This week I was “privileged” to make several trips to Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport.
I could fill several pages with rants about how close to inaccessible that place is. The signage, the traffic pattern “design,” parking… I will not go there.
I will reflect on a bit of irony. During my travels I drove up GA-314, and turned onto Riverdale Rd. The whole area of Riverdale Rd., adjacent to the airport was radically rebuilt to accommodate the last huge runway project. Whole neighborhoods were demolished, and the road completely re-routed. It became a divided four lane. And lo! There be bike lanes along the whole stretch of re-created road/highway.
I’ve wondered about those lanes since the day I first saw them. I can not fathom what they could possibly be for.
I am a fairly traffic tolerant rider. I frequently ride in heavy traffic and dense urban areas. I can not imagine what it would be like to ride to those bike lanes. There are three approaches to them. All of those approaches are impassable to cyclists.
In theory, it is possible to bike into the airport. Some years ago, I met a couple who flew into Hartsfield. They then reclaimed their travel tandem from baggage, and assembled it. They rode the bike out of the airport. They survived. On their return trip, they disassembled the tandem in College Park and took the MARTA train into the airport. Here’s a quote. “I’d face a firing squad before I tried to ride back into that place. The odds would be better.”
That couple were widely traveled, experienced, highly skilled cyclists. They found the airport to be inaccessible. The risks just too great.
I am not a native of Georgia. I came here from somewhere else. I have been here, and resident in Fayette County, for well over 25 years. In that time I’ve seen tremendous growth in the area. When I arrived, Fayette was semi-rural, and semi-agricultural. More, I could ride a bike to anyplace in the county.
In recent years, I’ve watched as one small road after another has been “improved.” They have become big, multi-lane, divided, and heavily trafficked. There are no facilities for cyclists and pedestrians on them. More, they form barriers to cyclists and pedestrians who wish to travel from one side to the other.
Traffic congestion is a problem. The obvious answer is to build more roads, enlarge the roads, add more lanes. After all, if we just add traffic capacity, then we relieve congestion. Right? Not true. The “build your way out of it model” just doesn’t work. Consider the examples of Los Angeles, Detroit, Chicago, and (yes) Atlanta. In all of these areas, extensive building programs have been going on for decades. Their traffic is Horrendous.
Let’s take Los Angeles as a prime example. They have been constructing, and expanding highway networks since the 1930s. Today their traffic problems are legendary. We can discuss the reasons and rationale at another time. For the moment, I’d like to consider a couple of the undesirable byproducts of this mad road building.
Highways, and big roadways are expensive. Intersections cost a lot of money. Overpasses are expensive. So cross-highway access is always limited. In short, as highways and high capacity roadways are constructed, it becomes increasingly hard to get across them. A byproduct is that neighborhoods and communities tend to be designed, or altered so that it is next to impossible to access them (or leave them) by foot or by bike.
Locally, we are rapidly becoming another “concrete jungle. I’ve been to meetings, and hear the slick suits tell us what surveys indicate. They say they know that we don’t want to become another Roswell. But somehow the construction continues.
The simple fact remains; Fayette County is becoming less livable and a lot less accessible by foot and by bike. Do we really want this? What are we to do to stop it?
This much I know, and it bears thinking on. The automobile is an amazing and wonderful device. It is fast and can carry a lot of stuff. But we are building a trap. It’s never a good idea to limit options. Fuel shortages will come. Other disruptions always occur. If the only way to travel is by automobile, any disruption in fuel availability, or price, has a very high impact. Is this what we want?
No comments:
Post a Comment