1946 Atlanta transportation plan

[Tom958]

Lengthy, exhaustively detailed, beautifully illustrated. This ought to keep me busy for a while:

Highway and transportation plan for Atlanta, Georgia,H. W. Lochner and Company; De Leuw, Cather & Company; Georgia. State Highway Dept. c. 1946

[2Co5_14]

The 1946 routing of the Downtown Connector is very close to what actually got built, but I-20 ended up totally different.

[Tom958]

The 1946 routing of the Downtown Connector is very close to what actually got built, but I-20 ended up totally different.

I was amused that they used the term Downtown Connector, which we still use today.

Overlapping the east-west corridor with the north-south would've been a truly epic fail.



EDIT: Let's have a closer look...

Here's the choke point, a.k.a the Downtown Connector. It really looks quite similar to what was actually built, though the north-south portion (at bottom) is between Courtland Street and Piedmont Avenue instead of east of Piedmont. The interchange with the eastern expressway (they were to be freeways, btw) is right where the 485-Stone Mountain Freeway-Freedom Parkway interchange is, and the one with the western expressway is at the Williams Street interchange. Only the segment between those two interchanges was to be built with six lanes, though the northern leg was to have room for an additional two lanes in the median. As it turned out, everything in this view except the western leg was built, and with an initial six lanes.



Further south, you can see the state capitol at the lower right. Again, the expressway there is strikingly similar to what was actually built, especially the way it passes in front of the highway department building (!) and under the intersection of Capitol Avenue and Memorial Drive. Beyond there, it's within the footprint of the eventual downtown interchange, though it starts curving south instead of continuing west.

[afguy]

Great find! It is interesting how the Downtown Connector pretty follows the route laid out in 1946. Also of note that there seems to be no perimeter highway proposed at the time.

[triplemultiplex]

Wow, if that had been built, the 'commons' section would have to have been expanded to even wider than 85/285 is today.

[Tom958]

Wow, if that had been built, the 'commons' section would have to have been expanded to even wider than 85/285 is today.

Yeah, might as well separate them as was eventually done with 85 and 285 on the south side. That or maybe build a loop around the west side of downtown. It's an interesting thought exercise. You may have noticed, though, that the number of lanes is reasonable given the projected traffic volumes, which, of course, are laughably low. Also, if you look at the line graph of traffic on page 29 and the projected volumes on page 73, the projected distribution of traffic makes that choke point seem less alarming. The highest volume is 44,200 on the north leg, with only 37,470 through the choke point.

If you believe it, lol. 

The study said that the metro population was expected to reach 750,000 by 1970, but I remember that my Dad put a plate on the front of our new '62 Chevy that read, "Atlanta-- City of 1,000,000." And I'd bet that per capita car travel ended up being much greater that was anticipated in 1946.

Also of note that there seems to be no perimeter highway proposed at the time.

True, though there is a non-"expressway" western bypass in the vicinity of Hightower Road (now Hamilton Holmes Drive, GA 280). It's kind of weird, too: GA 280 is also South Cobb Drive, and the best I can tell, it was finished in 1943 as a connection to the Bell Bomber Plant, which is now Lockheed's Marietta plant. It's easy to imagine that corridor being extended northward to meet US 41, thereby bypassing both Atlanta and Marietta, but I see no mention of anything like that in the report.

A few other things I noticed. These are really notes to myself, but others may find them useful:

That choke point was the only part of the system that was to be six lanes initially, but it was to be four with room for two more north to the northeast-northwest split, east to College Avenue, south to Lakewood Avenue, and west to Ashby Street. There were to be four-loop (cloverleaf) interchanges at

• Northside Drive, Collier Road, and Moores Mill Road on the northwest
  
• Lindbergh Drive (or something--wtf?) and Piedmont Road on the northeast
  
• University Avenue, Lakewood Avenue, and Cleveland Avenue on the south

The northern leg, six lanes wide, was open by the time my Dad arrived at Georgia Tech in 1952, as were evolved versions of the northeast, northwest and south corridors.

Unsurprisingly, the report recommended replacing all of the streetcars with motor or trolley buses. However, much of the stated rationale was to allow more efficient use of downtown street width so that sidewalks could be widened! The report also recommended a bus hub on what is now the site of MARTA's Five Points station, and eventually trolley bus tunnels (maybe with ventilation for motor buses), each a bit over a mile long, running north-south under Peachtree and Broad Streets and east-west under Marietta Street and Edgewood Avenue. The tunnels weren't a recommendation, but more of a suggestion, because the planners feared that proposing such an expensive item so early on could undermine support for the rest of the plan.

Also under the heading of transit, there was a loop (actually, square) bus route roughly two miles outside downtown. I mention it because it made it into the voter-approved MARTA program of 1971 and thence semi-sorta into the field as the 98 and 99 lines on the north and west sides. I think it's only gone away within the last few years.

There's so much more, but that's enough for now.

[Henry]

At least they got most (if not all) of the I-75/I-85 route right. I-20 as proposed there would truly be disastrous. It's a good thing they shifted it to the southern edge of downtown.

[lordsutch]

The eastern route seems a lot like what would have been the intown part of Stone Mountain Freeway - compare the route of Freedom Parkway today.