Impetus: Georgia Department of Transportation to spend about $356,000 painting markings and clarifying lanes on the I-85/I-75 Downtown Connector to help attempt alleviate extraneous traffic caused by people changing lanes.
GDOT seems to think that traffic is caused by people who don’t know where they’re going, basically. That’s why they think that spending a boatload of money to try and clarify directions better than it already is, would theoretically alleviate such congestion.
Such might be the case, as I-85 and I-75 are both major veins throughout the southeastern United States, but I have to believe it to be the vast minority of traffic causes.
Here’s the thing though: the extraneous traffic throughout Atlanta is often times caused by people who know exactly where they’re going. It’s the people who know where they are, and how they’re going maneuver through traffic that are the ones who are weaving and freaking out less-competent drivers with their aggression; because they know exactly where they are, and how much space they have to work with to get from point A to point B the quickest.
I see it all the time on the Connector; sitting in the right lanes, because I’m preparing on going to I-75, when someone behind me whips out of the lane, floors it past me, and I can see that moments before the split occurs, they dash back into I-75, and are now several car lengths ahead of me, completely ignorant of the fact that they had to use the shoulder and make three people pump their brakes in order to accommodate their maneuver.
The bottom line is that this is ultimately a gigantic waste of money for GDOT and the rest of the state. They think that they’re going to educate people into becoming more vigilant drivers on the Connector, but what they’re really going to accomplish is in the short term, lots of lane closures, headaches, rage and anxiety, and in the long term, nothing, because it’s not the people who don’t know where they’re going that causes traffic, it’s the people that do, and abuse the Connector’s expanse to traverse the roads fastest.
