During the New Deal, federal agencies like the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation and the Federal Housing Administration encouraged redlining practices that explicitly marked minority neighborhoods as risky investments and therefore discouraged bank loans, mortgages and insurance there.
Such laws were eventually invalidated by the Supreme Court, but later measures achieved the same effect by more subtle means. Civic planners pushed them into ghettos, and the segregation we know today became the rule.Īt first the rule was overt, as Southern cities like Baltimore and Louisville enacted laws that mandated residential racial segregation. Once they had no need to keep constant watch over African-Americans, whites wanted them out of sight. But with the abolition of slavery, the spatial relationship was reversed. Before the Civil War, white masters kept enslaved African-Americans close at hand to coerce their labor and guard against revolts. In Atlanta, as in dozens of cities across America, daily congestion is a direct consequence of a century-long effort to segregate the races.įor much of the nation’s history, the campaign to keep African-Americans “in their place” socially and politically manifested itself in an effort to keep them quite literally in one place or another. Commuters might assume they’re stuck there because some city planner made a mistake, but the heavy congestion actually stems from a great success.
#Atlanta traffic drivers#
Drivers there average two hours each week mired in gridlock, hung up at countless spots, from the constantly clogged Georgia 400 to a complicated cluster of overpasses at Tom Moreland Interchange, better known as “Spaghetti Junction.” The Downtown Connector - a 12-to-14-lane megahighway that in theory connects the city’s north to its south - regularly has three-mile-long traffic jams that last four hours or more. Save Share Peachtree, a coalition opposing the demolition, is holding a peaceful protest at 4pm Monday at the corner of Andrew Young International Boulevard NW and Peachtree Street NE.Atlanta has some of the worst traffic in the United States.What's next: Supporters are calling for Dickens to declare a 30-day timeout, followed by the buildout of the next phases and they want answers about what happens to remaining funding dedicated to the program. But the possibility of such a measure, he says, factored in to the decisions related to ending the Shared Space program. One of those owners, Richard Bowers, did not respond to an email from Axios seeking comment.ĭickens tells Axios he was not presented with state legislation that would restrict the city's ability to experiment with road diets to make safer streets.However, like the earlier proposed conversion of an adjacent one-way street used to funnel cars through downtown, the Shared Space program met opposition from a small but influential group of high-rise owners and businesses.
Pushback: The project had strong support from neighborhoods, the company that operates AmericasMart and major hotels fronting Peachtree, according to the city and the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association. And now you spend time to do the assessment." "This should not be seen as something that we're stopping because it failed or stopping because there was pressure or stopping for any reason," Dickens said.In an interview with Axios, Dickens said the program had operated nearly three times longer than originally planned and that data would be put to use as the city aims to expand its safer streets program, some of which could take place elsewhere on Peachtree. Its demolition sends the wrong message for a city that wants safer streets and more options for biking and walking (and is trying to hire a new planning commissioner), they add. What they're saying: The Shared Space program should expand, advocates say. In the program's first 90 days, city data says, the area saw a 27% increase in pedestrians, an 11% reduction in motor vehicles, and no more than 11.1 seconds of additional travel time.Launched in June 2021 by then city planning commissioner Tim Keane, the initiative was pitched as a multi-phase pilot program to use Atlanta's signature street as a lab for slowing traffic, giving pedestrians more room to walk and adding color and signs to the road.Why it matters: Despite desires to become a more walkable and bikeable city, Atlanta remains stuck in a war of cars versus people and speed versus safety.Ĭatch up quick: On March 10, Mayor Andre Dickens announced the city was closing out the Peachtree Shared Space program and erasing all traces of the initiative. Cyclists, pedestrian and wheelchair users are in a standoff against City Hall over plans to revert three blocks of Peachtree Street that were transformed during the pandemic into a calmer, safer street back to four lanes of automobile traffic.
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