After a morning which saw an 84-minute drive into work, and an additional 20 minute wait at Starbucks, I’m finally settled in at my desk a solid hour after when I would have preferred to have done such.
Seriously, the next time I wake up at my house and hear pelting rain and torrential downpour, and it’s a day in which carpooling wasn’t scheduled, I’m going to say I’ve contracted cholera, and call in sick.
I’m finding that my criteria of what constitutes a “good” morning grows lower and lower, and it’s getting to a point where nightmarish traffic is expected, and I’m just happy when the douchebag in front of me at Starbucks doesn’t pay with the Starbucks app, which conveniently my daily Starbucks does not have the hardware to accept in any other fashion than necessitating three minutes to punch in every single digit before the screen goes back to sleep.
Anyway, whenever I have a morning where I have to slog through traffic worse than it usually is, whether it’s because of a retard getting into a catastrophic wreck, or like today, there’s liquid AIDS AKA “rain” falling from the skies, my mind always wanders to the oft-fantasized topic by all Metro Atlanta denizens, which is hypothesizing how to “fix” Atlanta’s traffic woes.
Naturally, the logical solution of improving mass transit is off the table, because the city is already polluted full of crooked criminal greedy bureaucrats who will nix the idea every single time for personal monetary reasons that us pleebs aren’t going to understand, so it’s not out of the realm to start thinking of some more radical ideas.
1. Appropriately labeling Interstate 285 with an Inner and Outer loop.
One major thing that causes traffic for people in Atlanta is the fact that the I-285 bypass highway isn’t clearly labeled. Depending on which direction you’re approaching it from, it can be north, south, east or west, and this is made even more complex when it changes direction while driving on it.
Describing I-285 directionality to someone unfamiliar is doubly cruel, because there are literally two sets of each direction, based on which quadrant of the “square” you’re needing to describe.
Say a person is coming up from the airport, and is headed to Decatur. On I-85 north, approaching I-285, I need to get on I-285 north, but approaching the junction, the only options are east or west. The person panics and gets off on the first I-285 exit, and ends up going west. They let out a sigh of relief when I-285 West suddenly turns into I-285 North. Little do they realize that they’re going I-285 North on the west wall, and are basically going to be driving for nearly 45 miles before they get to any Decatur exits, when if they had gone I-285 East, and eventually ended up going I-285 North on the east wall, they would end up in Decatur in roughly 20~ miles.
Long story short, this kind of bullshit is avoidable if I-285 took a page out of DC/VA/MD’s utilization of the phrases “Inner loop” and “Outer loop” to describe the directions of I-495. Going clockwise is inner loop, going counter-clockwise is outer loop.
In Vinings, and needing to get to Roswell? Take the inner loop to exit 25, and Roswell Road will take you straight into Roswell. At Stone Mountain Park, and need to get to I-85 north? Get on the outer loop, and I-85 exits will be in about ten miles.
2. The destrucity of Interstate 20 within the perimeter.
Out of all the U.S. major market cities, Atlanta is one of two cities (other: Houston, Texas) that has three major interstates intersecting within the very center of the city.
I personally believe that this fact alone is why Atlanta suffers the tragic traffic it suffers on a daily basis. This is easily justified, because the worst traffic in the city always occurs in the three points where I-20 intersects with both sides of I-285, as well as the I-75/I-85 Downtown Connector.
So, I propose, simply get rid of I-20 within the perimeter. Meaning Interstate 20 no longer passes through the heart of the city. Needing to go east-west or west-east to pass Atlanta means getting off of I-20 onto I-285, and bypassing the city on the outskirts, and getting back onto I-20 on the opposite side of I-285.
As for those unfortunate souls who commute into Atlanta via I-20, sorry, but you’re the guys that have to cope with the loss of ITP I-20; naturally, in my fantasy, I nix the interstate that I rarely use. Besides, the people coming in from I-20 are people who live in places like Conyers, Douglasville, and even some saps that literally commute in from fucking Alabama. I’m not saying places like McDonough, Newnan, anywhere in Clayton County or Gwinnett County are any better, but those are the folks that would use roads similar to the ones I need to use, so they’re safe.
The bottom line is, Fuck I-20. The existence of I-20 within the perimeter is pretty much 90% of the reason why the city has as shitty traffic as it does. So fucking get rid of it, and watch the cars flow with vastly more ease on the connector.
3. Straighten out the north-south interstates.
What’s the fastest way between two points? A straight line.
That being said, it always baffles me that the Downtown Connector is the roller coaster-like series of twists and turns throughout the heart of the city. Compounded with the intersection of I-20, it doesn’t help the flow of traffic when people are incapable of gauging on whether they can maintain a 60 mph speed around the Grady Curve, or like in most cases, slam the brakes and come to a complete halt and crawl through it as if it were like trying to swap the idol for a bag of sand.
There’s like 30 miles of asphalt to complete 20 miles worth of distance between I-85, and substantially more to connect both segments of I-75 to each other. Again, genius idea of having both major highways go through the center of the city, but we’ve clearly gone too far, legitimately in this case.
But in the fantasized world where such theories were capable of coming to fruition, both I-85 and I-75 would be completely straight lines through the center of the city. Who absolutely cares what’s currently sitting on the land that would be needed for roads to pass through, as they can simply fight over the larger amount of land that would be hypothetically freed up by the straightening out of roads, as well as the complete elimination of I-20?
Who cares is the SunTrust building, Bank of America building, and the Georgia Power buildings will have to have a road blown out through them, like they were those trees in Northern California? It would also be justice to see the smarmy folks who live in the Druid Hills/North Decatur area who loathe automobiles to suddenly have a massive interstate just plopped onto them?
I-75 on the south would benefit greatly, as it would eliminate the tinier I-675 bypass, and it could basically be the new stretch of I-75. The existing stretch of I-75 could be razed, and the rest of the city would be done a favor by eliminating the major vein that gives the cesspool known as Clayton County access to the Metro area.
Now, this is the part where I say that I know my ideas aren’t perfect, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re certainly better than a lot of the nonsensical crap that other people have thrown out there. More unlikely, yes, impossible, not entirely, but at the same time, there’s not a lot to deny that these ideas would most certainly alleviate traffic on a pretty grandiose scale.
Sure, it would really fuck those who live outside of the city that rely on I-20, but fuck them, nobody cares about those areas. It would also fuck with those inside the perimeter that rely on I-20, but the west end actually has MARTA access, and they’re all ghettos anyway, so fuck them, and honestly places like Decatur on the east would probably be happier to have even less interstate accessibility to them.
