ATLANTA -- Just a few hours after a suicide threat prompted the closure of the Downtown Connector, a man threatening to jump prompted officials Tuesday afternoon to shut down Interstate 20, snarling traffic as the afternoon rush hour commute was shifting into high gear.

Police removed the man from the I-20 bridge overpass at the Wesley Chapel road exit after about 30 minutes and no injuries were reported. It was not immediately clear why the man, whose identity was pending, was threatening to commit suicide.

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Police lined up four 18-wheelers beneath I-20 at Wesley Chapel Road to break the man's fall, said officer Dale Davis of DeKalb County police. But police stopped him before it came to that.

The unidentified man has not been charged with a crime, Davis said.

The incident resulted in lengthy traffic back-ups on I-20.

It was the fourth threatened suicide from a metro area bridge in three months, including a similar incident that shut down the Downtown Connector early Tuesday. All of the incidents have added a new sense of urgency to state officials' effort to add new barriers to bridges that don't have them.

During Tuesday morning's incident, a man climbed to the top of a bridge with a rope around his neck and threatened to jump.

The man climbed onto the edge of the Fair Street bridge over the Downtown Connector about midnight before police talked him down from the bridge.

No injuries were reported, but police stopped traffic on the northbound lanes of I-75/85 at the Langford Parkway while they tried to resolve the crisis. The man, whose identity has not been released, was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment.

Police said the man was upset about problems with his girlfriend and his employment. The freeway was shut down for at least 90 minutes while the situation unfolded.

"Our hostage negotiator talked with the person for about an hour and a half and got him down," police Maj. P.M. Williams said.

It was the third time in as many months that police have grappled with a distraught person threatening to jump from an overpass onto the freeway.

On May 27, a man stood on the edge of the Windy Hill Road bridge over I-75 for over two hours. Police closed the freeway in both directions for much of the afternoon.

The man fought with officers who had tried to grab him but he eventually fell 30 feet onto the interstate and was injured.

On April 7, a 32-year-old man angry at his wife threatened to jump from the same overpass where Tuesday's incident occurred, snarling traffic in both directions for more than three hours. The freeway was shut down for at least three hours, a closure that resulted in up to $2 million in lost productivity, researchers concluded after the incident.

In many overpasses, there are fences that scale the top of the bridge, preventing pedestrians from jumping, falling onto the interstate below or throwing objects into traffic.

The state Department of Transportation is seeking bids to erect fences over the remaining 125 areas in the metro region that don't have the chain-link guards.

"Since we've had a rash of these (threatening jumper incidents) in the last couple of months, we decided we would start to make some modifications to those fences to deter that type of behavior," said Mark McKinnon, a DOT spokesman.

He said the agency plans to first erect a fence over the interstate where the man threatened to jump early Tuesday. It was not immediately clear when the work would begin but it is expected to be complete within 18 months.

Channel 2 Action News reporter Ross Cavitt contributed to this report.