The downtown connector in Atlanta

Here’s what Mary Norwood, Atlanta city councilmember and 2017 mayoral candidate, thinks about tunneling underground to expand the Interstate 75/85 connector through Downtown.

“The tunneling technology they’re using now in New York City is $19,000 per foot. The prices have really come down from what we were looking at in our big storm water-and-sewer fix. I believe we would have a very quick return on investment if we do a tunnel.”

That quote comes from an AJC article this year about Norwood’s agreement with Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle that tunneling down to create a double-decker interstate in the middle of the city is a good idea.

The fact that Norwood is leading the pack in the mayor’s race in all the major polls is what makes her opinion particularly worrisome. An Atlanta mayor in 2018 needs to be concerned with moving the city and the region away from the automobile dependency that has hurt us so much, not enabling it. We need a mayor who will use our precious transportation dollars for creating a more sustainable urban design, not a mega-sized version of a broken status quo.

The devastation of Atlanta’s city center by interstates

To understand why the way our leaders think about interstates is such a big issue for the city and the region, here’s an image that provides some historical perspective on the neighborhood fabric (this is basically South Downtown, Mechanicsville and Summerhill in the image) that we lost when the gulfs of asphalt were built:

The urban fabric and neighborhoods we lost to the interstates

The top image is from the 1950s just before interstate construction began. The bottom image is of the exact same area today. Many residents were displaced from these largely-African American neighborhoods, and many street connections were lost.

As a city we talk a lot about how to address automobile traffic congestion but we also need to address the effect this infrastructure and the car trips it generates. It demolished city neighborhoods in the past and continues to plague them today.

Whatever happens to this I-75/85 connector interchange with I-20 will be felt by the neighborhoods in the center of the city. Increasing capacity through a tunnel or a double-deck expansion, but leaving the exits open, means more car trips (induced demand) creating more exhaust and bringing more vehicles into the city, all wanting a level of parking and a level of car-oriented road design that hurts our ability to create healthier, more people-oriented places.

Scuttled project for bike lanes on Peachtree

A couple of years ago, the state Department of Transportation came up with a good design for adding bike lanes to Peachtree Road, the major artery that connects neighborhoods and businesses through the heart of the Buckhead area.

When some vocal residents of the affluent district complained that the bike lanes might reduce the level of service that the road provides to automobiles, Norwood defended them and helped to shoot down the plan, saying: “There are people who feel that will be a good solution and those who think that won’t solve concerns. Let’s use our creeks and multi-purpose trail systems to get bicyclists safe to Buckhead.”

Multi-purpose trail systems? There is a single multipurpose trail in Buckhead, Path 400. It’s a good trail to be sure, but it does not connect people to jobs and to the highest density of destinations which lie on the Peachtree Road corridor. Basically, Norwood was saying that cyclists have their little path — we’ve thrown them a bone — now let them ride their bikes far away from Peachtree and not cause problems for the car drivers who matter most.

This does not seem to be a person who understands the relationship between sustainable transportation options and a growing city, or the one between urban density and active mobility, or the one between reductions in car trips and healthier cities.

Can Norwood’s opinions be changed on these issues? Of course they can. But she’ll need to be willing to make the change.

These are my opinions alone and they do not necessarily reflect the opinions of anyone in the ThreadATL advocacy group I belong to.