Atlanta traffic calamity can serve as a lesson
A joke has been going around for years that whether you’re bound for heaven or hell, you’ll go through Atlanta first.
That’s because of the city’s airport, one of the busiest in the world. Regardless of their final destination, however, things just got decidedly hellish for residents of Atlanta’s metropolitan area following the collapse of a portion of Interstate 85 leading into downtown last week. Caused by a massive fire under a bridge that might have been set deliberately, it will take weeks, if not months, to clean up the rubble and fill the gap in the highway.
Keep in mind this is one of Atlanta’s major arteries, and the “city too busy to hate” already has notorious traffic woes. Additional lanes have been added to highways over the last two or three decades, but it never seems to be enough to keep up with the pace of new arrivals. This often results in teeth-gnashing commutes to the suburbs that can last two hours each way in the best of circumstances.
If there’s a bright side to be found in this calamity, it’s that more residents might be tempted to give the city’s public transportation system a try. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority – MARTA, for short – is gearing up for more riders to get on board its buses and trains. Maybe, after the highway is repaired, they’ll decide to remain customers. If they do, it would be a boon for Atlanta. In fact, it would be a windfall for other cities if more people used public transportation. Getting cars off the road would not only bring down congestion, but reduce air pollution, help mitigate climate change, reduce gasoline use and generally help make our cities more livable.
There’s just one problem, though, both in Atlanta and elsewhere – public transportation systems have been underfunded, even as they have grown. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the country’s public transit system a D-minus grade in its 2017 infrastructure report card, pointing out that even as demand has increased, public transit systems are not getting the money they need and face a $90 billion backlog for repairs and upkeep.
“While some communities are experiencing a transit boom, many Americans still have inadequate access to public transit,” the engineers reported.
These problems could get worse. The budget proposal unveiled by President Trump last month would erase funding for transit expansion projects and eliminate funding for an Obama-era initiative that would provide a slice of federal transportation funds for transit agencies, along with efforts to build walking and biking trails.
Atlanta is additionally hobbled by the fact that MARTA’s buses and trains operate in only two counties. Voters in outlying communities have turned down joining MARTA at the ballot box when given the opportunity. Doug Monroe wrote in Atlanta Magazine in 2012 that not extending MARTA into the suburbs was “the mother of all mistakes.”
“It wasn’t just a one-time blunder,” Monroe said. “It was the single worst mistake in a whole cluster bomb of missteps, errors, power plays, and just plain meanness that created the region’s transportation infrastructure.”
Maybe the I-85 chasm will change some minds about the virtues of public transportation. And it should serve as a lesson to the rest of us – we all could be just one lit match away from a traffic nightmare of unfathomable proportions.