by Mike Lowry
We have heard much
recently about “making Atlanta a great city” and “moving forward not backward”
and “keeping up with other cities” by giving politicians and developers a
massive amount of tax money to spend on their favorite projects.
Atlanta
is already a great city and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Our
suburban lifestyle is the best in the nation by far. IBM and other corporations
discovered long ago that once they moved executives into Atlanta, they would
give up further promotions to stay here. As a region we have been in the top 10
in growth for years and are very likely to continue that growth.
We
have a congestion problem because our transportation planning has been
dysfunctional for years. We have planned (and spent) as if Atlanta is still the
hub-and-spoke city that it was in the 1960’s. We have ignored the suburban
growth pattern and failed to create a grid of arteries.
In his
excellent study on this subject (“Getting Georgia Going”)
Baruch Feigenbaum notes:
“The
arterial network that should serve as the backbone for transportation is
underdeveloped. Atlanta has quite possibly the worst arterial network of any of
the 10 largest metro areas in the country. A great deal of attention is focused
on the shortcomings of the region's transit network, but the region's highway
network is not much better. Creating a grid network would improve Atlanta's
traffic flow.”
The
Atlanta region has grown into a network of clusters. From a growth viewpoint,
this is a very strong structure and one that we should encourage and
promote. That requires very different thinking on the part of the state
as well as local government officials. Regional governance structures
that attempt to cement in place a dominant “urban core” are misguided and in
the end will prevent rather than encourage the region’s growth.
We
should begin by focusing on the origin of the problem – a dysfunctional GDOT.
The GDOT board should be elected, similar to the Public Service Commission, and
minimal professional standards for its top management established.
Our
transportation planners should begin by identifying roads that should serve as
major arteries in the regional grid, and developing innovative, continuous-flow
roadway designs for these arteries. This can be done without building
full-scale expressways. Other cities have done it with flyovers,
roundabouts and cross-unders, yet preserved the ability for local access to
stores when desired. Roadways designated as arteries should have minimal
standards for such design, preventing local officials from putting stoplights
every ¼ mile to slow them down.
Companies
don’t move to Atlanta because of our urban core or transit system. They
come because of the airport, the suburban lifestyle and great housing values.
Companies that avoid Atlanta do so because of our state income tax, our
dysfunctional governments at state, county and city levels and our abysmal
school systems. If we want to compete effectively we should focus on
those problems.
The
competitive regions in the next century will be strong networks of suburban
clusters with great arterial grids, not central cities. This does not
mean that in-town lifestyles will deteriorate. Quite the opposite.
There will always be a segment of the population that desires high-rise
apartment living close to the city center. Developers can and will meet
that need as the market demand dictates.
As
witnessed by the Avalon complex in Alpharetta, there is even demand for that
lifestyle in the suburbs, and Avalon’s developers are constructing a product to
meet that demand without grossly distorting our transportation planning or
requiring massive tax subsidies. What is interesting to note is that the
Avalon market study makes clear that its success will be dependent on the
surrounding suburban neighborhoods.
Source:
TrafficTruth.net, Blogs, Mike Lowry
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