Burying The Traffic Problem
Decatur Metro | February 24, 2009Wheatley points out that House Resolution 201, which proposes a 1-cent statewide sales tax for transportation uses (not to be confused with the Senate bill that allows counties and regions to implement a local 1-cent tax), includes a project that just makes me want to type really unpleasant words in no specific order.
Subterranean highways. Under neighborhoods like Va-Hi, Morningside, East Atlanta, Midtown, Cabbagetown.
Yep! Just like the Big Dig! The same Big Dig that’s cost is forcing Massachusetts to raise its gas tax to the highest in the nation so it can attempt to offset an impending $19 billion deficit? Yep! That’s the one!
In a moment of economic crisis, when the state is already $3 billion over-budget, the suburbs are suffering from foreclosures and inefficiencies, and our transportation infrastructure is the laughing stock of the world, the State legislature is considering funding not just another highway, but a highway of outrageous cost with no proven benefits!
Obviously this project has little chance of ever getting off the ground, but this is the sort of geez-whiz, “that would be so cool!” thinking that scares the crap out of me. Please for the love of God keep the 1-cent sales tax transportation money out of State hands. Let the local gov’ts decide.
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As a part time downtown (South End) Boston resident, the big dig may have left us with a fiscal mess, but over the long run, it left us with a more beautiful and vibrant city. Even more beautiful than before. And it will get paid. The citizens of the Commonwealth will get it done.
So while we are going through this short term pain, in the long run when it comes to comparing cities, at the rate its going, Boston is going to make Atlanta look like sliced bread. And its going to have a huge impact on the quality of people attracted to living there and the amount of money they make and contribute to the local economy.
While I don’t agree with Wheatley’s idea (by jeez bury the existing ones…at least we don’t have to look at that ugliness such as 85N or the connector), there needs to be some type of concensus on transport down there. I was down there for the last couple of weeks until yesterday and I can automatically sense the decline in the quality of air as soon as I leave the airport. I was speaking with a yoga teacher that I know originally from the area and she said that many people who have lived in the area most of their lives (and never lived anywhere else) don’t even realize how bad it is or they’ve been around for so many years they’ve just somehow gotten accustomed to how disgusting it is.
I really love the City of Decatur and the community. Perhaps its too small to have larger State influence, but I really question why the State govt is so…..I don’t know….non visionary or non creative. Friends of mine in the northeast think it may be a mental block as a result of intense religious conditioning which does not allow the mind to expand and think creatively to finding solutions. (scientists are actually finding truth in that) Personally, I’m not certain what the deal is, but it sure is discouraging.
Maybe Obama would consider a subterranean Presidential Library to put a stop to this ridiculous plan!? Worked for Jimmy and worked for us!
Some folks are at least examining alternatives for all these interstate catastrophes: http://www.cnu.org/highways/freewayswithoutfutures
I heard Andres Duany, the Godfather of new urbanism, speak last week at ARC and one of his major messages was “reconnect the grid.” His point is that in older urban areas with a grid street pattern, congestion is minimized and walking is fascilitated. He showed a street map of downtown Decatur and remarked how the grid was fractured. By comparison the grid at North Druid Hills and Clairmont was almost non-existant, and of course traffic stinks around that intersection. Alex Garvin, another prominent planner, also recommended that a grid street pattern be established for the “Sembler” site.
Most people just want to complain about traffic, but the reality is that unless the economy absolutely craters, cars and traffic are going to be with us for a long time. In all liklihood traffic will worsen. At some point we can’t continue to widen arterial roads to 6 and 8 lanes. I wonder whether the public buys into the concept of building new streets to create a grid street pattern to alleviate bottlenecks of congestion, encourage mixed use and encourage walking?
@E – This makes a lot of sense. I had not heard that a grid pattern was recommended for the Semblerplex, but I can totally grok why. Grids are a simple and understandable way to provide alternate paths. Unlike the grids in, say NYC or Miami, for example, Atlanta is a City of veritable cul-de-sacs. Between that, uhhh, “organic” design that would do Charles Darwin proud and the Chattahoochee river thwarting western egress, there are a very limited number of ways to get from A to D in our fine City. If one of these pathways gets loused up, the others collapse under stress of the diverted traffic and it just snarls to a halt. Just like the 2-track MARTA system, there’s no alternate path when the proverbial poo hits the fan.
I wish I could see a way to improve traffic incrementally from the current state, but I don’t see how we could even widen existing roads. Right-of-way is just too expensive, and I agree with you 6 or 8 lanes won’t really solve our problem anyway. For example, North Druid Hills Road or Ponce… what could you do, there, realistically?
