Well, "Go Build" is definitely an improvement over "Go Fish."

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I think flex shoulders are simply shoulders that have been reenforced so they can be used for traffic during rush hour. I haven't been on 400 in a while but I thought they already did that a few years ago, for about ten minutes for buses only so transit would work in the corridor and then snatched up for regular traffic. But that might no longer be the case. Any regular GA400 zombies know what the current situation is? Some other states have tried them with mixed results. The big problem is that when someone breaks down, the resulting situation is much worst than if the lane never existed. And because there no longer is a shoulder, HERO vehicles can't get there to clear the mess. As long as no vehicles have trouble during the rush hour period (which is now four or five hours long?) it is an easy way to add capacity. What are the odds of that being the case more than one day a week?

The criminal justice reform doesn't surprise me. The state has pretty much created a huge growing hole in the budget and created a generation of citizens with extensive unproductive prison time with years of failed "get tough on crime" measures. If it wasn't for his severe addiction to sticking his hand in the cookie jar, Deal would have the potential to be a decent governor.

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Centennian, I don't take 400 daily but yea they had reinforced them for the buses and then took them for general traffic when they added another lane a couple years ago to 400, when that construction was done the shoulders reverted back to the buses.

The buses don't get in the way of responders and can deal better with stalled cars.

If they are confiscating these reinforced shoulders from the bus service then that's just another example of why "enhanced bus service" doesn't work. If you can just restripe the road and back track on a transit commitment people aren't going to do 30 plus year land commitments based on the transit because who knows if it will still be there in 5 years.

That sucks if that's what the flex lanes are.

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The only way buses could enhance 400 would be to roll them on their sides forming barricades at the sandysprings and dunwoody exits, forcing people to park their shiny imports and to ride marta into the city. The only flex lanes I want to see are the flex of the overpasses tumbling into the asphalt after some cool urbano-terrorist group wraps semtex into the structural supports of the 17th street bridge and detonates it after tipping off the local media for some sweet youtube clips.

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Unbelievable!!!!! Deal's proposal would use the shoulders that MARTA now uses when 400 backs up!

It was done to improve bus service. If they can just wave a wand and take away this semi-express bus service do you really trust them to spend half of the uber regressive transportation sales tax on transit.

This is not the step to take in getting more transit service for the region.

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"He wants to reduce the traffic clusterfuck on Ga. 400 by adding "flex shoulders" in each direction — whatever those are."

this is a dumb idea for two reasons

first, shoulders serve a necessary 'pit stop' function to remove disabled cars from traffic. what's going to happen if someone breaks down during rush hour and they have no shoulder to cry on?

second, expanding lane capacity never pays off in the long run. if you expand road capacity, it will fill up with cars very soon - and you're back where you started, except with two extra lanes of gridlock

you can't manage congestion through supply (lanes, road) but only through demand (requiring less driving through transit and development)

flex lanes are a transparent dogwhistle for suburban commuters who want to live the sit-in-traffic lifestyle but hate sitting in traffic. and it's not going to work

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http://www.ajc.com/news/governors-ga-400-p… - AJ articles quotes firefighters and police concerned about the loss of emergency access. Note bus use of the shoulder doesn't get in the way since the shoulder doesn't get congested with the MARTA and GRTA XPress buses.

http://11aliveblogs.com/commuterdude/?p=11… local story about the bus lanes.


http://gov.georgia.gov/00/press/detail/0,2… lanes added in 2005. Perdue announcing funding of additional lanes on 400 that are apparently already full, supporting the idea that we can't pave our way out of congestion. Adding more lanes merely induces more demand, its a vicious circle.

GRTA Press release on the bus lanes.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 12, 2003

Contact William Mecke
(404) 463-3011
Bus on Shoulder System to Operate on GA400
GRTA Express Buses to Utilize Shoulders

ATLANTA - Mirroring a system successfully used on 200 miles of highway shoulders in Minneapolis-St. Paul, express buses running on Georgia 400 will travel along the shoulders bypassing stop-and-roll traffic. The Bus-on-Shoulder System is a concept introduced by the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA) through its Northern Sub-Area Study/GA 400 Corridor Analysis and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).

"Identifying cost-effective ways to increase the usefulness of our highways and improving mobility is important, both in the Atlanta region and throughout the state," said Governor Purdue. "I congratulate GDOT and GRTA for developing this inventive solution for improved transit along the Georgia 400 corridor."

GRTA and GDOT are working together to reinforce where necessary the outside shoulders of GA400 in order to support express buses traveling from Forsyth County and/or the MARTA Windward Parkway Park and Ride lot to the MARTA North Springs rail station. The program is part of a series of improvements to Georgia 400 currently being made by GDOT.

"Minneapolis' experience shows us that this is a successful method for gaining additional use from existing transportation infrastructure," said Jim Ritchey, GRTA acting executive director.

"Between exists, the buses run on the outside shoulder of the road and then merge back into the regular traffic stream at exits and at other places where necessary. The people on the buses get the advantage of using an express lane. The taxpayers get an express bus lane at a fraction of the cost of building such a lane. On top of that, the buses will help reduce the number of cars on Georgia 400, thus reducing congestion on that heavily-traveled road."

MARTA's North Fulton County buses could take advantage of the program, as well as GRTA's Regional Express Bus. The GA 400 shoulder reinforcements, as well as a number of other intersection improvements in the GA 400 corridor identified by GRTA's Northern Sub-Area Study/GA 400 Corridor Analysis, will be constructed by GDOT over the next 18 months.

