ATLANTA — Most Metro Atlantans spend a lot of time commuting to and from work.
Channel 2’s Carol Sbarge rode along with three people who live in Gwinnett, Clayton and North Fulton counties to get a first-hand look at the challenges they face getting to their jobs in Midtown Atlanta.
Some of them have already taken steps to make their commute a little easier, and we asked traffic experts at Georgia Tech what else they can do.
Life moves at a pretty fast pace in Atlanta, except for traffic during the morning and evening rush.
“Traffic’s bad now. I hope it doesn’t get much worse,” said Rick Lonn, who lives in Gwinnett County.
We rode along with Lonn from his home in Snellville to the Southern Company on Peachtree Place in Midtown Atlanta.
After Lonn starts his car each morning, he checks WSB-AM for traffic reports.
“Make sure I get my radio on so I can find out where the accidents are going to be and see if I have to alter my route,” said Lonn.
On the day we rode along, a Friday at the end of a holiday week, his normal commute of about 90 minutes took less than an hour.
Lonn said last fall he bought a Ford Fusion that runs on compressed natural gas. It allows him to use the I-85 H.O.T. lanes for free and save time.
“Which for me takes a half hour off my commute every day. Between five minutes in the morning and about 25 minutes in the evening,” he said.
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Next we rode to work with Reecia Landers who lives in Clayton County near Atlanta’s Hartsfield Jackson International Airport. Landers took surface streets to I-85 and didn’t hit much traffic until she got to University Avenue on the Downtown Connector.
“So usually here is where you start to see a lot of the brake lights. When school is in it is horrible,” said Landers.
Traffic got tricky again at I-20.
“Usually right in here is a really bad spot,” she said.
Landers exited the downtown connector at 10th Street.
She has a strategy to deal with the heavy traffic.
“I normally try to stay in one lane because usually when you get down here nobody wants to let you over,” said Landers.
For our final ride along we took Diane Weber’s SUV from her home off Holcomb Bridge Road in Alpharetta to the North Springs MARTA station in Sandy Springs. Weber makes a point of avoiding Georgia 400 in the morning, taking a more scenic route along Spalding Drive to catch her train.
“It’s just nice and relaxing and then you know hop on MARTA,” said Weber.
She said MARTA is reliable.
“There’s hardly any hiccups on MARTA,” said Weber.
She said it’s also stress free.
“I like that you can get on (and) read. You can just zone out. You can listen to music,” she said.
It takes Weber about 50 minutes to get from her house to Southern Company which is next door to the Midtown MARTA station.
We showed all three commutes to two Georgia Tech professors who developed the Commute Warrior app.
“It’s tracking your activity, speed and acceleration,” said Georgia Tech professor Randall Guenesler, Ph.D.
The app gathers information about each trip you take and shows how much energy and money each trip costs. It also shows different routes including buses and trains.
Professor Michael Rodgers, Ph.D. has two pieces of advice for Atlanta drivers.
“Very often that defensive driving is being hyper vigilant to the driver who’s not paying attention,” he said.
Rodgers said Atlanta drivers tend to go fast.
“You’ll want to drive with traffic, create the minimum disturbance. A smooth traffic flow is a safe traffic flow,” he said.
The professors told us the afternoon commute is worse than the evening because people can stagger what time they leave their homes in the morning, but they have less flexibility in the afternoon. There are also more cars on the road with people shopping and driving to evening activities.