How about some non-tolled, non-express lanes otherwise known as "roads."
Anyone in gubbermunt remember those?
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I don’t mind the new tolled lanes.
Want free? There’s all the lanes that were there. Plenty, shared by everyone else wanting free.
Want speed? Congestion-free is available for the supply-and-demand going rate. Toll is set at whatever discourages congestion. Those fees go back to maintenance, reducing taxes for the whole road.
Especially some that bypass the hellhole of Atlanta far enough out that the locals won’t tie them up.
“How about some non-tolled, non-express lanes otherwise known as “roads.””
You should see the reaction here when politicians propose raising the gas tax for just that purpose.
So this is all we’re ever going to get...
“roads.” Anyone in gubbermunt remember those?
The achilles heel of government central planning is that central planners impress each other with the biggest shiny object. Atlanta could almost double its capacity with just a few, cheap, small changes.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS: Cooper, a dead end street with 2 houses has a traffic light at Fulton. Busy Fulton St traffic has to wait 60 of every 120 seconds for that light. I have yet to see a single car on Cooper.
Heavy traffic Briarcliff traffic waits 60 out of 240 seconds for The-By-Way and 60 out of 240 seconds for Stillwood, 100 ft South of The-By-Way and those lights are not sequenced with each other. Just 1 out of 10 times a car uses The-By-Way green light and 1 out of 5 times a car uses the Stillwood green light.
Recently a few lights have been turned to blinking orange on the heavy traffic street and blinking red on the street with almost no traffic. Unfortunately, Georgia drivers have no clue what blinking red or orange lights mean.
Throughout the entire Atlanta metro area, the placement and timing of traffic lights makes no sense at all. Intelligent use of traffic lights could increase traffic flow by 20%. Cheap and easy to do.
SIGNAGE: A highway or expressway will come to a fork in the road. The signs to take the right fork are on the left side of the road and vice versa. At the last minute, people in the far left lane will suddenly realize that they are in the wrong lane and will cut across 2 or 5 middle lanes to get to the lane they really want.
The busiest surface road near my house has 4 names in 1/2 mile. Almost every street that goes for more than 1/2 mile changes its name in the middle. Moreland-Briarcliff, Boulevard-Monroe, Pryor-Park, Aaron-Capitol-Capital-Piedmont, Juniper-Courtland-Washington, DeKalb-Decatur-Marietta.
The GPS is typically 30+ seconds behind the change in name of a street. A moving car encounters a street changing its name twice in 60 seconds, which means the GPS is always wrong. You can see numerous drivers looking at their GPS and not watching where they are driving .... or stopping in the middle of the street trying to figure out where they are because the GPS does not match the street signs.
Atlanta metro has many of us immigrants from the Rust Belt. It takes us extra long to figure out where we are and how to get from point A to point B. We clog traffic. But it isn’t just us. Plenty of Georgians haven’t memorized all the street name changes.
Before the top officers of Amazon or some other firm come to town to decide whether to locate here, the assistants come. They rent cars and try to drive around town to get from their hotel to their various meetings. They encounter the ignorant mess that is Atlanta traffic...ignornant mess that is obviously cheap to improve, yet not improved. It must make a negative impression on them.
More observations. Atlanta is clearly going to grow East-West at Mid-town and Downtown. Clearly Freedom Parkway must go under Boulevard so the traffic on neither is stopped. Freedom Parkway could easily go Beyond Moreland to enter Clifton North of Ponce and to enter Ponce East of Clifton. This would greatly relieve the East side, which seems to be adding a thousand apartments per month.
Apartments added to Memorial seem to be 300 per month. Memorial could be cheaply widened to 5 lanes, 4 driving lanes plus a center turn lane. But the longer this is delayed, the more expensive and disruptive it will become.
Clearly the Westside will expand. Clearly a connector needs to be built as a bi-level expressway along the West side of Benz. It would extend on the south to I20 and a Southbound exit beyond I20 and the possibility of future extension farther South beyond I20.
Of course, this Westside Connector would have ramps directly into Benz and Gulch parking lots.
To the North of Benz it would be bi-level and follow the Railroad tracks West of Marietta and Howell Mill north to I75. A branch would follow the Railroad Tracks north of 17th and then up to I85 to relieve the I85 traffic before the I85-I75 merge. If Cobb county can afford their new skybridge, then this Atlanta connector can be afforded.
Southbound at the merge of I75 HOV and I85 HOV there is a grassy median that leads to 17th Street. An exit should be built from both HOV lanes to a new bridge parallel to and North of 17th Street Bridge. That new bridge should then lead over 17th Street to Spring St and also double back to Northbound Peachtree.
All of the above demonstrates something else that is true nationwide.
Hang MISSION ACCOMPLISHED on Ike’s interstate system. What is now needed is maintenance and short connectors. That is best done by state and local government, not by government Central Planners in the Beltway in a new SHOVEL READY program that is given some new name.
Abolish the Federal Department of Transportation.
Abolish all Federal Energy, Utility and transportation taxes. Tell each tax collector (typically the energy company) to send the Federal tax directly to the state in which collected for a 5 year transition period.
The states have 5 years to replace (or not) the federal taxes with state taxes.
Bold plans are not to do more of the same central planning. Bold plans are to decentralize central planning.