Traffic talks to Alan Chambers.
Not in words. It speaks to him in the way it moves, the way cars slow down or speed up, the way brake lights flash. Traffic tells him when there’s debris on the road or when a car has run out of gas and stopped dead in the middle of everything.
As he cruises Atlanta’s interstate highways, Chambers scans the horizon for signs of trouble. The 24-year-old watches and listens to what the traffic tells him.
It’s his job. He’s a H.E.R.O. It says so in glow-in-the-dark letters on his cap and on the big truck he drives. He’s a Highway Emergency Response Operator, one of the drivers of the huge trucks that shepherd the traffic on Atlanta’s massive roads. His job is to keep that traffic moving. It’s a job he loves.
“Especially being able to help people every single day,” Chambers said. “It makes you feel good when somebody is at that point, and you make their day. And you’re not asking anything for it, just trying to get them to a safe place.”
Chamber’s truck serves as a rolling roadside service station. The truck comes outfitted with flashing lights and a siren and a big changeable electronic sign to warn drivers of problems. It carries 30 orange traffic cones, a supply of flares and a five-gallon can of gas so he help a stranded motorist get to the next gas pump. He also carries an empty 150-gallon tank to remove the gas from a stalled tractor-trailer so it can safely be pushed aside, out of the never-ending flow of cars and trucks.
Chambers provides a full-service station. He changes flats. He pours gas. He provides water for cars that have overheated. At times, he’ll even provide a bottle of water to an overheated driver.
Chambers started working as a Department of Transportation H.E.R.O about 2 1/2 years ago. Before that, he’d worked for DOT in its road maintenance operation based in Newton County, where he grew up and still lives. His job gives him a view of metro traffic that differs from that of most daily commuters. When the cars slow down, it just makes his job easier, he said. He can see more. “Sitting in traffic doesn’t bother me at all,” he said.
Not when he’s a work. When he’s off, it’s a different story. So, he said with a grin, he doesn’t drive all that much when he’s not working.
On the job, he drives plenty. H.E.R.O. drivers rotate through 31 separate routes on the 300-or-so miles of the metro interstate system. They change routes regularly so they don’t get too tied to any one stretch. Chambers, a self-described “country boy” who says he never considers moving to the city because it has too few fishing ponds, knows every exit in the metro interstate system and with ease can recite the ramps from Senoia to Spaghetti Junction or from Clayton to Cobb.
His favorite places to work are the top-end Perimeter and the Downtown Connector. That, he said, is where the action is. “That’s where the busiest areas are,” he said. “It makes the day go faster when you’re constantly busy.”
One thing Chambers wants people to know is how risky his job can be. It angers him that drivers won’t follow the law or common sense and move over a lane when he makes a roadside stop. “We have a very dangerous job out here,” he said. “When motorists don’t move over, it makes our job more dangerous.”
H.E.R.O. drivers have been injured, even killed, on the job. “You know waking up and putting your uniform on in the morning that it could be your last time,” Chambers said. “That’s what keeps you on your toes out here is knowing how dangerous the job is.”
As he cruised portions of I-285 and Ga. 400 looking for stranded motorists one recent rush hour, traffic was light. It was between Christmas and New Year’s, so many of the usual commuters stayed home for the holidays or were out of town. For the most part, traffic behaved itself.
Still, there were troubles. One car overheated. Another had a flat. Then, a bit after dark, as Chambers heading north on Ga. 400, a dispatcher called to tell him someone had spotted a mattress in the middle lane on I-285.
Chambers hit the lights and siren and sped away, roaring down the interstate at 80 mph. He had lanes to clear.
