Road Problems: Visitors Beware
Atlanta Metro has a number of problems with its streets and roads. If you are
new to town, just passing through or visiting here, you need to read this:
1.Street numbers go up and then down; try to find the 3400 block of Buford
Highway; you will find it twice, once inside the perimeter and again way out in
Gwinnett County.
2.Roads change names several times, everywhere.
3.Roads turn left and right without telling you.
4.Roads stop and then continue several blocks down from where they dead-ended.
5.All verbal directions require that you drive to the Big Chicken before you
can find your way to your destination.
6.All office building have three to five names for their complex thanks to the
marketing people. Try finding the Palladium by Greenway at the Ponds from the
Big Chicken.
7.Few addresses are visible from the street. Many addresses are not on their
buildings at all. You really can’t slow down enough to catch an address; the
minimum traffic speed on our roads is 45 mph.
8.Hotels change hands faster than a hot Rolex watch. Restaurants go up and down
even faster.
9.Left turns are only allowed on 3 downtown streets. Everyone else continues to
turn right.
10.The I-75 North exit out of downtown no longer means I-75 / I-85 North. You
may want to go to Gwinnett, but you will end up in Chattanooga.
11.There are never any cars on the big 17th Street overpass. I go there just to
clear my head.
12.The exhaust from line of cars idling at the GA-400 toll booth caused the EPA
to ban road building in Atlanta for decades due to poor air quality. The people
who don’t want you to drive were ecstatic.
13.Coming up I-75 / I-85 North through downtown Atlanta, you need to get into
one of the 3 left lanes to go right to I-85 or into one of the 3 right lanes to
go left to I-75. Nashville has you switch lanes like that 5 times. Nashville
needs a 17th Street overpass where you can go to have your nervous breakdown.
14.Some roads can suddenly turn into highway entrance ramps. If you go south on
Buford Highway, the entire road becomes an entrance ramp to I-85 South. Nobody
knows what they did with the rest of Buford Highway or how to get there.
15.The Interstate highways we use, I-85, I-75 and I-285 require some warnings:
The minimum traffic speed on our highways is always the posted speed plus 20.
If you try to drive the posted speed on I-85 South from the Williams Street
Exit to the Hwy
20 Exit, you will cause a huge pile-up, multi-car accident. Just pick a center
lane and hope for the best.
It is common to lose your lane as the highway narrows. That’s because your
right lane has become an exit ramp and you must cut over to the next lane on
your left. This can be difficult and harrowing, but it is a good idea. If you
don’t and you take the exit ramp, you will probably not be able to get back on
to the highway, ever.
The worst entry ramp was from the airport to I-85 N. You had to accelerate from
zero to 80 miles per hour in 4 seconds to cut left through 5 lanes of on-coming
traffic to get to your ramp way over on the left. Otherwise, you couldn’t get
on to I-85, ever.
Our Exit Ahead signs are designed to stun and confuse you. They are very large
and cover the entire highway. They announce the coming exits for the tangled
plethora of roads and highways you may want to take. There are no through-lane
signs, so it’s hard to know if you’re still on the highway you started on. Just
pick a middle lane and hope it’s not an exit lane.
We have HOV Lanes for car pools and buses. No one knows what HOV means. If you
have two or more people in your car or bus, you can use them. Our HOV Lanes are
on the left and so are their exit ramps; you may be required to exit and then
you won’t be able to get back on the highway, ever, and you may not know where
you are. Our HOV Exits are designed to hide what is ahead, so you really don’t
know where they will take you. It’s the GDOT’s way of making your driving
experience exciting.
You may notice the placement of traffic lights on entrance ramps to our
highways. These are really fun. Until they added these unnecessary traffic
lights we were able to form a single lane before reaching the highway entrance
lane. We all took turns shuffling our cars. We did that all by ourselves and it
worked fine. But the Georgia DOT did not think we could handle this shuffling
on our own, so they put stop signs on the entrance ramps. They go Red, Green,
Red Green alternately and very fast. You have got to see this. It creates a
huge line of cars that back up on the road that leads up to the entrance ramp.
They are not always on; nobody knows why. The best time to catch them is rush
hour. You can pack a picnic lunch, and sit on the grass across from the
entrance ramp for the best view. You won’t believe it.
You may notice that some parts of some highways have signs with people’s names
on them. These are not the names of people who died there; these are the names
of well connected, retired Georgia politicians who are not currently
incarcerated.
Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
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