Before I get into the bulk of my comments, let me start by saying this: I don’t live in Atlanta. I used to, but I moved to Jacksonville almost six years ago. However, I drive back and forth through Atlanta several times a year, and my observations are based on those trips.
I also don’t actually have a Peach Pass, but I do have a Florida Sun Pass, which is used interchangeably on toll lanes in the Sunshine State, Georgia and North Carolina. While I’ve never encountered toll roads in North Carolina, I have used the Sun Pass quite a bit in Florida and on my trips to Atlanta, so my comments are also based on those experiences.
So, why do I say the Peach Pass is a waste of time? In the four years that I’ve driven to Atlanta using the Sun Pass, I think I’ve been able to access a toll lane perhaps three times. Georgia, in its wisdom, decided to build only one toll corridor with one or two lanes in most places where it’s used. That corridor runs one way, and that direction depends solely on a strict timer. For example, south of Atlanta, between 1 a.m. and 11 a.m., the lanes are directed Northbound. After a shutdown from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., the lanes reverse to Southbound until another shutdown between 11 p.m. and 1 a.m.
While the state says they reserve the right to adjust these flows for special events and holidays, its adjustments don’t seem to follow any reason or logic. For example, this week, Monday was one of the most heavy travel days in recent history. Knowing that Atlanta traffic generally sucks anyway, the state should have made a solid plan using the toll lanes. When we reached the toll entrance on I-675 at around 12:15 p.m., it was closed, just as the schedule said it would be. However, the lane was being used by Northbound traffic. Both I-675 and I-75 had relatively light traffic with zero slowdowns, and we counted maybe 30 cars total that were in the 20 miles of toll lanes (that we were able to see).
I don’t pretend to be a traffic expert, but one would think that a toll project like this would pay major dividends in terms of reduced congestion. After all, if a state is going to spend $4 billion to construct special lanes designed to give drivers the option to spend a little extra money to avoid sitting in an interstate parking lot, you’d hope that they would engineer the lanes so that the most possible drivers would use the lanes and, thus, take pressure off of the roads. Instead, Georgia opted not to build lanes that run in both directions, but to reverse the flow based only on strict timetables. Ask yourself this: Is 10 a.m. on March 24 the same as 10 a.m. on July 4 or December 26? And when you anticipate a massive traffic jam at a specific time, shouldn’t you begin to reverse the lane so that you could alleviate the jam as quickly as possible? And knowledge about how many cars are in the lanes shouldn’t be a problem. With an abundance of cameras and with transponders on cars feeding data into computers, the state should know exactly where each lane stands every minute.
Of course, my current home state is perfect regarding its lanes, right? Not at all. But the biggest criticism of Florida’s system is with the administration of the individual accounts. (Georgia also gets slammed by customers in this area.) When it comes to actual usefulness of the lanes, Florida actually does a pretty good job. In most places, Florida actually looked ahead and anticipated that toll roads might be needed. Georgia, on the other hand, didn’t seem to think that traffic would be that big of a problem and waited to add lanes to existing interstates. Even so, it would seem that when constructing a solution, they would have attempted one that could have been used by all the people, all the time.
Of course, that’s not new for Georgia. Every traffic solution is generally deficient even when it’s implemented. The HOV lanes on I-75 and I-85 cost taxpayers millions of dollars to convert, but when there’s a traffic jam, those lanes are just as jacked-up as the non-HOV lanes. And then there’s MARTA, Atlanta’s version of the subway. More accurately, MARTA is Atlanta’s mass-transit system, which largely uses buses to shuffle its passengers through the city. But the trains? Unless you live near and are traveling to a place on the city’s plus-sign shaped route map, it’s more or less worthless. If you’re used to the efficiency of mass transit in places like Seattle, Boston, Washington, D.C. or New York City, forget about Atlanta and MARTA. (I’ll share my own personal MARTA story sometime. It pretty much sums up all of the ridiculousness of that system.)
So, when I go back to Atlanta, will I use the Peach Pass lanes? Based on history, it’s doubtful because I don’t think they’ll be going my way. That pretty much goes for anyone who thinks they’ll be traveling through Atlanta. Don’t count on the Peach Pass to help you out.
However, if I lived in Atlanta, would I get a Peach Pass on my car? Based on the helpfulness (or lack thereof) of the lanes, the high costs of the tolls at times (one toll on I-85 is $5.60 as I write this) and the terrible reviews the system gets from its customers, I would probably refrain from getting a pass. The time and effort would be better spent getting in touch with officials and advocating for viable solutions that will actually improve things.
Copyright © 2021 Doug DeBolt
