New GDOT video vividly shows a Perimeter flush with express lanes, less traffic

The most mesmerizing part of the Georgia Department of Transportation’s new video showing the vision for one of its many interstate expansion projects isn’t the color-coded network of new express lanes.

Rather, it’s the staggering lack of congestion along a typically high-traffic corridor of the Interstate 285 Perimeter.

That’s the main thrust of GDOT’s mission with its potentially $11 billion Major Mobility Investment Program—to curb traffic.

The video offers a vivid preview of the proposed Interstate 285 Top End Express Lanes project, which has caught the ire of a few north metro Atlanta officials and prompted questions about the future of mass transit in the region.

Granted, the video comes with a disclaimer that what you see “may not be representative of the final design.”

Nonetheless, it envisions a world in which GDOT spends beaucoup bucks to build more lanes—and the tactic, per the video, actually works!

Starting from the east side of the so-called Top End, the virtual tour shows in purple how new express lanes would hang over Cobb Parkway and then thread through the junction of Interstates 285 and 75, sending some tolled passengers toward Truist Park and the Battery.

East of that, toll lanes are elevated on either side of the Perimeter expressway, hanging mostly above the highway all the way to the Glenridge Connector, where Ga. Highway 400 meets I-285.

There, the purple lanes are cross-stitched, ushering some drivers north, where they could exit at access points at Mount Vernon Parkway.

Heading east again, the new express lanes would hop over the MARTA train tracks near Perimeter Center Parkway and shoot toward the connection of 285 and 85.

There, more weaving of lanes would link new and existing infrastructure.

Could this be enough to help reduce congestion along the Perimeter’s north side? Or is it possible GDOT officials are imagining a world in which Georgia drivers learned how to efficiently carpool?