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The state did not want to make the GA 400 tolls permanent because they knew that a toll-averse and increasingly road construction-averse voting public might not be so willing to go along with the construction of the potentially highly-controversial road.
400 wasn't just potentially controversial -- the people in that section of Buckhead were apoplectic. They protested and filed lawsuits and fought it for years, but were eventually steamrolled by the government and various business interests in and outside the Perimeter. A lot of those folks are still very upset about having an expressway rammed thought the middle of their community.
But what are you going to do? You either fold your tent or pick up the pieces and get on with things. The trail they are building is good evidence of healing around that scar, although it has taken a good 20 years.
Build an east-west alternative to I-285. In 30 years when north Georgia's population is 7-8 million, do you expect all of them to only have 1 east-west freeway?
NC's gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon plus the 18 cent federal tax. Gas in NC is about $3.60 a gallon. THEY SPEND $5 BILLION EVERY YEAR on their highways. $2 billion for maintenance and $3 billion for new construction.
Georgia's gas tax is 7.5 cents per gallon. Yet for some reason, gas is more expensive than NC. Corruption and Atlanta's unique smog-reducing blend of gas combined. Georgia spends only $2 billion a year on roads total, mostly maintenance.
Florida spends $13 BILLION PER YEAR on its roads, which are fantastic statewide.
Will Georgia's incompetent leadership ever improve in my lifetime? I can only hope.
400 wasn't just potentially controversial -- the people in that section of Buckhead were apoplectic. They protested and filed lawsuits and fought it for years, but were eventually steamrolled by the government and various business interests in and outside the Perimeter.
This is an excellent point. One of the reasons that the government (the State of Georgia, the City of Atlanta and Fulton County) and those various business interests (commercial real estate interests in Buckhead and a then-much less-developed Perimeter Center area) were able to steamroll the Buckhead and North Atlanta residents who were in opposition to the GA 400 Extension through their neighborhood is because the environmentalists and Intown anti-roadbuilding interests who likely would have come to their aid were placated with the inclusion of a MARTA heavy rail extension as part of the unpopular major road construction project.
If that MARTA heavy rail extension would not have been included as part of the project, the GA 400 Extension probably would have been much-harder to construct because the road would have had the full opposition of anti-road expansion Intown interests.
But because those anti-road expansion Intown interests were so happy to be getting an expansion of MARTA transit service in the form of a MARTA heavy rail transit line to a rising job center in the suburbs at the Perimeter Center/Sandy Springs/Dunwoody area, they basically stood down and let the GA 400 Extension be built through Buckhead and North Atlanta so that they could get the highly-coveted but very-rare hard-to-get transit expansion that they wanted.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
A lot of those folks are still very upset about having an expressway rammed [through] the middle of their community.
This is another excellent point as the anger over the construction of the GA 400 Extension through two very-viable upscale ITP suburban neighborhoods in Buckhead and North Atlanta culminated in the very-angry rejection of the Northern Arc in 2002 and the regional T-SPLOST referendum in 2012 by a highly road expansion-averse voting public.
It was also public dissatisfaction over the handling of the GA 400 Extension situation that played a major role in the eventual downfall of the long-ruling Democratic Party in Georgia which completely dominated Georgia politics for over 130 years.
Quote:
Originally Posted by arjay57
But what are you going to do? You either fold your tent or pick up the pieces and get on with things. The trail they are building is good evidence of healing around that scar, although it has taken a good 20 years.
Yet another excellent point, Arjay.
The Buckhead and North Atlanta residential communities have had no choice but to accept, live with and build around the GA 400 Extension.
Though, over the LONG-TERM, I can see an urban road like the GA 400 Extension eventually being tunneled underground and replaced with replanted greenspace where the road now lies on the surface.
If the technological and financial know-how would have existed back in the late 1980's-early 1990's, building the GA 400 Extension through Buckhead likely would have been the best option in building such a controversial road so that there would have been a minimal amount of disturbance and destruction to the neighborhoods on the surface.
Build an east-west alternative to I-285. In 30 years when north Georgia's population is 7-8 million, do you expect all of them to only have 1 east-west freeway?
This is an excellent point.
Though the State of Georgia attempted to build an east-west alternative to I-285 when it attempted to build the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc back in the late 1990's and early 2000's but was very-unsuccessful when the voting public overwhelmingly rejected the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc concept and voted out of power the party that backed it (the Georgia Democratic Party) back in 2002.
The overwhelming failure and overwhelming angry public rejection of previous state government attempts to construct an Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc in the late 1990's and early 2000's has made state government extremely reluctant to even raise the issue of constructing an Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc type of road.