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Ok found this, which is what I thought. At least part of the funding for the bus shoulder lanes came from federal CMAQ (Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality funds). While in Atlanta much of these funds are used for traffic signals and signs its also the federal pot of funds that the region uses for can be used for sidewalks, bike lanes, streetscapes, LCI projects or transit. Though CMAQ is a very small portion of the Federal Highway Transportation funds so its generally not used for big transit projects. Larger Pots of the federal highway funds are easily flexed to transit though that has NEVER been done in Metro Atlanta, in part because the 10 to 20% match from GDOT is restricted to highway use (though note under any reasonable definition a bus lane is a highway addition)

Anyway, the point is, I hope or wonder if this CMAQ project to use federal funds to reinforce these shoulders for bus use came with restrictions. Can the state just toss aside the application that surely was submitted to the Feds to use these CMAQ funds?

Unfortunately MARTA or GRTA are not going to try to protect their bus service in this corridor because they are to worried about the politics of it all. Well GRTA is just an arm of the Governor so of course they won't say anything.

http://www.grta.org/board_calender/2003_Mi…
Mr. Ritchey announced that GDOT and GRTA have reached an agreement to move forward with
the Buses on Shoulder Project for GA 400. Work necessary to improve the shoulders for bus
operation will be done in conjunction with this project. GDOT will be conducting maintenance on
GA 400 which will consist of repaving and repairing the existing shoulders, updating the signage
and repairing guard rails. GRTA will be contributing $2.8 million of CMAQ funds to widen the
shoulders and GDOT will provide $18.5 million. SB 256, which amends Georgia law to allow buses
to operate in emergency lanes, was introduced on March 6, 2003.
Formal Action: Motion was made by Mr. Shailendra and seconded by Ms. Baylis to approve
support for changes in state law to permit bus operations within the emergency lanes of state
highways in the non-attainment areas. The motion was approved unanimously.

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This is why people got so upset at the suggestion that the Beltline be built with bus service instead of rail. Everyone knew that as soon as the buses started rolling on the pavement, that commuters would demand to get to use it too. It has happened elsewhere (the El Monte Busway comes to mind) and would absolutely happen here.

This is also why many are opposed to BRT. Transit funds are already limited. To use the little money there is to put down BRT lanes which would quickly be turned into HOV3 and HOV2 and eventually general use lanes would be just more of the same. But hey, pols would get to claim they spent x million on transit while really delivering more pavement for sprawltopia.

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Centennian, this 400 episode certainly lends credence to that suspicion or belief. Its been at least 10 years when I first heard of Curitiba Brazil and their BRT system http://www.streetfilms.org/curitibas-brt/

If you built a BRT system truly geared towards Bus Rapid Transit its engineered differently than a general lane and thus is far more difficult to convert. But hey, I can't deny thinking that 1. Georgia would find a way to convert it or more likely 2. Georgia will build a BRT that's not really BRT and thus it would be easy to convert to HOT lane usage.

The one spot I still think BRT makes sense is 285 since you've got buses from Gwinnett, South Dekalb and Cobb that could jump on it on the top end after traveling down 85, 75 and from I-20/285, but if this is the way the region treats bus service is there any reason to think there will be significant bus ridership in the future? (Note the 285 BRT proposal runs on just one side of 285 and weaves across 285 at points and at points like the perimeter center diverges from 285 for a decent distance, thus making its conversion more difficult).

Though I can see it being compromised and being built in a manner that makes it easier to convert it to a HOT lane.

The death of meaningful transit in the 75 corridor as a part of the major rebuild proposals and now 400 says to me that meaningful transit is years a way and any regional transit agency will be more concerned about reducing costs than they are about increasing ridership. Granted both goals are necessary, but frankly the other bus services are not interested in increasing ridership due to the fact that our regions massive subsidization of solo car travel makes it impossible to have profitable transit.

*note i'm not against HOT Lanes - I didn't like seeing a HOV converted for one and while it can provide congestion free services for bus service it doesn't inspire transit oriented development.

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Okay, it's not true that rail = "meaningful" transit and bus doesn't. It depends on what you're looking for. Buses work very well for rapid transit purposes and carrying commuters of all stripes - see BRT systems, solid express bus systems, layers of limited-stop services in larger/better systems than MARTA, etc. And before I get accused of being a bus-only person, I firmly believe that they fit within the context of multi-modal networks, being used to complement rapid rail, commuter rail, etc.

That said, Deal's idiotic idea isn't any kind of strike against bus lanes, busways, or "enhanced bus service" (which isn't even defined well) as referenced by InAtl. It just shows that we have policymakers that don't really care about maintaining the facilities that make these services possible. Enhanced bus - be it BRT, express, local/semi-express buses in shoulder lanes - will work well when it has the facilities. If Deal takes away the facilities, it's not that the "enhanced bus service" is disproven as a concept - Deal has just eliminated the ability to provide enhanced bus service.

And just for the record, while the El Monte busway is no longer bus-only, it's still a 3+ HOV. They briefly opened it to 2+ carpools and rescinded the idea when travel speeds dropped, opting to keep the 3+ and a 65 mph travel speed during congested times (supposedly, this works). So while that's not necessarily ideal for transit, it's not as though they're just giving the lanes away to any latte-sipping single-occupancy sucker in an SUV. I think that this was a bit mischaracterized by an earlier post.

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