Georgia 400 Toll Booths To Come Down

How long of have you lived in Atlanta? Some of you may remember a time when GA 400 stopped at I-285. That particular portion of the

Tolls will no longer be collected at the GA 400 toll booth as of November 21, 2013. Photo from Creative Loafing 2010.

road, which would seem impossible to live without in our current day-to-day lives wasn’t around when the road opened in the early 70′s. With that portion also came the toll booths. It has been over 20 years since everyone traveling from Buckhead to North Fulton started paying a toll. Most would say the toll  road has been a huge asset to our communities, even if they have been in rush hour traffic on GA 400.

History is going to be made on November 21 of this year when you will no longer pay a toll to travel on GA 400. It has been decided that the changes will take place prior to the Thanksgiving holiday, in order to ease some of the traffic woes during the winter holiday season.

All of this will result in some new traffic plans according to the Peach Pass newsletter, “preliminary plans call for all GA 400 traffic to shift into three general purpose lanes where motorists currently use the electronic tolling lanes.”

Construction will begin in October for the traffic shift, but the full demolition of the booths will run January 2014 through May 2014. Once the structure is down, traffic will shift back over.

This is great news and who knows maybe rush hour will move a little quicker!

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Video: The GA 400 Trail on BroadcastAtlanta

Would you like to see more green space and walkability in metro Atlanta? Soon you will!

On this episode of BroadcastAtlanta (also known as BADTV) we hear from George Dusenbury from the City of Atlanta’s Parks, Recreation and Cultural Affairs department about plans to increase park space in the city’s least parked area – Buckhead.

Also Erica Danylchak from the Buckhead Heritage Society discusses how plans for the GA 400 trail will incorporate important historic sites along the way.

Livable Buckhead is the chief organizer of the proposed five-mile trail to be built alongside and beneath Ga. 400, connecting North Buckhead with the BeltLine.

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Ga. 400 Trail Meetings Begin

The proposed five-mile trail to be built alongside and beneath Ga. 400 moves into its final planning phase this week.

If all goes as scheduled, design work that begins at this time will lead to construction starting in mid 2013, according to Denise Starling, the executive director of Livable Buckhead, Inc. Livable Buckhead is the chief organizer of the $10 million trail that is to stretch from a cemetery off Loridans Drive in North Buckhead to the planned Peachtree Creek spur of the BeltLine, near MARTA’s Lindbergh Station.

The Buckhead trail is not directly affiliated with the BeltLine. But the two projects are complementary, and are to constitute the largest expansion of greenspace now underway in any U.S. city, according to Trust for Public Land.

This is the sort of pastoral scene to be built in the Ga. 400 right-of-way. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Livable Buckhead, a non-profit, was incorporated in 2010 to help implement a greenspace initiative known as the Buckhead Collection. The initiative evolved out of the collective vision within the community to provide more public greenspace in a park-starved region of the city.

Buckhead’s newest proposed trail is an example of the type of innovative thought that Livable Buckhead is bringing to its effort to provide public greenspace.

The trail would be established in the Ga. 400 corridor, in the right-of-way beneath the highway and outside the walls that reduce the highway noise heard in neighborhoods. Currently, the much of the land is unkempt and urban campers have taken up residence in some areas.

Atlanta Councilman Howard Shook has helped garner support for the project from the Atlanta City Council. Last week, Shook shepherded legislation through the Atlanta City Council to support the proposed trail by expanding the boundaries of the Buckhead Community Improvement District.

Buckhead is to have this type of winding pathway once the planned trail opens. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Buckhead is to have this type of winding pathway once the planned trail opens. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

The CID now includes the state-owned land along Ga. 400, as well as property owned by MARTA. This expansion will allow the CID to help pay for the trail’s development, according to Jim Durrett, the CID’s executive director.

Starling said the development phase now beginning involves meeting with individual landowners to talk about their desires for the trail. This phase will follow the pending approval of the trail’s finalized concept proposal.