You might be able to “grid up” by fixing the cross streets so that they connect to other main arteries instead of being just “XYZ Circle” or some other form of dead-end so that cut-thru traffic could flow around. But the only way that even has a prayer of working is if there is solid enforcement to ensure safety of residents and motorists and other users of the neighborhood streets … Sadly, some of our fellow man think that residential cut-thrus (like Wilton, Ponce Place, and others) are really part of the Talladega Urban Raceway Annex II and that STOP signs are /really/ supposed to read “STOPTIONAL” but the DOT ran out of room on the sign and used an abbreviation. Without a practical way to address the enforcement problem (both passively and actively), I don’t hold out much hope of that working out.
I suspect it’s going to take a carrot-stick type of scenario where traffic really, really sucks and then there’s this nice, safe, comfortable and convenient alternative (trolley, train, fancy bus, something) that just happens to go where you need it to when you need it to go there… and folks will just naturally make the shift… just like when the gas prices got to $5/gal and folks started leaving the cars at home more.
Of course, for cities like Decatur which thrive on out-of-area customers for their restaurants and boutique shoppes, a reduction in vehicle traffic (or the inability to properly park the current high level of traffic) could be a recipe for disaster.
Intense religious conditioning? Garsh!
Maybe it is the result of all those dirt sandwiches we eat and all the time we spend running around without shoes on…”here in the South” that prevent us from thinking of new ideas!
Honestly…LOL!
Sir Isaac Newton was a devout Christian. Sure kept his mind in the dark.
Beyond that, Rick, what, exactly, is your point? You seem to love the big dig, and a Georgia version of the big dig seems to be exactly what the Ga. house is proposing here. So in Boston, burying roads is enlightened policy, and down here, it’s the equivalent of handling serpents at a backwoods Mass?
I side with DM here: this is a gargantuan waste of money that will disrupt everyone’s life for years, we can’t afford it, and it does seem stuck in the rut of investing ever more money in car-based transport. My solution: do nothing. Just refuse to build more roads. The only things that are ever going to get a lot fewer people driving are (a) cost and (b) capacity constraints. The political will to tax gas into the $4 to 5 dollar/gallon range — the ideal solution in my mind — simply does not exist. So lets the highways choke themselves to death, and sooner or later, enough people will relaize that hopping on MARTA beats the hell out of a 3 hour commute.
Geez Rick, way to cite “research” to really insult the general population.
E, this gets really off the original topic but I love this stuff…where did Duany show that Decatur’s grid is fractured? Are we just talking about the fracturing done by the MARTA station or is the larger grid also fractured?
Baron, nice use of the word “grok”. As can probably can be deduced from my post above, I don’t believe that adding more highways or highway lanes will solve the traffic problem. I believe wonking specialists call it “latent demand”. Basically, each individual has their own tolerance for the amount of traffic they can endure in a day and the more lanes you build the farther out they will go, spreading people out farther and farther, but doing nothing to diminish gridlock. But it does go a long way in diminishing our long term prospects for success as a city.
In terms of traffic thru your neighborhood, Duany would probably say that if people are speeding, the problem really is that your roads are too wide. Either you need MORE street parking (Scott made this argument about Nelson Ferry recently) or you need to physically make your streets skinnier. Only then will folks feel like they can’t blow through your neighborhood.
DEM: Hells yes my friend.
Duany didn’t do a thorough review of Decatur; just a cursory block-structure comparison with other environments (Fairlie Poplar, the ‘burbs, etc.). So, his off-the-cuff analysis (though he couldn’t see this from the diagram) was largely driven by all the connections severed by Marta.
The diagram really did look like a bunch of cul-de-sacs because the remaining pedestrian connections — that help compensate — don’t show up.
Hey Baron that’s so Heinleinian of you.
Actually if you look at map of Atlanta the interstates cut up the grid pretty bad too.
I’ve always thought that the way Atlanta was developed was part of it’s charm.
If you don’t know a neighborhood you can’t use it as a cut through because you’ll get lost.
Now with GPS being fairly common you can use neighborhoods without to much problem. Speed bumps are cheaper than highways.
I do remember when it was possible to drive around Atlanta and not spill your martini.
You must be as old as I am, David.
Good point, David. I knew I was a true Atlantan when I could navigate through the nearly impenetrable Prado neighborhood after a night out in Midtown.
The future doesn’t belong to the fossil fuel burning car. Atlanta went down this road in the seventies and ended up with our horrible connector, instead of investing in alternatives like light rail. (no, Marta is not light rail) Now I can’t even believe we are talking about burying the interstates. That’s just nuts.
Rick, I think that our history as an agriculture based economy says more about our infrastructure than our religious hang-ups do. Boston is older, more laid out in a European cluster style supported by manufacturing. Atlanta was a railroad hub for agricultural commodities. Most of our state is laid out in in blocks of agricultural plots with a farmhouse dropped in the middle of the property. If anything, I think we should spend the money on railroads of all sorts…lightrail, high speed rail, commuter rail, etc. Let’s get back to the future and bring Georgia’s railroads up to speed.