The overwhelming public unpopularity of the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc concept is the major reason why the proposal is likely to remain dead in an environment where any mention of the road can become an instant major political liability.
Quote:
Originally Posted by architect77
NC's gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon plus the 18 cent federal tax. Gas in NC is about $3.60 a gallon. THEY SPEND $5 BILLION EVERY YEAR on their highways. $2 billion for maintenance and $3 billion for new construction.
Georgia's gas tax is 7.5 cents per gallon. Yet for some reason, gas is more expensive than NC. Corruption and Atlanta's unique smog-reducing blend of gas combined. Georgia spends only $2 billion a year on roads total, mostly maintenance.
Florida spends $13 BILLION PER YEAR on its roads, which are fantastic statewide.
Will Georgia's incompetent leadership ever improve in my lifetime? I can only hope.
This is also an excellent point.
Though one of the major reasons that road spending is so low in Georgia is because the public is so intensely-averse to the concept of increasing government spending on roads, particularly in Metro Atlanta and North Georgia where many new roads have been built by real estate development interests not to make traffic better, but to make traffic worse by sparking more real estate development than a new road can handle.
Because so many roads have been built more for speculative real estate purposes than for the purpose of improving traffic flow, the North Georgia public often vehemently rejects any government proposal to increase spending on roads, particularly on new roads near residential areas...
...It was this worsening anti-speculative road construction calculus that played-out in the 1999-2002 rejection of the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc concept and the 2012 rejection of the regional T-SPLOST referendum concept.
(....The voting public thought that the only reason for the Outer Perimeter/Northern Arc was to make land speculators and real estate developers wealthy off of building more traffic-worsening sprawl, while the public thought that there was too much spending for speculative road construction in the 2012 T-SPLOST....The voting public also thought that the 2012 T-SPLOST was a backdoor way to fund the unpopular Northern Arc.)
Did that just after 2:15 today and nearly got in a wreck as a Maserati (seriously) had to go from 400S to 285W. Stopped traffic in the lane for 285E. This happens a lot anyway as traffic has to slow down to 20-30 (throw in an 18 wheeler and it's game over) and there's only one lane to choose from. It's a bad and outdated design. No high traffic highway to highway ramp should be a loop requiring drivers to decrease speed from 60+ to 30 then back up to 60+. Spaghetti junction backs up every day with a flyover ramp and 2 lanes. Can't imagine having just one loop ramp. Unfortunately with the design I don't see much that they can do without redoing the whole thing. It doesn't have to be like the High 5 interchange in Dallas but major construction is inevitable.
Wasn't there talk about reconstruction of Spaghetti Junction (285 & 85) when TSPLOST was being proposed?
That intersection is a mess even with all those ramps, but I haven't a clue what kind of fix there could be for THAT interchange.
Wasn't there talk about reconstruction of Spaghetti Junction (285 & 85) when TSPLOST was being proposed?
That intersection is a mess even with all those ramps, but I haven't a clue what kind of fix there could be for THAT interchange.
Only thing I can think of is widening some of the ramps. On I-285 at least, I don't think there any conflicting movements anymore. Used to be people getting off at Chamblee Tucker had to cross to the right while the people coming off I-85 onto I-285 South had to cross to the left in the same place. That was fixed years ago.
Wasn't there talk about reconstruction of Spaghetti Junction (285 & 85) when TSPLOST was being proposed?
That intersection is a mess even with all those ramps, but I haven't a clue what kind of fix there could be for THAT interchange.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MattCW
Only thing I can think of is widening some of the ramps. On I-285 at least, I don't think there any conflicting movements anymore. Used to be people getting off at Chamblee Tucker had to cross to the right while the people coming off I-85 onto I-285 South had to cross to the left in the same place. That was fixed years ago.
Widening the mostly 2-lane flyover ramp from I-285 Eastbound to I-85 Northbound to 3 lanes was the Spaghetti Junction reconstruction project that was on the failed 2012 T-SPLOST project list for DeKalb County.
WanderingImport and MattCW make an excellent observation that there likely is not much of a fix for the I-85/I-285 NE Spaghetti Junction interchange as this point in time.
That's because the expansion of the 2-lane flyover ramp from I-285 Eastbound to I-85 Northbound to 3 full lanes will not fix the rush hour 'bottleneck' further north on I-85 Northbound that causes traffic to back-up back onto the flyover ramp and back onto I-285 eastbound.