Some neighbors have already expressed concerns including safety along the trail, its impact on trees, and impact on a natural habitat that’s home to a number of coyotes and deer, Starling said.

Compounding these issues is the reality that some homeowners may not realize that portions of their backyards are actually within the public right-of-way of Ga. 400, Starling said. Some apparently have forgotten property lines that were established by the Georgia Department of Transporation after years of intense conflict that led up to the highway’s construction.

Pedestrians could stroll along a trail, safely away from motorized vehicles. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

Pedestrians could stroll along a trail, safely away from motorized vehicles. Credit: Livable Buckhead, Inc.

The battle over Ga. 400 now seems like ancient history. But its construction almost 20 years ago came only after a long and bitter battle that pitted neighbor against neighbor, and resulted in zoning that was intended to keep commercial development and apartment towers south of the Buckhead Loop.

“Ga. 400 came right through these neighborhoods,” Starling said. “One of the biggest things we’re going to have to deal with is a lot of people who think the GDOT right-of-way is their back yard. So there are going to be perception issues to deal with.”

Another the major issue to resolve involves the amount of access to the trail.

“I’d say I want an access point from my backyard to the trail, but others may say, ‘No, I want a wall,’” Starling said. “We’re designing with different people’s needs, and different yard dynamics, and taking all of that into consideration.”

Funding is another major issue.

Nearly $1 million has been provided for design, with $750,000 coming from the Buckhead Community Improvement District and $200,000 from Atlanta.

The PATH Foundation has included about $3 million for the trail in its current capital campaign, Starling said. A request for an additional $2.5 million has been presented to the entity that oversees Ga. 400, the State Road and Tollway Authority.

Starling said Livable Atlanta expects to start a capital campaign later this year to raise the additional funds needed to build the $10 million trail.

Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle Saporta Report

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DOT Discusses Hwy 400 Expansion

Tuesday evening was a beautiful time for a walk, a bicycle ride or any other outside activity.

Instead, hundreds of people were inside an activity building at the Cottage School in Roswell to discuss one of the area’s hot button topics — Georgia 400.

Georgia DOT district engineer Bryant Poole discussed potential GA 400 improvements with citizens at an open house in Roswell on Tuesday. Credit Timothy Gillman

The Georgia Department of Transportation held its first of three open houses on the feasibility of adding lanes to the freeway.

The DOT provided stations in the activity room: the first was a video discussing the issue. Elsewhere there were experts fielding questions while standing at maps. The DOT also offered to let citizens fill out a study survey.

The area under consideration is from SR 20 — Buford Drive — in Forsyth County south to the intersection with I-285.

During the two-hour open house, citizens came with some ideas as well as some gripes.

They learned a few things:

• No funding source has yet been identified to pay for the right of way and construction. As a voice on the introductory video said: “Even with tolls there may not be money for improvements.”
• If lanes were added, they would be managed lanes, probably involving a toll.
• The current lane configuration will probably not be messed with. It seems likely only the added lanes would be toll lanes. It is unlikely that current lanes will become managed lanes.
• The DOT is open to ideas about how many lanes to add, the possibility of reversible lanes, most everything.

“We are at the very beginning stages,” said Bryant Poole, District Engineer with the Georgia Dept of Transportation. “Do we want four lanes, two lanes, nothing at all? What other creative ideas do [people] have and certainly, in this case, there are no identified funds to acquire right of way and build the road.

“That is part of what this is about. If we could come up with an idea, how would we fund it?”

Poole noted that transportation projects must make sense to facilitate growth decades in the future.

“[We’ll consider] any creative way that we can think of to manage congestion that will project into the future, and that is the key,” Poole said. “When we develop our transportation system, it is not thinking today or tomorrow, we’re thinking 30 years out. That is the key, even if we have to build it in phases.”

The DOT hopes to finish collecting public input by June, the video explained. Ideally, environmental documents would be approved by late 2013.

The department’s other open houses regarding GA 400 will be Thursday at Piney Grove Middle School in Cumming and March 20 at First Baptist Church in Sandy Springs.

Source: Alpharetta-Milton Patch

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