For more than a decade, Atlanta has been the epicenter of a population explosion in the South, luring more than 1.3 million new residents to the area since 1990 with the promise of jobs, a pleasant climate and affordable housing.
But while the influx contributed to a flourishing economy, developers have been allowed to gulp land in every direction, with suburban Atlanta spilling over small communities that once took pride in their independence from the big city. Residents are paying for this unrestrained growth through air pollution, diminishing green space and the longest commutes in the U.S.
If the prototype of smart growth is Portland, Ore., Atlanta is exhibit A for urban sprawl. Other Southern cities that are experiencing population booms, such as Charlotte, Nashville and Birmingham, Ala., look at Atlanta for examples of what not to do when managing growth.
“By most indicators, Atlanta is the most sprawled major metro area in the country,” said George Galster, an urban affairs professor at Wayne State University in Detroit and co-author of a study on urban sprawl supported by the Fannie Mae Foundation. “Atlanta is justifiably a model to examine for a metro area that has a booming population that is relatively unconstrained by topographical or climatic factors, a lack of growth controls or strong planning legislation and has developed primarily in an era when the auto was king.”
Historically, Georgia has tried to solve its transportation problems by adding new roads. As a result, environmentalists said, the Atlanta area is among the most polluted in the country, a problem that has landed the state in court and provided the first legal test for national clean air laws.
This summer, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes released a long-awaited transportation plan that outlined an $8.3 billion program to relieve traffic congestion and improve air quality. For the most part the plan advocated expanding lanes and constructing additional highways over the next five years, including the Northern Arc, a proposed 50-mile east-west connector in Atlanta’s far northern suburbs. While the plan included money to create a commuter rail system in some counties and expand regional bus systems, critics say it will increase traffic and does little to address inadequate public transportation linking the city to the suburbs.
Transportation problems
“The attitude for two decades has been `Let us go ahead and build this batch of roads and we will deal with air pollution and access to jobs for people without cars later.’ There’s been a lot of broken promises,” said David Farren, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law Center.
“Many suburbs have fought vigorously against public transportation. But in a city that is almost entirely automobile dependent, the lack of public transportation creates huge issues about how people get to the suburbs where the new jobs are and enjoy the region’s economic prosperity,” Farren said.
Without natural barriers such as an ocean or mountain range, the 20-county metropolitan area as defined by the U.S. census stretches more than 100 miles across and encompasses 6,126 square miles–an area nearly the size of Hawaii with the population of Kentucky, about 4.1 million people.
According to the Fannie Mae sprawl report, houses are spread out more in the Atlanta area than in any of the 13 cities studied. The low density rate–806 houses per square mile–has created a metropolitan area that is almost totally dependent upon cars. The Atlanta density rate compares with 1,946 houses per square mile in New York City, the highest density area. Chicago, with 1,647 houses per square mile, ranked higher than the national average of 1,407.
The sprawling Atlanta area requires residents to drive farther to get anywhere–34 miles per capita, the highest in the nation–according to transportation officials. Commuters drive an average of 58 miles to get to work. Because the area’s public transit system serves only two counties, more than 3 million vehicles pack the roads, traveling 1 million miles a year.
“People do well here, but it has been a double-edged sword,” said Tom Weyandtk, director of comprehensive planning for the Atlanta Regional Commission, which oversees transportation in 10 counties. “We anticipated the growth but we never had an agency to implement our plan. Our challenge is not just transportation but sprawl. Our development pattern means that we have to drive a long way to our jobs, to get our kids to school and to get to the stores.”
Earl Govert, who has commuted from his home in Peachtree City in the far south suburbs to his office in Chamblee in the northern suburbs for 51/2 years, has a system to help him make the 46-mile trip in about 11/2 hours on most days.
Govert leaves his office at the Centers for Disease Control at 4:30 p.m. and heads south on Interstate Highway 85. As he nears downtown, he gets off at an exit, travels the ramp a half-mile, and gets back on the freeway, jumping ahead of a few cars. He picks up his wife, Barbara, who takes the train from her office in Decatur to a downtown station, then rejoins the gridlock.
If all goes well, the Goverts pull into their driveway at 6 p.m. But if there’s a wreck on the expressway, a Braves baseball game or rain, it could take three hours.
“In six months, I’m going to retire,” said Govert, 56, a human resources manager at the CDC. “The commute is a pretty big factor. The traffic gets worse all the time. It’s going to get to the point where commuting by car to work just won’t be possible.”
Weyandtk said Atlanta has learned from its problems and has done more in recent years to address them than many other cities.
Innovative projects
Among the most innovative projects, Weyandtk said, is a $5 million program that encourages neighborhoods to develop land-use plans that allow for better transportation. An additional $350 million will be allocated to those communities in the next 10 years to implement those projects, which include building affordable housing and expanding mixed-use developments that utilize the rail system.
But if environmentalists get their way, new road projects will be halted. Several groups have filed a lawsuit against the Georgia and U.S. Departments of Transportation and the Atlanta Regional Commission to get the federal government to withhold $400 million in new highway funding until Atlanta cleans up its smog. Two years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency cut off federal money for new roads. The ban was lifted last summer after the state agreed to improve mass transit and test car emissions every year.
The lawsuit is the first in the nation to seek enforcement of a provision in the Clean Air Act that prohibits funding new highway projects in areas where air pollution exceeds national health standards, said Farren, who represents the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense and other plaintiffs. The lawsuit also would require officials to follow through on its promise to expand mass transit.
