By Evelyn Andrews
The City of Atlanta on April 14 launched a website, CommuteATL.com, to help commuters and visitors plan their routes while I-85 is being reconstructed.
The city has been urging commuters to not rely on driving alone but instead to take public transportation, and the new site, commuteatl.com, features real-time schedule updates for all modes of mass transit including the streetcar and MARTA rail and bus. MARTA parking lot conditions will also be on the site, as well as the locations for bike share stations.
“CommuteATL.com is a place for Atlanta residents to get real-time awareness of traffic and road conditions in the region and discover the various transportation options they have to move around our city. Our team is excited about continuing to add additional real-time, interactive mapping features to the site over the coming weeks,” Samir Saini, the city’s chief information officer, said in a press release.
The city is also scheduling traffic light timing to be more effective and restricting access to neighborhood streets. Timing the traffic lights to move traffic through intersections more quickly will also help keep people off side streets, the city said.
The city recently posted “no thru traffic” signs around neighborhood streets, including some in Buckhead, and was using Waze to help enforce those signs until April 13, citing driver confusion (Read more about that story at this link). Atlanta is relying, in part, on its partnership with navigation app Waze to run the site by using data drawn from Waze to show information on road closures, accidents and current travel speeds.
“As motorists look for different routes to commute to work and school, the City is taking proactive steps to protect residential streets and neighborhoods which are not designed to accommodate heavy traffic,” the city said in the press release.