickname for Perdue before.

LOL Brad!

I have all of my friends calling him that now. The one exception is my friend Barb from Charlotte - who still insists on Sonny Bubba. She has a great idea for a bumper sticker with his fat face and the slogan "Kiss my Bass."

[atlantaguy]

Originally Posted by smArTaLlone

I love the plan to reconfigure the freeway interchanges like the one in Midtown. West Peachtree is little more than a freeway ramp in that area.

I absolutely LOVE this idea. This was actually my favorite part of the plan, along with all of the streetcars being proposed.

[jew4life4948]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

I absolutely LOVE this idea. This was actually my favorite part of the plan, along with all of the streetcars being proposed.

During the Committee Meetings they gave us all this info about Freedom Parkway.

How the ramps were built before the project we decommissioned, so they want to reconfigure those into intersections, which will free up A LOT of space apparently.

[atlantaguy]

Yeah, I saw that and loved that aspect of this plan too. Actually, all of the original ramps are gone from when they widened the Connector back in the late 80's/early 90's, but the ones you see now do follow pretty much what was there previously - just a bit more intricate than before.

The first thing I thought of when looking at the redesign for Midtown and Freedom Parkway was Andrea. She may finally get at least PART of her urban boulevard system she has been dreaming of.

[Andrea]

That does look great!

[sabino86]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

The first thing I thought of when looking at the redesign for Midtown and Freedom Parkway was Andrea. She may finally get at least PART of her urban boulevard system she has been dreaming of.

Who'da thunk it?

[Andrea]

Buzackly. Heh!

[jew4life4948]

Is Buford Highway a State Route?

I know State Routes are harder to reconfigure since they're under GDOT.

Also, the Connect Atlanta Plan wants to remove the reversible lane on Northside Drive. ND was originally conceived to be a western counterpart to I-475, which luckily never got built.

I wonder how stubborn GDOT will be during these changes.

[Andrea]

It's a state highway but maybe the DOT would go along with it since the Buford Highway Multimodal Corridor is already in the works.

It would be nice to see the GA400/I-85 interchange completed, too. That was finally included in the Connect Atlanta plan as well, but of course money is, as always, a major hurdle.

[dante2308]

Originally Posted by atlantaguy

I absolutely LOVE this idea. This was actually my favorite part of the plan, along with all of the streetcars being proposed.

I'm not so enthused. The idea of getting rid of the one-ways has always suggested a slower progression of traffic in the area especially during rush hour and at intersections. How is this supposed to help congestion exactly? The entire plan seems driven to slow people down. Even pedestrians have an harder time crossing two way streets.

Considering that Buford Highway is the only access to I-85 north or North Avenue (20 blocks), how exactly does it help to have people trying to get on the highway for another couple blocks? As it is I have to go into the center of Midtown every time I want to go to a suburb. It isn't like I want to. I would love to enter the highway at 10th, 14th, 17th, or even 5th and never have to touch West Peachtree Street. This plan has me weaving through midtown on thinner roads through more stoplights for no apparent benefit.

The only road with traffic problems in Midtown is Peachtree Street itself and that is exactly because it is a two-way road in the center of everything. Every parallel road is fine.

If this is some kind of plan to benefit the locals, as a local, I say it clearly does not. Maybe we should try to add access to 85 at 14th street through the center of the bridge if we wanted West Peachtree to stop being a long onramp.

[Andrea]

Dante, you are such a naysayer sometimes. It's not hard to cross a two way street if you have proper crosswalks and modern signals!! And you're darn tooting, the idea is to get people to slow down rather than simply using Midtown as a drag strip the way they do now. If people want to drive fast, get on the damn interstate or go out in the suburbs. If they want to drive in the city, slow down.

However, I completely agree with you about the lack of access to the Connector. It's absurd to have to drive 14 blocks south just to turn around and go north.

[smArTaLlone]

Its not a matter of lack of access to the interstate. It has to do with the merging of two interstates into one which limits your options for reaching 85 N the further north you are in the city.

But heaven forbid anyone have to drive 20 blocks in order to drive 20 miles (or more) out to the suburbs.

Maybe its just me but when faced with the choice of creating a more walkable, more livable city versus making interstate access the priority, I'll choose the walkable city every time.

[jew4life4948]

This map only shows W. Peachtree being augmented between 17th and Peachtree Circle. So that may only add one additional stoplight and the curved road will slow down traffic.

This'll add what 3 minutes to use W. Peachtree to get out of the city?

Honestly it gets to a point to how much I want to infringe upon my lifestyle to cater to suburban commuters.

It's bad enough 16th Street serves as a high speed offramp for 75 South. That alone is utterly ridiculous, but I digress.

[dante2308]

Originally Posted by smArTaLlone

Its not a matter of lack of access to the interstate. It has to do with the merging of two interstates into one which limits your options for reaching 85 N the further north you are in the city.

But heaven forbid anyone have to drive 20 blocks in order to drive 20 miles (or more) out to the suburbs.

Maybe its just me but when faced with the choice of creating a more walkable, more livable city versus making interstate access the priority, I'll choose the walkable city every time.

It's not about interstate access versus livable environments per say. What this is about is increasing congestion in the heart of the city by making it harder for people to get out of our core and on to where they need to go. I would love for there to be no congestion within Midtown and I don't think it helps to make it difficult for people who live or work here to get around. The whole purpose of the highway was to concentrate all the intercity traffic on a single corridor and off the surface streets. This plan does the opposite. People still need to go places but now they have to go 20 blocks through highly congested "livable" areas.

