Metro Atlanta Winter Storm 2014 ... and more

Last Thursday at this time, January 30th, 2014, snow was melting and, by then, most people were finally home.  It had only snowed 3 inches or so on Tuesday 28 January but the snow quickly melted into ice and with metro Atlanta automobile lifestyle it had turned into a transportation catastrophe.  All area schools and companies dismissed students and workers at the same time resulting in giant gridlocks.  Vehicles could not move or would slide off the roads and many abandoned their vehicles on emergency shoulders thus blocking first responders who were unable to get to accidents and snowplows were unable to spread sand and gravel.  The whole area was paralyzed and looked like a giant parking lot.  (Click on collages twice to enlarge.)

As I mentioned in my last post, we stayed home - we could not have driven on our road anyway.  We watched all the main channels on television reporting that thousands were stranded and cautioning all residents to stay home.  Children on school buses could not get home either; some went back to schools to sleep (as their parents could not get home) and others stayed in their buses overnight.  Many people did spend the night in their vehicles and others took shelter in grocery stores, drug stores, etc.  One thousand people slept in the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel at Cumberland Mall, near Marietta.  By 9 pm the Georgia State Patrol had responded to 940 crashes and emergency number 911 had received 3,280 calls for help.  A lady was telling a reporter on TV via her cell phone that she had left her office at 3:15 pm on Tuesday, had arrived five miles away at the perimeter highway I-285 by 10:30 pm and eleven hours later, on Wednesday morning 9:30 am, her car had not moved one inch.  Another young lady spent 22 hours in her Ford Focus, too scared to leave her car.

The weather forecast had predicted some snow for Tuesday, January 28th, mostly for areas south of Atlanta.  It had not become a "warning" until 3:45 am that morning when most people were asleep.  The roadways quickly became covered with solid sheets of slick ice causing vehicles to crawl, slide, swing around or slam into each other.

Many people blamed Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed for the city's lack of preparedness, but to be fair, the streets of Atlanta were quickly cleaned off and 1 million people left the city.  Three years ago the city had four pieces of equipment but now it has 30 spreaders, 40 snowplows and 70,000 tons of sand and gravel.  The traffic problems were on the interstate highways that are maintained by the State of Georgia, not by the mayor.  Many 18-wheeler trucks passing through the state jack-knifed and prevented other vehicles from moving, then also too many vehicles hit the road toward the suburbs at the same time.

The census of 2011 showed that the city of Atlanta has a total of only 420,003 people living inside the city limits.  When people say "Atlanta" they mean "Metro Atlanta" with 6.1 million people and a region that spreads over an area of 8,376 square miles (21,694 km2) - a land area comparable to the state of Massachusetts - Atlanta itself is about 10% of the metro area.  Metro Atlanta is the largest metropolitan area in the Southeast United States and comprises ten counties: Cherokee, Clayton, Cobb, DeKalb, Douglas, Fayette, Fulton, Gwinnett, Henry and Rockdale (that rarely cooperate with each other.)  This area has more than 16,000 miles of road (2nd highest number of miles per capita of any metro are in the nation.)  However, the public transportation system called Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) only serves two counties close to the center of Atlanta.  I saw a graphic in a July 2013 article that showed that Atlanta was the fastest growing and most sprawling metropolitan area in the US with traffic congestion rated in the top five of the country - and that is when the weather is fair.

There have been other bad snow and ice storms here.  When my husband received his Master's degree in Urban Land Use and Environmental Regional Planning from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, he was offered a position in Governor Jimmy Carter's administration.  We moved to Atlanta in early February 1973.  I remember seeing trees down, debris everywhere.  That January 1973 there had been an ice storm that closed roads, shut down businesses and schools for a week.  Nine years later, in January 1982, seven inches of snow fell across Atlanta, again immobilizing everyone.  I worked in the northwest area of Atlanta and could not get back home.  My husband who worked downtown at the State Capitol left his office around noon and did not reach our house until 3 am (a routine 45 minute drive then.)  There was no power for a week.  This storm was called Snowjam.  Below are some pictures of 1982 Snowjam (author unknown.)

Then eleven years later, in March 1993, another big storm paralyzed the metro area for days.  Some snow had been predicted but a foot fell thus forcing the closure of the interstates.  That day I had been driving back to Atlanta from Greenville, South Carolina, with a group of Algerian trainees from my work.  Once at their lodging I could not get back home (15 miles away.)  They kindly let me have one of their apartments for two nights.  Our daughters could not get back home either and stayed with friends.  This storm was called The Storm of the Century, or the Great Blizzard of 93.  Below is a photo of the blizzard courtesy Wikipedia.

In 2011, On January 14, I wrote a post "Atlanta snow in the New Year," click here to see it, describing the ice storm that had turned the metro Atlanta area into a skating rink for a week.  It had snowed, then rained, then turned very cold, and ice had formed over the snow.  It was very pretty - the snow looked like marshmallow cream, but it was dangerous to walk and drivers faced chaotic conditions on the road.  The State of Georgia spent about $2 million a day to clean up the storm and the City of Atlanta purchased additional snow removing equipment at that time.  Below are some of my pictures from that ice storm.

People here have a short memory.  The lack of public transportation and suburban sprawl add immensely to the traffic problems.  When we moved to Cobb County in 1976 we were hoping that the MARTA public transportation system would be extended to our county.  Only two counties voted for the system, ours declined.  The reason was mostly racism - they thought that it would make it easier for black people to move into the county.  This decision permanently altered the region toward making automobiles necessary to go anywhere and created more sprawl.  Metro Atlanta sprawls to 100 miles in diameter - or the size of Los Angeles with 1/3 of the population.  There are no sidewalks and very few bicycle lanes.  Developers prefer to clear-cut acres of forest (at a rate of 50 acres - 20 hectares- a day,) cover farm land with asphalt and bulldoze hills to build wealth segregated subdivisions rather than modernize areas in the city and build mixed-use housing there. There is no "smart growth" policy here compared to most cities in Europe.

MARTA serves only 500,000 out of a region of 6.1 million people.  The region's average commuter spends over one hour per day in an automobile to commute (one of the longest commute time in the nation.)  In the 1970s my husband and his staff had drawn up a regional plan for metro Atlanta including land use, environmental studies, green areas, transportation, etc.  When Jimmy Carter left for Washington for his presidency, the State of Georgia dissolved my husband's department, saying environmental concerns were not necessary and the regional plan was not implemented.  I don't think there is a working regional plan still.

In 2012 the Governor of Georgia (Republican) and the Atlanta Mayor (Democrat) joined forces to back a transportation ballot issue, called T-SPLOST, that would have provided the residents with alternatives to highway travel.  The measure was defeated by 67% of the voters (but supported by Atlanta citizens.)  The metro area has become very conservative and the Tea Party is strong - they reject any type of tax and always vote for smaller government ... but then blame the area government when the roads are gridlocked.  I thought I'd mention these details for the understanding of what is happening with traffic in Metro Atlanta and one of the main reasons for this new snowstorm fiasco, named Snowpocalypse 2014.  I'll end up with a quotation from Charlie Hales, the Mayor of Portland, Oregon, at a business meeting in September 2013: "Atlanta's a mess ... Sorry, but Atlanta's planned so poorly, it'll take generations to change the shape of the place."   Here below is looking at my road, down and up (no sidewalks) the day after the snow fell, January 29, 2014.

In my next post I'll show pictures I took in the snow.