Atlanta

[Tom958]

I seriously hope the same contractor who rebuilt the Bridges on 285 North of there is the same one doing this interchange. They were quick in replacing those bridges. I Would imagine most serious work at this interchange will be done overnights and on weekends...?

Yep, same contractor, pretty much.

just with longer spans and fewer columns and straddle bents for the flyovers.[/i]


-SOUNDS LIKE THIS might look really GOOD and ELEGANT!

Probably, though deliberate attention to aesthetics would be far too much to expect. 

[Tomahawkin]

That is great news that contractor did a kick #### job on the Bridges north of that interchange. Total 180 from the 400/285 ongoing fiasco. I can't wait to see this interchange done with added lighting. 285 is going to look like a urban Freeway once the toll lanes (2 in each direction) are added

[US 89]

I seriously hope the same contractor who rebuilt the Bridges on 285 North of there is the same one doing this interchange. They were quick in replacing those bridges. I Would imagine most serious work at this interchange will be done overnights and on weekends...?

Yep, same contractor, pretty much.

just with longer spans and fewer columns and straddle bents for the flyovers.[/i]


-SOUNDS LIKE THIS might look really GOOD and ELEGANT!

Probably, though deliberate attention to aesthetics would be far too much to expect. 

Honestly, I don't care too much about aesthetics for stuff like this as long as it doesn't look like it's 100 years old or straight out of some dystopian WWIII movie. Even if you make it look nice to start, the concrete will probably start turning black anyway pretty quick.

[Tom958]

I-85-285 southwest of Atlanta, 1968, purchased from historicaerials.com for the exorbitant price of $10. The short and high-volume weaves make this probably the worst interchange I've ever personally driven through. In fairness, the problems with this interchange are as much from planning as from engineering. That is, it's simply impossible to design an economical interchange for these movements, especially with Spur 14 and the service interchange with GA 279 Old National Highway in the picture. Fittingly, it was replaced in the mid eighties with the largest and most complex interchange in metro Atlanta, with sixteen lanes on six separate roadways under Old National Highway.

The east-west I-285-Spur 14 component was built first; I recall that the bridges were dated 1959, but historicaerials shows the section still under construction in 1960. I-85 north followed in 1964-65 or so, I-85 south a bit later, then I-285 north probably in 1967, though it looks brand new in this view. Spur 14 was a temporary connector to US 29, which eventually became the eastern end of the South Fulton Parkway, but, except for that, it was relatively useless once I-85 to the south was opened a mere five years or so after Spur 14. Could a case have been made for not building Spur 14? Or perhaps running I-85 along that route and then southwestward on the west side of Union City et al? Maybe so!

Contrary to my own memory, the 85-285 concurrency was six lanes from day one, with the forty-foot median typical of early Georgia Interstates surviving until the eighties reconstruction. While more capacity there would've been good to have, apparently GDOT decided that adding lanes would be so operationally unsound as to be more trouble than it was worth. What I do remember correctly is that the westbound roadway jumped from three lanes to five, with a mainline lane being added on the right simultaneously with the onramp from Old National Highway.

[Tom958]

Six days after I asked, GDOT's Facebook crew replied that the 285 bridge replacements at Glenridge, 400, and Peachtree-Dunwoody were on track for completion in late July-early August, after which the mainline will have room for the final eight through lanes. There's still a good bit of work to do on the ramp terminals, and surely they'll follow with a hugely-overdue resurfacing of the 285 mainline.

[Tomahawkin]

I responded that those bridges wont be done til Labor day and I told them to take it to the bank! Im upset at this interchange! I hate the left hand merge from 285 W to 400 south and the new bottleneck where 400 ramps onto 285 E at the Ashford Dunwoody bridge where 2 lanes merge into 1. its nasty if there is a lot of truck traffic....

[Tom958]

Im upset at this interchange! I hate the left hand merge from 285 W to 400 south and the new bottleneck where 400 ramps onto 285 E at the Ashford Dunwoody bridge where 2 lanes merge into 1. its nasty if there is a lot of truck traffic....

All three of the non-loop approaches are like that. It's just that the others have all three lanes open downstream of where the service onramp comes in from the left. The left-side merge will be eliminated eventually.

Embarrassingly, though... though the evidence has been plain to see for months, I didn't realize until I was there yesterday that the westbound CD passing under the Roswell Road bridge will be only one lane, not two. That messes up the whole design concept of the interchange, which was based on using the outer spans of the Roswell Road and Ashford-Dunwoody bridges to add two lanes in each direction so that there'll be six lanes in each direction under each bridge instead of the current five even after the mainline is striped back to eight lanes instead of ten. That also means that there'll be less usable capacity for the southbound 400-to-westbound 285 movement than there was prior to construction-- despite the ramps apparently having been rebuilt to accommodate two lanes! 