As it is, for some reason it's almost stupid to drive to Lindbergh from Midtown without using Buford and the two areas practically border each other. Part of being livable is the ability to simply run your errands without running into hundreds of thousands of people trying their darnedest to get on a highway with no onramp for what could be five whole miles!

This plan does absolutely nothing to improve traffic or livability.

[dante2308]

Originally Posted by jew4life4948

This map only shows W. Peachtree being augmented between 17th and Peachtree Circle. So that may only add one additional stoplight and the curved road will slow down traffic.

This'll add what 3 minutes to use W. Peachtree to get out of the city?

Honestly it gets to a point to how much I want to infringe upon my lifestyle to cater to suburban commuters.

It's bad enough 16th Street serves as a high speed offramp for 75 South. That alone is utterly ridiculous, but I digress.

Actually, thats not true. It turns the five lane one-way West Peachtree Street into a two lane road going towards Buford. The traffic impact would be enormous. We're talking 30 minutes at least which means 30 more minutes every commuter occupies space on my roads.

As I said, it's not about the suburbs versus the city. I live here and I would very much appreciate it if the suburbanites were on their highways and off my streets. With the bridges down, it is currently almost impossible to cross over the highway from Georgia Tech on 10th during rush hour.

I can't even imagine what having a stoplight immediately after a highway does for congestion. Thats why they usually filter these things into more than one road or make one ways. This plan has absolutely no one in mind.

Let me offer an alternative: You make a livable environment just like the plan shows but you allow access to 85 at 17th street. Then Buford would only host traffic coming from between 20th and 17th instead of north of 5th Street. The plan as it is just makes it impossible to get around for everyone and until there is a single housing unit in that area, I don't see it causing an up shoot in walkablility. Better yet, ad a ramp at 14th too.

[dante2308]

Originally Posted by Andrea

Dante, you are such a naysayer sometimes. It's not hard to cross a two way street if you have proper crosswalks and modern signals!! And you're darn tooting, the idea is to get people to slow down rather than simply using Midtown as a drag strip the way they do now. If people want to drive fast, get on the damn interstate or go out in the suburbs. If they want to drive in the city, slow down.

However, I completely agree with you about the lack of access to the Connector. It's absurd to have to drive 14 blocks south just to turn around and go north.

Ah, but what if people want to get on the damn interstate, but are in the city. There in lies the problem. Also, this doesn't slow people down, it gridlocks them. Bad for the environment.

Pedestrians really have no trouble with one-way roads. Zero. You can't even complain about them. At intersections you just can't get hit by people turning. I still need to know who that plan benefits. Why not just add landscaping and wider sidewalks?

[Andrea]

All new urbanists know that converting back to two-way streets is the way to go.

It's about taming the automobile. One way streets were created to facilitate fast auto traffic. We don't want that in our cities. We want drivers to poke along, to stop at the shops and restaurants, and to yield to cyclists and pedestrians, rather than speeding rapidly from Point A to Point B. We want on street parking as well, since that slows down cars and provides a buffer to people on the sidewalks.

Hopefully, people will be deterred from driving in the city, and will choose transit instead. Take those cars out in the suburbs and leave them there, or at least use a park and ride on the edges of town when you need to come into the city.

I can tell you right now that walking or biking down Spring Street or West Peachtree is a pretty scary experience. They are car streets. Compare them to Peachtree, which is much more of a pedestrian street.

[GTviajero81]

I think that if one looks at the whole picture this will actually be helpful. Considering that Midtown Atlanta literally has only five N-S thoroughfares (Spring, W. Peachtree, Peachtree, Juniper, Piedmont), reclaiming our two western streets is wonderful! Also, if I am not mistaken isn't there to be a new ramp from Midtown onto the Connector at 14th? If people are so afraid of congestion then get out of the damn vehicle and take the train or bus! Once again this is a case with dealing with the hand that we have been dealt -- i.e., enhanced pedestrian ambiance and urban connectivity is more important than freeing up important roads for the purposes of commuters. Currently West Peachtree is truly a beautiful, urban thoroughfare -- arguably one of the most urban vistas in the city when looking southbound at 10th -- yet this view is hardly noticed as it runs one-way northbound. The 15-mph experience is much more appealing and appropriate for the centre-city than the 35-50mph (this IS Atlanta, after all) experience.

As a matter of fact, many cities that have freeways through their centres reduce the amount of exit/on-ramps onto these freeways; reference the Centre-Ville of Montréal, where the Autoroute Ville-Marie which is actually a tunnel through most of downtown Montréal, has very few access-points into the city. If one is driving into the city, then as a city that is densifying then we have to expect that congestion of the vehicular kind will only get worse. Therefore this may prompt those who must come into the city to pursue other methods. Now the true piéce de resistance would be a concurrent enhancement of the public trans system (which seems closer to fruition under the new Administration's goals). Many complain that Atlanta is just not walkable: well then why not try to change some things to fix that instead of keeping the status quo ante?

[jew4life4948]

I believe it to be a true miracle that Connect Atlanta and Concept3 were approved right before the largest public works investment in the past 50 years.

[Andrea]

Yeah, but I would not think Georgia or its legislative delegation is exactly on Obama's short list of places for handing out money. We just elected a Senator by a landslide who campaigned on a platform of keeping Obama in check. And one of our congressmen called him uppity.