I-285 Top-End Express Lanes Visualization - June 2024

[@triplethreatpodcasts]

One more lane bro, this time it'll finally fix traffic. Oh and maintenance, don't worry about that that'll be someone else's problem.

[@campbellsadeghy213]

Nobody has ever said just one more lane will fix traffic. You anti car nuts are a joke.

[@triplethreatpodcasts]

@@campbellsadeghy213 if no one has said one more lane will fix traffic, then why do we widen roads? Also i love my car, the speed and convenience are great, but as someone who lives in a city, it simply isnt effective at moving thousands people. Im pro car, I'm anto car dependency and government waste. We have fantastic roadways, but they are at capacity, road expansion is proven not to reduce traffic and increase cities maintenance cost. Do you think two viaduct express lanes are worth 12 billion dollars? That could go to repaving streets, fixing sidewalks, building housing, building bikepaths, building transit. Does that make me anti car or pro modal freedom. Lets not fight but understand others opinions, thats how we get the full story. Id love to hear your opinion on the matter.

[@me-it9jn]

@@triplethreatpodcasts 3 things: road widening does reduce congestion, and outside of urban areas (and in urban areas outside of rush hour) it can “fix” congestion. Second, most of the land around 285 is not dense enough for practical, reliable, around the clock public transit to serve local residents. Third, the toll lanes are great for allowing buses to bypass traffic, thus giving drivers a reason to actually ride the bus and reducing demand for parking in the malls/business parks around the upper 285

[@me-it9jn]

Oh and also, gdot is pretty good at maintaining its roads so I’m not sure why you brought that up

[@joannekearney5329]

I noticed areas that are heavily pixelated ... makes me wonder what is being claimed for the roadway....

[@LSHoang]

Last I heard, 400 properties via eminent domain.

[@CoolCoverBro]

I'd rather see these lanes be dedicated to HOV/BRT, it's a shame to see more freeway construction instead of investing this money into something that serves everyone for transit.

[@elevatorsof14s]

With all due respect, your concern is exactly why this is being constructed. The express lanes, along with the direct express-to-street exits, are intended to allow for better transit connectivity. Buses can use the express lanes for free, rather than sit in traffic.

[@zactishgarten7703]

@@elevatorsof14s totally get that! i think the concern is that non-exclusive express lanes could still end up with congestion just as bad as the normal lanes

[@me-it9jn]

@@zactishgarten7703prices to use those roads will spike way before congestion gets near levels of the main lanes. Just look at suburban DC and Texan toll lane prices going over 12 dollars one way to get to downtown from some of the outer suburbs. Toll operators could always increase prices even more to further safeguard against congestion

[@lysolman582]

living near spaghetti junction I just know that if this does go through traffic is gonna be an absolute hellscape never before seen

[@Foggen]

With the amount of land you'll have to condemn for these high bridges you could double the width of 285 with normal lanes. Why not just build more lanes for everyone, and not try to nickel and dime us with tolls? Or if you must build bridges, why not regional light rail?

[@tommarney1561]

Double the width of 285 with normal lanes? Don't be ridiculous. Most of this elevated stuff appears to be within the existing rights of way. That's most of the point of elevating it. Building new lanes, for everyone or otherwise, is cripplingly expensive. Tolling will at least somewhat recoup the cost of these lanes. Why not regional light rail? First, because it's not GDOT's job. Second, because it's cripplingly expensive, too, and it requires subsidies to operate, subsidies that no agency is volunteering to pay. You really should ask better questions.

[@tommarney1561]

@stynkanator I didn't say driving wasn't subsidized. Don't put words in my mouth. What I will say is that the sources of subsidies for driving are well established and are at least partly paid for by fuel taxes-- taxes on driving. You really shouldn't have to have that explained to you.

[@Foggen]

@@tommarney1561 "Tolling will at least somewhat recoup the cost" To what end? This is an extremely expensive and disruptive project that boxes GDOT in in terms of the ability to expand normal lanes. What's the upside to citizens? They get to have poor road capacity used as leverage to extract money from them, and a lot of people get their land taken by force. I'm sure from GDOT's perspective this is great, because then they can leverage that money into job security for the lifetime of an enormous project, but for the rest of us it's a shakedown. We're better off if they do nothing at all.

[@tommarney1561]

@@Foggen Don't dump on me. I'm here to criticize the dumb arguments that ignorant people are making here, not to be a target for every passing troll. If you want to denounce this project here, make your own post and leave me TF out of it. But, since you've made a dumb argument yourself, I guess I'll have to point out that directly recouping costs through tolls is a self-evident good, and one that only a tiny proportion of highway projects even attempt.

[@Foggen]

@@tommarney1561 If you want to be left TF out of people's arguments you might be well advised not to reply to them. One might assume that's obvious but I guess some people don't understand things. Also, an ill-advised project is still a bad idea if it pays for itself.

[@parkermaupin2930]

The highway in the middle of the screen looked like a good option too

[@campbellsadeghy213]

This is great and we need to see more of this everywhere.

[@muhnameizjeff]

Imagine if this right of way were used for trains and busses.

[@me-it9jn]

This design would work very well for adding bus service but that’s Marta’s job now

So the 75 South express lanes don't flow directly into the 285 East express lanes?

[@parkermaupin2930]

Men really will go to some crazy lengths to get out of going to therapy

[@jermainec2462]

what kind of city skylines shit is this 😂😂 ??!

