Articles

Metro Commutes Shorter, But Congestion is No Better, Study Shows

By Ariel Hart
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Nov. 21, 2005

Atlanta drivers may not believe it. It may not seem possible, given their sluggish, endless commutes. But it's true, according to a new study.

Drivers here are driving less.

Every year from 1998 to 2003, the years included in a new report on Atlanta traffic and transit trends, the average distance each person drives per day has fallen. The average distance per licensed driver has plummeted, from 47.2 miles per day to 38.3. That's about 19 percent.

The study's authors at the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority caution that they didn't ask why. But for them and planners across the board, one possibility seemed obvious: that in the face of unbearable traffic congestion, a decade or more of promoting live-work centers and mixed-use developments may be paying off. And metro Atlantans, famously stubborn in their commitment to cars, may be changing their behavior.

"I think consumers have concluded they don't want to spend 45 minutes to an hour each way between home and work," said Sam Williams, president of the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, as he reeled off the names of town centers in the region that have drawn residents to homes near businesses and activities. "Developers will always build things if people will buy it."

That doesn't mean congestion is any better for those drivers. With so many people moving to the area, and millions more expected, for all their efforts they are swimming against the tide. For 2002, 2003 and 2004, GRTA computed data from high-tech cameras that the state Department of Transportation has been installing along metro highways. They take pictures, and they can count. Over those three years, the study found, average freeway speed slowed from 49.6 mph to 47.3 mph.

That's in spite of another change by drivers. In 2002 and 2003, the heaviest 15 minutes of morning rush hour were 8:15 to 8:30 a.m. In 2004, it moved back, to 8 to 8:15 a.m. "Maybe people were thinking that the congestion would be less if they started earlier," said Marvin Woodward, director of engineering and projects at GRTA.

Woodward cautioned that with just three short years of speed data, the congestion results could be a fluke.

They're not for David Winner's family. Winner, 37, works as an ophthalmologist in Roswell, Northlake and Buckhead. Of all six commute trips, the worst is an easy call: the evening trip home up Ga. 400 from Buckhead to his home near the Northridge exit.

The GRTA study, which also ranked stretches of highway for congestion, names the evening commute up Ga. 400 from the Perimeter to Old Milton Parkway the king of slow.

"They didn't have to do a study; I would have told them," Winner said.

Largely because of that congestion, two years ago his family moved south of the Chattahoochee, where other roads form arteries into the city.

That tracks with what planners see: not just a proliferation of Midtown Atlanta lofts but some suburbanites choosing not to be so spread out.

The Winners' driving has changed in smaller ways, too. His wife, Robin, 38, who stays home with their baby, liked to shop in Sandy Springs. But "now I'm going north instead to go to Target," she said. "Because of the congestion, it's closer."

"It's a good trend," said Tom Weyandt, director of comprehensive planning at the Atlanta Regional Commission, which provided some of the data in the study. "I hesitate to [say] whether it's going to be long-term. But certainly it's a direction better than what we had been on."

Weyandt noted some other ARC figures that may explain some of the drop in travel distance:

In a review of proposed developments last week, the ARC found that "for the first time in a long time, the city of Atlanta had the most, by far, of any jurisdiction in the region," he said, including 6,000 new housing units. ARC figures show the city of Atlanta's live-in population growing by 18,000 from 2000 to 2004.

Beyond Atlanta, Weyandt added, in town centers across the region, more than 9 percent of housing built since 2000 has been in "livable center communities," formerly sterile downtowns the commission has tried to push toward mixing business and residence.

"That is a change in the trajectory," he said. "That's a turnaround. That is significant."
Woodward suggested other possible factors contributing to the declining drive lengths: telecommuting, compressed work schedules and "trip-chaining" - drivers try to string errands together rather than departing from home for each one.

The study didn't find people taking transit instead. The overall number of times passengers boarded buses and trains each year fell by 16 million from 1999 to 2003, though that wouldn't take into account the last couple years of ridership on popular suburban express buses.

Woodward hopes the study, which was published for the second time this year and has contributions from several agencies, will become an annual snapshot of transportation use that Atlanta policy-makers can't do without.

It will never be that for Keith Terrel, dental assistant, who commutes to Jonesboro from his home in Cobb County. He says he's thought about moving closer to work but is still thinking.

For part of his commute he drives the least-congested stretch of highway that the study measured in the region, I-75 below the Perimeter, away from Atlanta in the morning and northbound in the evening. But that's not why he's staying put for now.

"The least congested?" he said, with a smirk.

"What they could do is travel my route," he said. "No matter where you go, it's congested."

Copyright 2005. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. For more information: www.ajc.com.

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