Impetus: Atlanta Regional Commission proposes ideas that would cost about $59 billion dollars which could theoretically alleviate traffic.
I hate to write about it every time something like this comes up, but there’s something about the topic of Atlanta’s incessantly horrendous traffic that sets me off. Maybe it’s because so often times is the case, I’ve suffered a particularly bad morning of traffic when I get to work and eventually begin reading the news, there’s something about the fair city’s bad traffic that just aggravates me.
Anyway, the posted link is basically a story about how some probably likely crooked bureaucrats want nearly 25 years of a boatload of money to do a whole lot of nothing AKA attempt to “solve” Atlanta’s traffic woes. It’s not that I’m deliberately trying to sound pessimistic towards the idea of alleviating traffic, it’s just the fact of the matter, conclusive and succinct is that Atlanta traffic is unsolvable, and that nothing short of changing the topography of the entire city, destroying existing, and creating an entirely new, actually planned, road system and implementing an efficient and planned mass transit system, would actually help.
In other words, nothing realistic can really be done about Atlanta’s traffic, and putting any money towards such futile endeavors is a waste and serves no purpose other than padding pockets of people who are probably aware of such impossibilities and are taking full advantage of trying to get paid to do nothing.
Seriously, it’s a gigantic waste trying to “solve” Atlanta’s traffic. For every idea that could feasibly work, there would be a million people voting to oppose it, because it throws a monkey wrench into their daily commutes and routes. Personally, I like the idea of demolishing all parts of Interstate 20 within the perimeter, and eliminating the necessity of intersecting interstates in the heart of the city, but there would be about a quarter million people from Douglasville, Covington, Alabama and whatever other east and west places of the city that would be obviously objective to that idea.
Trying to expand MARTA or create other forms of mass transportation is the popular solution that anyone who’s ever played Sim City is aware of, but the one reality that isn’t a factor in Sim City is the veiled racist nature of the population. It would be a fantastic idea if there was convenient, reliable and expedient rail systems that took people from Peachtree City, Roswell, Alpharetta and Stone Mountain, but on the flipside, the residents of said communities would very much balk at the notion that such a rail system conversely gives all the perceived blacks and other unsavory minorities access to them. Curmudgeon I may sound, but the reality is that every time such an idea is proposed, such is the precise rationale to why it is snuffed out immediately, perhaps not in quite such succinct terms. I like to call it “the Springfield Mall Effect,” that affluent, predominantly white communities wish to avoid.
There’s really nothing complicated about Atlanta’s traffic, and why it exists – curvy roads, intersecting highways, a lack of mass transportation, and an excess of drivers on the road. Simply put, the city was poorly planned, if it was even planned at all in the first place, and it’s developed and grown too far gone to be remotely capable of rectifying its problems. As conducive to the flow of traffic it would be, if the 75/85 Connector could be snapped into a straight line instead of the weaving S through the heart of the city it is today, a gazillion dollars-worth of real estate would have be deconstructed and then reconstructed, including stuff like Grady Memorial Hospital, Georgia Power, the ScumTrust and Bank of America skyscrpaers. Obviously, none of that is going to happen, but it is a good example of how problematic it can get when simply too much shit is developed, right onto the edge of the roads outright; needless to say, there is zero chance of any lane expansion or construction that doesn’t necessitate the outright closure of roads could ever realistically happen.
The bottom line is that there is nothing that can be done about Atlanta traffic. Until companies evolve past the Stone Age and realize that it is very much possible for employees to work remotely in many cases (like mine), we’re all just going to have to suffer and slog through the city’s shitty streets with 2 million other miserable commuting saps on a daily basis and have no other alternative than to simply deal with it.
