Sometimes The Old Traffic Ways Are The Best

ATLANTA -- While the Georgia Department of Transportation turns on more ramp meters on interstate on ramps, Emory Village turns to the old ways to fix a clogged intersection.

Sometimes technology is the answer, and sometimes the old ways can prove to be the best. Two of Atlanta's toughest traffic problems illustrate how the opposite approaches offer the same high chance for success.

Automatic sensors calculate the amount of time required for cars to stop at the end of freeway on ramps, and signal the drivers to go to merge more smoothly into traffic.

Drivers act together on their own to travel safely around a roundabout at North Decatur and Lullwater, without the aid of signals or official supervision. The goal at the roundabout and the ramp meter is the same.

"It forces motorists to merge in an orderly and a safer way," said GDOT's Paul Marshall.

"It would allow a continuous flow of traffic," said Emory Village resident Cynthia Tauxe.

This week on the top-end Interstate 285, 15 ramp meters will be turned on at the end of on ramps. Sometime in the next year or so, a roundabout will be built in Emory Village.

"What makes it so difficult is that there are five roads that feed into this intersection," said Cynthia Tauxe. "And so in order to use an electronic means you have to have the traffic stopped for all four of the intersections."

Idling at traffic signals wastes fuel and puts more pollution into the air. At a roundabout, the traffic is always moving.

When construction on the Emory Village roundabout begins in earnest, sometime before the end of the summer or the beginning of the fall, all the utilities will be buried, all the traffic signals will disappear and they'll be planting dozens of trees. It has taken eight years for the proposed roundabout in Emory Village to get started. Supporters are hoping other metro communities will see its value and build roundabouts of their own.

The trainer roundabout a few hundred yards away at Lullwater has turned a dangerous intersection into a safe one. Emory Village is expecting the same.

Sometimes the old ways are still the best.