[@nubianking4203]

Love my state of Georgia. So amazing to see all the massive growth over the past 30 yrs

[@derickdevindavis]

Why aren't there equivalent southbound access into 75/400/85? All options seem to only point North. A person traveling across can't exit southbound? What kind of sense does that make? 75N - no problem; 400 North and 85 North - no problem. No SB transitions?

[@qthetroll]

spaghetti junction 😵‍💫

[@jrae1997]

Right! It looks like it's gonna be even more noodles in Spaghetti Junction. But honestly, every major exchange on 285 is gonna look like that. 75/285 already does and so does 400/285. Spaghetti Junction isnt so specual as it was years ago.

[@JAXONcreed]

I hate it. Please build transit. This benefits no-one except the wealthy.

[@TayReed]

There needs to be an auxiliary lane eastbound from New Northside to Riverside. Traffic backs up so bad right there all the way past Cobb Cloverleaf

[@campbellsadeghy213]

We need to start planning for a new outer perimeter ring Road.

[@nubianking4203]

@@campbellsadeghy213 they tried in the late 90s. The wealthy suburbanites in the north metro raised hell.

[@northamericanvanlines]

very healthy and normal

[@illusionsnc]

GDOT, please replace the aging interstate signage in Atlanta and repair and restripe existing freeways before putting billions into this project.

[@stephentuday651]

This would be an engineering marvel if it gets built!

[@darianflenoy758]

I heard years ago they were talking about double decking the whole perimeter including the express lanes for buses and trucks

[@JJaani]

Stop building subdivisions and creating t-intersections everywhere... GA should have built the outer perimeter long time ago.... now we have to deal with this cash cow express lanes.

[@Cerby1979]

This would be like those I-35 top end express lanes going up outside of San Antonio.

It would seem I should be investing in construction and cement companies...

[@yankee8570]

What a dystopian nightmare this project is

[@campbellsadeghy213]

No it’s not. This is a great project that needs to be implemented in a lot of other places.

[@SarahMottram]

Is this an out of season April fools joke

[@user-uo7fw5bo1o]

With all the money being spent and property being seized by eminent domain for this elevated tollway you could have transformed the 285 into a quadruple highway like Ontario's Highway 401 in Toronto or added a Northern Perimeter elevated metrorail. But I understand you would rather make a mint off induced demand with those Lexus lanes.

[@tommarney1561]

Free lanes like the ones in Toronto would induce much more demand than tolled lanes as proposed here. You have no idea what induced demand is.

[@user-uo7fw5bo1o]

Have you seen 95 in Miami-Dade County? They have high priced toll lanes too yet all lanes free and toll are gridlocked at least from photos I have seen. Same thing for I-10 in Houston at rush hour

[@tommarney1561]

@user-uo7fw5bo1o No, I haven't. The theory is that rush-hour tolls can be set high enough to drive enough users away to keep the lanes moving. I don't understand why the agency that runs those lanes wouldn't do that, but it's something that could easily be changed.

[@tommarney1561]

@@user-uo7fw5bo1o I did some research on this and discovered that, while the tolls in Miami and likely Houston seem high to you, in fact they're capped. Capping tolls prevents the lanes from being managed correctly, thus creating congestion where there shouldn't be any. The Transurban lanes in northern Virginia don't have caps on their tolls and thus operate efficiently all the time unless there's a crash or some other incident. Here's the kicker: The Transurban lanes are privately owned and operated, and there's no way that Transurban would've signed a deal to build and operate them if they'd been forbidden to operate them efficiently. Unfortunately, AFAIK, the lanes in Atlanta will be publicly owned and therefore vulnerable to the same political pressure from ignorant people that have caused the Miami and Houston lanes to fail. That may be the most compelling argument against the project.

[@tommarney1561]

@user-uo7fw5bo1o I did some research and found that the tolls on the lanes in Miami and Houston are capped, presumably due to political interference by people who don't understand how managed lanes work. The Transurban lanes in northern Virginia are privately owned and free to charge whatever they want, so they're kept at a level that yields rush hour speeds of about 45 mph, near the lanes' capacity, and don't jam up unless there's a crash. The argument that GDOT will be unable to resist political pressure to operate the lanes stupidly is the best argument against them I've heard here. Congratulations. 😄

[@babyallyouneed]

Absolutely ridiculous. Stop letting private investors build private highways only they can afford and build a fraking train

[@tommarney1561]

I've been a critic of GDOT for most of my life and I'm not exactly sold on this project, but it annoys me that people's criticisms of it are so blisteringly ignorant.

[@Freewayjim]

Agreed!

[@Magnus_Magnesium]

Would be better to build another outer ring

[@jasonyuan4034]

Okay express lines for collecting more money.. what about that so broken 285? my windshield and tires were broken 3 times already from past year. who will pay me on the repair cost?

[@TupolevTU144]

This is horrifying. Spending enough money to fully build out a legitimate public transit system, but instead we get a highway on top of a highway, exclusively for paid use, with profits funneled off to private investment funds. If this wasn’t GDOT, I would presume this to be an Orwellian joke…

[@iamnatis]

This looks like crap and won't solve anything.

[@bigggincognitohammy6791]

That’s what I’m saying it will literally solve nothing

[@kendrickharris6987]

It look cool asl

[@kendrickharris6987]

Please build this