[Tomahawkin]

Yeah, that is a very underwhelming redesign. It will be antiquated in 5 years.

OT, drove through the 285/20 interchange a few  minutes ago. I'm amazed at all the deep hills/ravines in that were once covered by trees. Now I see why it's going to take 2 years for that project to be complete. A lot of infill needs to be done which will take months...

[Tom958]

After some apparent hand-wringing over the decision, the only bid for milling and resurfacing the bulk of top-end 285  has been rejected and a contractor who didn't bid on the job will conduct spot milling and patching. The contract was to cover Paces Ferry to Chamblee-Tucker excluding roughly Mount Vernon to Chamblee-Dunwoody, which is to be deep milled and resurfaced by the 285-400 contractor starting in early August.

A joint venture of the only two contractors in Atlanta who could handle a job that big was the only bidder. Same with the contract to resurface I-85 in Gwinnett County, which has been bid and rejected three times now. In fairness, that one has the extra complication from SRTA of maximum downtime requirements for the loop detectors for the HOT lane system plus a frankly silly requirement that all contractor vehicles have a Peach Pass (!!).

[Tomahawkin]

I'm not surprised in hearing this!

OT I drove 285 to 675 yesterday. Looks like they are rebuilding the Bouldercrest rd bridge and adding a bridge ramp between there and 675 to get rid of the merge problems between those 2 interchanges??? I didn't see anything about this from GDOT???

[Tom958]

OT I drove 285 to 675 yesterday. Looks like they are rebuilding the Bouldercrest rd bridge and adding a bridge ramp between there and 675 to get rid of the merge problems between those 2 interchanges??? I didn't see anything about this from GDOT???

It's been kicking around for a while. I the guess operational problems there are pretty bad.

Yeah, that is a very underwhelming redesign. It will be antiquated in 5 years.

Actually, no. It's an appropriate design for the interchange of ten-lane 285 and six-and-eight-lane 400. It'll continue to be congested, but it'll be because the routes that feed it are and ever will remain congested, not because the interchange is a bottleneck.

I didn't have time to do it when it happened, but whoever runs GDOT's Facebook page asserted that the interchange was designed to accommodate traffic thirty years in the future. Ha, no. It's barely adequate for traffic thirty years in the past! If it really was adequate, what's the point of the multibillion-dollar elevated express lanes that GDOT is currently trying to get an acceptable bid on?

Why do they say things that are so patently absurd? That's a rhetorical question, I guess.

[Tomahawkin]

I agree for that project to have taken damn near 10 years to complete, I wanted something more along the lines of what was done to the top end IH 635 in Northern Dallas, not just a temporary fix...

[Georgia Guardrail]

Right after 285/400 wraps up they are going to add capacity by expanding the 285 bridge over Long Island drive and replacing/widening the Mount Vernon road bridge over I 285. 

Still I wonder if it may be possible to retrofit the SR 400 south ramp to I 285 west ramp to two lanes since it is just wide enough to do so under the Roswell Road bridge.  Then you just add an additional 3rd lane for Roswell Road to I 285 west ramp to merge into up unto the Lake Forest Road Dr (provided there is enough room with the retaining wall.

[ran4sh]

A different user posted about this in the overall Georgia thread, but my opinion is that it is more appropriate for the metro Atlanta thread because there are no toll roads in Georgia outside Atlanta...

Starting soon, Peach Pass becomes interoperable with E-ZPass, see https://peachpass.com/where-can-i-use-peach-pass/additional-states/ . But, of course, because some legacy E-ZPass states don't read sticker transponders, and it looks like Georgia is not offering a hard-case transponder, only some E-ZPass states will actually be able to accept Peach Pass at first.

[Rothman]

Makes me wonder about the reverse: Peach Pass taking E-ZPass.  Hard body probably makes that tough.

[ran4sh]

Makes me wonder about the reverse: Peach Pass taking E-ZPass.  Hard body probably makes that tough.

Georgia SRTA "administratively joined" the IAG in 2021, so the Georgia toll roads are probably ready to accept E-ZPass, although I haven't heard anything specifically about that

[Thing 342]

Makes me wonder about the reverse: Peach Pass taking E-ZPass.  Hard body probably makes that tough.

Seems unlikely unless GDOT has installed TDM readers, the new PeachPass-accepting states are all ones that have added readers for PeachPass's 6C tags to their gantries.

NC Quick Pass is able to work with them because their hard-case tag supports all 3 common protocols: TDM, SeGo, and 6C.