The state knows that expanding the ramp will not necessarily make traffic traveling from I-285 EB to I-85 NB any better. The state just put that project on the T-SPLOST list as a token project to try and get voters in politically-crucial Gwinnett County to vote to approve the Atlanta region T-SPLOST....Something that was not going to happen due to Gwinnett County voters' lingering anger over the implementation of tolls on the previously-untolled I-85 carpool lanes in October 2011.
With I-85 Northeast virtually completely built-out at this point (both physically and politically with I-85 expanding to as many as about 20 lanes just northeast of the I-285 interchange with auxiliary lanes and access lanes), the only things that could and maybe would make a noticeable dent in the amount of peak-hour traffic along the I-85 NE corridor are:
> The extension of high-capacity passenger rail transit service (regional heavy rail and commuter rail transit service) from its current northeastern terminus at the Doraville MARTA Station up to Gainesville, and....
> The implementation of high-capacity passenger rail transit service (regional heavy rail and commuter rail transit service) between Atlanta and Athens.
When the former cloverleaf interchange that we now know as Spaghetti Junction was redesigned back in the late 1970's-early '80's and rebuilt and expanded back from about 1983 to about 1987, the interchange was considered to be an advanced state-of-the-art interchange that was designed to be ahead of its time.
With the flyover design and the expansion of the I-85 and I-285 roadways to occupy the entire available right-of-way, the current I-85/I-285 NE interchange was basically designed and built with future traffic volumes in mind.
The current I-85/I-285 NE interchange and roadways basically were completely maxed-out in their expansion, meaning the only real way to expand the capacity of the interchange and the roadways is with expansions of high-capacity transit in and along the greater I-85 anchored Northeast Corridor.
I know that it is a weird concept for some, but we cannot expand the roadways forever. There often comes a time when the only way that the capacity of an urban transportation system can be expanded is with transit and we have reached that time with the I-85/I-285 NE interchange and roadways.
Build an east-west alternative to I-285. In 30 years when north Georgia's population is 7-8 million, do you expect all of them to only have 1 east-west freeway?
NC's gas tax is 37.5 cents per gallon plus the 18 cent federal tax. Gas in NC is about $3.60 a gallon. THEY SPEND $5 BILLION EVERY YEAR on their highways. $2 billion for maintenance and $3 billion for new construction.
Georgia's gas tax is 7.5 cents per gallon. Yet for some reason, gas is more expensive than NC. Corruption and Atlanta's unique smog-reducing blend of gas combined. Georgia spends only $2 billion a year on roads total, mostly maintenance.
Florida spends $13 BILLION PER YEAR on its roads, which are fantastic statewide.
Will Georgia's incompetent leadership ever improve in my lifetime? I can only hope.
Your comparison to NC is an excellent one, but throwing Florida in there makes no sense. They have nearly twice the population, way more toll-roads, and a huge tourism base, so what do you expect??? Also, I DISTINCTLY remember back the the late 90s that their roads were nightmarish (especially the turnpike), so this is relatively new.
I seriously hope that GADOT does not try to rebuild the entire interchange, because that would be a terrible waste of tax dollars. Instead, replacing just two of the ramps that cause a disproportionate number of the problem would work wonders:
(1) 285 east to 400 north. If you've never tried taking this ramp during evening rush hour, then you don't know the fun you're missing out on. It should be two lanes, it's only one, and the best part is--it dumps you into the LEFT lane of 400 with just a couple hundred feet to merge. Fun. Oh, and some people love to try to cut onto this exit at the last second.
(2) 400 south to 285 east. Ah, the good old cloverleaf (270-degree) interchange. Drivers seem to have their own determination for how fast they should drive around this ramp. And the last-minute lane-changers are common here, too.
This right here is a very good reason they need redo that interchange. For some reason, I always come close to losing control of my vehicle when I try going through those things, as I'm just not in the habit of slowing below 50 when I switch interstates. I always have to do some hard braking to stay on the pavement in that curve...lol.
The one from 285 south to the Stone Mtn Expressway is a bad one too, but at least the curve doesn't get so bad until very near the end - the one off 400 is just nasty throughout. Time to knock that sucker down and build something that works.
Wasn't there talk about reconstruction of Spaghetti Junction (285 & 85) when TSPLOST was being proposed?
That intersection is a mess even with all those ramps, but I haven't a clue what kind of fix there could be for THAT interchange.
Ah, the other ramp I have to deal with. That one's beyond hope. You'll see cars from Gwinnett, Hall, Barrow, etc and all sorts of out of towners and trucks. There needs to be an alternate route for much of the traffic (another loop) but at this point, it's not gonna happen. With 285 being the only Atlanta bypass, all that traffic just has one option besides going on side roads which have their own problems.
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I always have to do some hard braking to stay on the pavement in that curve...lol. 
