Atlanta's Urban Planning is to Blame for this Icy Mess

I (Paul) normally just post about our travels on this blog, but I couldn't resist sharing my thoughts about the current disaster taking place in metro Atlanta. And yes, it is a disaster. It's 29 hours after it started snowing, and there are still traffic jams in the suburbs, abandoned cars on the highways, and people who have yet to try to leave their office to go home. As of the governor's press conference around 11AM, there were still over 2000 students in Fulton County alone that had not yet left school.

School buses caught in the mess

Trucks couldn't handle the icy curves

GA-400 was a parking lot overnight

So what happened?

Urban sprawl, that's what happened. Metropolitan Atlanta is one of the most sprawling areas on earth. We have close to 5.5 million people, but they're spread out across a massive area (more than 8000 square miles), with only 630 people per square mile. For comparison, the Chicago metro area is more than twice as dense and New York is more than three times as dense, and both have comprehensive transit systems and large central cities. Meanwhile, the city of Atlanta only has around 450,000 people... it's less than 10% of the metro in terms of both population and land area. There are an astonishing 28 counties in metro Atlanta (according to the US census bureau), and the Atlanta Regional Commission plans for 18 counties.

Area road closures at midnight. Red triangles mean all lanes are blocked.

What does this mean for commuting in the region? The vast majority of people live in the suburbs, and most of them commute (by car) to various employment centers. The population of the city of Atlanta more than doubles each day, up to about 1.2 million people. MARTA, the local public transit agency, is only supported by two counties (Fulton and Dekalb), so it's simply not an option for most people living in the region. The state government does not fund the system - it's by far the largest transit agency in the US that does not receive state funding. So when pretty much every local business and school closed shortly after noon on Tuesday, the streets became gridlocked.

Traffic went from good to disaster in a very short time span

In our metro, the average commute is over 30 minutes each way. People drive long distances on the highway on a daily basis. Complicating the situation is that two major interstates, I-75 and I-85, join together and cut through the heart of the city. This not only destroyed some historic neighborhoods, it also resulted in a perpetually gridlocked highway as it's not only commuters on the road, it's also anyone driving from Michigan to Florida or North Carolina to Texas. Sprawling suburbs, long commutes, lack of a cohesive urban plan, poor highway design, lack of communication and cooperation between jurisdictions, and a scatter-shot transportation plan all contributed to this mess.

Spring Street on Monday afternoon

This lack of density in Atlanta (in both housing and jobs) makes transportation planning a nightmare. When people chose to live in the Atlanta suburbs or exurbs, they contribute to the problem. A cheap suburban house comes at a greater price. Increased greenhouse gas emissions, bad air quality, contaminated storm water run-off, obesity, decreased social capital... these are just a few of the ills that are exacerbated by a car-oriented suburban lifestyles. And now, add icy transportation disasters to the list.

This situation isn't unique to Atlanta. Birmingham had all of the same problems, just on a smaller scale because it's not nearly the size of Atlanta. In other sprawling southern cities like Dallas and Houston, the same thing easily could have happened with an ill-timed snowstorm. But those cities also are more cautious - Atlanta usually gets about 3 inches of snow per year. So while it's not super common, it's not something that always necessarily shuts down the whole metro. Meanwhile, Houston gets snow so rarely that even the threat of a light dusting would cause the city to preemptively shut down schools and businesses and urge residents to stay home.

Stalled car blocking traffic on Peachtree Street on Monday

Another thing to point out is that the comparisons to the ice storm in January 2011 are off-base. 2011 happened on a Sunday evening, one of the least busy traffic periods of the entire week. All schools and almost all employers were closed for several days. Every city and county in the region was inept at clearing the ice, but nobody was stranded because they were all at home. This time around, the city of Atlanta (I can't speak for any of the suburban areas) has actually done a great job at getting the streets salted and plowed. By Wednesday afternoon, the major streets in our neighborhood were completely clear:

Peachtree Place near the MARTA station

Spring Street in Midtown

So what could have been done?

For starters, area schools should not have been in session. Superintendents should be held responsible. We knew this was coming. The National Weather Service (NWS) was issuing alerts on Sunday. By Monday afternoon, the NWS updated their message to say that icy conditions were likely for all of metro Atlanta, starting Tuesday morning. Overnight Monday it was upgraded to a full winter storm warning. Some agencies and businesses, including the Atlanta Regional Commission, were completely closed on Monday. Schools and businesses should have followed suit. There's really no excuse. The governor should have encouraged schools and businesses to close. Instead, all of them closed at noon, and the situation unfolded as it did. But when it comes down to it, the real culprit here is decades of bad urban design and an ill-conceived car-based transportation plan. Let this ice storm serve as yet another example of why we should be moving toward more compact, walkable, transit-oriented cities. Supporting smart growth policies, investing in our transit infrastructure, and living in walkable communities can help to prevent this from happening again.