[Plutonic Panda]

Article about a couple projects including the I-20/285 west project and the GA 316 project:

The State Road and Tollway Authority (SRTA) in Georgia signed off June 26 on two major highway improvement projects, including an interchange west of Atlanta that is ranked among the worst traffic bottlenecks in the nation.
SRTA Board members unanimously approved resolutions authorizing agreements between the authority and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) to split oversight of upgrades to intersections along Georgia Highway 316 and an overhaul of the heavily congested Interstate 285/I-20 West interchange.
The Ga. 316 project calls for building seven grade-separated intersections along the busy highway connecting Athens with I-85 in Lawrenceville to improve both traffic flow and safety. The intersections involved in the project are in Barrow and Oconee counties.
The construction will be done through three contracts worth approximately $350 million in total, the Ledger-Enquirer reported, with the first one involving two Ga. 316 intersections in Barrow County.
GDOT plans to issue a request for proposals from interested road builders for the $100 million contract and announce the winner of the bidding in December.

- https://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/notorious-traffic-bottleneck-in-atlanta-among-two-roads-soon-to-be-upgraded/61591

[Finrod]

Demolition began on the old Bankhead Avenue Bridge, built in 1912 and closed since 1991, back in May:

https://www.constructionequipmentguide.com/construction-crews-demolish-bridge-to-nowhere/61376

A shot of the bridge via Google Streetview:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.7730449,-84.4073447,3a,75y,5.61h,85.82t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipM-Xu7gdJBzTsjrusQRzB5fXCHb6BlgnmVl_zcn!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipM-Xu7gdJBzTsjrusQRzB5fXCHb6BlgnmVl_zcn%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0.08874767-ya71.85902-ro-6.4494543-fo100!7i5376!8i2688?entry=ttu

[Finrod]

Article about a couple projects including the I-20/285 west project and the GA 316 project:

What I'm wondering about this GA 316 project is-- will this make GA 316 fully expressway from I-85 to Athens or not?

[Tom958]

Article about a couple projects including the I-20/285 west project and the GA 316 project:

What I'm wondering about this GA 316 project is-- will this make GA 316 fully expressway from I-85 to Athens or not?

AFAIK, it's a series of interchanges and would still leave some at-grade crossings intact. What I don't understand-- bringing it back on topic for this thread-- is why they didn't start in Gwinnett, where the need is greatest.

[Ted$8roadFan]

A different user posted about this in the overall Georgia thread, but my opinion is that it is more appropriate for the metro Atlanta thread because there are no toll roads in Georgia outside Atlanta...

Starting soon, Peach Pass becomes interoperable with E-ZPass, see https://peachpass.com/where-can-i-use-peach-pass/additional-states/ . But, of course, because some legacy E-ZPass states don't read sticker transponders, and it looks like Georgia is not offering a hard-case transponder, only some E-ZPass states will actually be able to accept Peach Pass at first.

Good to know. Last fall, I found out the hard way that my EZPass was not compatible with Peach Pass after taking a tolled lane on I-85 north.

[ran4sh]

Article about a couple projects including the I-20/285 west project and the GA 316 project:

What I'm wondering about this GA 316 project is-- will this make GA 316 fully expressway from I-85 to Athens or not?

AFAIK, it's a series of interchanges and would still leave some at-grade crossings intact. What I don't understand-- bringing it back on topic for this thread-- is why they didn't start in Gwinnett, where the need is greatest.

It's a state route to link Atlanta and Athens that happens to pass through Gwinnett. It would be unfair to Athens if interchanges had to be built for Gwinnett before they could be built closer to Athens. Athenian drivers are already used to the mix of interchanges and at-grade intersections (the 316 & 78 junction has always been an interchange, for example, despite at-grade intersections to both its east and west).

[Tomahawkin]

Anyone know a time date of the completion of the 285 brides over 400? School starts in a month and it's going to be hell getting through there. I'm at the assumption that it won't be completed til after Labor day? GDOT already has the "Weather" issue lined up for this completion that is moving at a snails pace as compared to the replacement of the Covington Hwy, and Glenwood Rd. bridges in S. Dekalb County. Those were done at a great and efficient rate...

[Georgia Guardrail]

FYI Mount Vernon Road Bridge Replacement and Long Island Drive Bridge widening has started.  I drove through the 285/400 area today and noticed they appear to have started clearing the area where the new bridge will be.  This will tie into the Transform project by providing an extended auxiliary lane for Westbound traffic going on I-285.

https://roughdraftatlanta.com/2023/05/19/gdot-to-keep-mount-vernon-bridge-open-during-replacement-construction/