What time does "rush hour" start? (Atlanta, Roswell: house, school)

[alliejay]

Hello,

Been reading about the traffic in the Atlanta area and it is concerning. Living outside of Chicago we have bad traffic, but what is described here sounds worse.

What time does "rush hour" start in the morning and at the end of the work day. My husband leaves the house to get to work by about 6am to 6:30am. Hoping that would help him to miss morning rush hour traffic. I'm not sure where we will be living yet, so not looking for commute times, just an approximation of what time rush hour traffic starts.

Thanks for your help.

[CMMom]

I find that if I leave the house by 7:00, I get where I need to go pretty quickly (travelling south on GA 400). But if I wait even 15 minutes later, the commute time increases exponentially. Regarding afternoon, I notice a big pickup in traffic between 3:30 and 4:30. On days that I let my kids stay for aftercare at school until 4:00, it takes me almost an additional 30 min. to get home (travelling east on I-285). Others' experiences may vary.

[PKCorey]

In the morning, I would say after 6:45am.

In the afternoon, you can see start seeing slow traffic at 3pm. I've noticed since school is back in session, the top end of 285 westbound begins to jam at 3pm from Roswell Road to 75.

It really depends on your side of town as CMMom has stated. If I leave at 630 from the east side on 20, it will only slow down approaching Panola but if you leave 15 mins later, you will have to deal with slow traffic from Turner Hill all the way to 285.

The biggest issue is the incidents on the roadway. If there is an accident or stall, it will turn your commute into hell here. Coming home the other day took 2 hours due to an earlier accident on 285S near 20 that had traffic jammed solid back to 85.

[tonygeorgia]

Generally after 730

[fleetfeet9]

Going from midtown to Windy Hill is not bad when I leave my place at 7:45 am but if I leave at 8:45 there is definitely more traffic on the roads.

[JoeTarheel]

Rush hour varies, depending on where you are and what you actually consider to be heavier traffic...but I think you have some informed replies already. And don't worry about Atlanta being worse than Chicago traffic, it may not be much better, but it's definitely not any worse.

[tonygeorgia]

Look at Georgia-navigator.com in the morning and see for yourself

[billl]

Originally Posted by alliejay

Hello,

Been reading about the traffic in the Atlanta area and it is concerning. Living outside of Chicago we have bad traffic, but what is described here sounds worse.

What time does "rush hour" start in the morning and at the end of the work day. My husband leaves the house to get to work by about 6am to 6:30am.

He won't have a problem. Traffic doesn't get heavy until after 7 am unless there's an accident or rain. (And if it snows everyone stays home anyway!)

Being a Chicago transplant, I've spent a lot of time sitting in rush hours in both cities. Atlanta isn't anywhere near as bad as Chicago. It certainly has its hotspots but outside of that it is noticeably easier than Chicago. There's nothing down here that can compare to, for example, the Eisenhower!

[alliejay]

Thanks everyone!

[MattCW]

The downtown connector starts to get slow after about 1:30pm, especially if you're heading south trying to get on I-20. It's not like rush hour, but it's a pronounced slow down. Outside the connector, things don't get really bad till about 4:30pm with the worst peaking around 5:15-5:30. What's interesting though, is that in my experience, going through downtown after 4:00 is actually much faster than going anywhere on the north and east sides of I-285.