Freak’nomic, have you communicated your views to your elected representatives? They hold the pursestrings.
Is Boston sitting on solid granite like we are? Or would we not dig that deep? Granite is really hard.
Hagus, maybe we could just sell the granite to make countertops, and the whole project will be self-financing.
I heard from a Boston native that the roads in Boston were laid out by the cows as they walked from their pastures to graze on Boston Common.
Soooo… all you had to do was to think like a cow and you couldn’t get lost.
So Atlanta was laid out by politicians and…. no I really can’t. I just can’t.
The Decatur Grid is broken in several places and it is best to look at a Google map to see the point Duany is making. The grid connection between West Ponce and Trinity are limited bewtween Water St and Ponce Place. The connections between W Ponce and West Howard are broken from Adair to Commerce. In general Commerce breaks the grid, particularly on the northwest side. While the MARTA station breaks the grid along Sycamore and North McDonough, the pedestrian and bicycle connections still exist. The most dramatic break in the downtown Decatur grid is breaking north McDonough from intersecting Ponce. I suppose those streets connected before the MARTA station existed? If so, I’m guessing the north south traffic must have been snarled since Clairmont and North McDonough did not allign.
McDonough never intersected Ponce. It terminates on the south side of the courthouse, where you used to have the option of turning left or right on Sycamore. Clairemont terminates on the north side of the courthouse. The courthouse used to occupy a block (square) of its own, with Ponce and Sycamore connected on both sides of it (to the east with what is now, I think, E Court Square next to Brick Store and to the west with what is now a plaza for the glass building).
It also doesn’t help that there is only one option for turning south off of Ponce (Church St) between Commerce (on the west) and Commerce (on the east) if you are trying to get over to Howard or College Avenue. North Candler Road is of course one way going north between Howard and Ponce.
Maybe we should tunnel under the Old Courthouse … ha, ha, ha!
I’m trying to imagine a less pedestrian friendly road in Decatur then Commerce Drive. A mini 285 for the ages.
Be careful when you try to involve the paving arm of government in anything. The money is used to flowing that way and you may get more then you bargained for.
City agrees with you David. See page 25 of the Streets section of the Community Transportation Plan to see the plan for Commerce. (spoiler: one 11′ (instead of current 12′) auto lane each way, on-street parking and a bike lane) Also included in that plan section are redesigns of the intersections of Commerce/Clairemont and Commerce/Church.
Of course all of these redesigns of our least pedestrian-friendly roads/intersections depends on getting funding.
You are correct, E. The current system fails, so bulking it up only serves to better illustrate its weaknesses (while creating increasingly less livable environments in the process). Imagine someone suggesting the internet be dendritic with everything feeding into a giant central cable that runs from NY to LA, and the only solution to bigger files being shared locally in Kansas City being a fatter cable. But we apply the same logic to our transportation networks (where “packets” in the form of cars work their way towards an infinite number of destinations) and expect it to solve the problem.
Garvin’s plan for the Sembler site would have worked well internally but it was rightfully criticized because the larger system it had to plug into would have forced painful choke points where the two systems connected. And that illustrates the larger problem: Right now, the burden of addressing transportation and connectivity is falling solely on developers of private parcels without any support at the macro scale.
Achieving the benefits of a fully connected network requires a coordinated program of regional policy, transportation policy, funding and zoning reform. Given no one sees this happening any time soon, there are some creative workarounds emerging (some clever ideas in Ellen Dunham Jones’ [architecture head at GA Tech] new book, Retrofitting Suburbia), but they’re not the ideal scenario.
Yes,they hold the purse strings but the auto and oil lobby hold the purse. We need more of a shift in consciousness to get people to think about or even ride trains. People like their own space in a car. Legislators like the juicy money they get from those lobby groups too much. These lobbyists have spent the better part of a half century getting our people to rip up every light rail line in America. Watch “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” for more info about how the car lobby paid dearly to get our rail lines destroyed. Seriously.
So, have you communicated with your elected reps that not all people feel that roads are the answer? Some areas (outside Georgia) have seen dramatic turnarounds in the past few years.
What Scott describes is correct. E Courthouse Square used to cut through to Sycamore, while what was once W Courthouse Square (with many of the same two story brick commercial still found on E Courthouse) is now Quizno’s Plaza. That road also cut through to Sycamore, thus creating an actual “Courthouse Square”.
The original argument to tear down the old Courthouse back in 1959 was to connect Clairemont and McDonough. This plan was a big part of the reason the new courthouse is located where it is. Instead of a plan which would build a new courthouse on top of the old, they decided to build along McDonough. Then when it was complete they could just move all the judges and whatnot across the Square, tear down the old courthouse and connect the roads.