Apparently they’re laying more than asphalt at the Department of Transportation. It’s not just roads they’re paving! Seems state transportation board chairman Mike Evans was the DOT Commissioner Gena Abraham’s HERO unit on the road to romance! Now Evans has done the right thing and resigned after disclosing he’d been fishing off the company pier. Abraham’s fate is yet to be determined. Only a few months into her new job and it may become her old job. Even though Governor Sonny Perdue has given her his vote of confidence the state board of transportation could confidently vote her out. She got the job on the slimmest of margins when they voted her in. And now we come to discover she’d been working under Mike Evans in more ways than one!
Archive for April, 2008
I’ve been reading, with obvious interest, about the recently disclosed money woes of the Georgia department of Transportation. Then a story pops up about truck-only lanes and toll lanes not being good ideas. I found that interesting because those ideas had been heavily pushed by lobbyists. Put these stories together and you begin to see what appears to be an emerging change at the DoT. For one of the first times I can remember a state DoT engineer stated the obvious (backed up by research, not “feelings”). You create space more people will jump on the interstates to take advantage of it, thus filling everything up again, boxing out the trucks and creating additional congestion. It’s a dilemma alright. That takes me back to my 2007 mantra, “Manage What You Got.” Use no-cost or low-cost options to move traffic better throughout Atlanta. That means things like better traffic incident management. And that means some first response agencies are going to have to be dragged kicking and screaming into this new century whether they like it or not. You’d be surprised how much better your commute would be. That beats a billion dollar funding surprise in my book.
I’ve got a few pet peeves when it comes to traffic. One of em’s handed down by my father, a traffic cop. Merging. Maybe I’m missing something but where is it taught or demonstrated that you get on an interstate by comin’ off the on-ramp at 10-15 miles per hour LESS than the flow of traffic?!? The ramp is there to essentially allow you to match your speed with the flow for an almost seamless entry onto the highway. Unfortunately we’re bustin’ at the seams in Atlanta with drivers that think you just cruise down the ramp then just come on over regardless of traffic. Nothing could be more wrong! And, if there is a steady flow of traffic then drivers already on the interstate need to make sure the driver’s have room to get in, either in front of them or behind them. There is no disgrace in slowing down a little. Just don’t hit the brakes for a nimrod trying to merge doing 55 or less when everyone else is up around 75! They need to just continue onto the shoulder and wait for traffic to subside. Or park it and have someone come get em’.
One of my favorite stories about my dad happpened many, many years ago when he was doing his helicopter traffic reports in Cincinnati. A woman had slowed, then stopped at the bottom of an on ramp to I-75 (a co-incidence? I think not). He had his pilot put the helicopter down to just a few feet above and in front of the woman’s car. Everyone listened to him and she just looked up at him and he yelled, “MOVE!” into his headset microphone. She did. And the drivers in the cars behind her aplauded and honked their horns in approval. It’s called merging for a reason. And even though you’re all headed in the same direction it’s still a two-way street.
