By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JAN. 29, 2019 | Many people in Gwinnett are astounded that the county is approaching having a population of a million people. The estimated current population is 950,000.
They are astounded, that is, in one way.
When you live and pretty much stay in one area of the county, and don’t get out of that area much, you know the streets are usually crowded. But it doesn’t seem like there are about a million people around you.
But if you have to move about the county much at all, especially during the two-and-three hour-long rush periods, you very well know it. Even as far out to the edge of the county at Hamilton Mill, or in the edge of Hall County at near Flowery Branch, you know it by the zoom-zoom-zoom of cars passing you if you are holding to the speed limit. And by the time you see Georgia Highway 316 coming into Interstate 85, from 6 to 9 a.m. and from 4 to nearly 7 p.m., it’s traffic, traffic, traffic.
Another feeder into the Metro Atlanta area, U.S. Highway 78, has its own bumper-to-bumper problems even on its four lane highway. Other feeder routes, U.S. Highway 29, Buford Highway and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard, see traffic backed up at every traffic light during rush hours.
And even more foreboding: during rush hours, there’s a whole lot of traffic in the opposite lane, going the other way. Soon that will be crowded, too, during rush hour.
Isn’t there something that can be done about it?
A recent Gwinnett poll found some 48 comments on what is wrong with the county. In 40 of 48 responses, someone mentioned traffic or transportation. That shows the seriousness of the problem.
At least in 2019, Gwinnett is moving to provide one answer toward solving some of the problem. The March 19 referendum on providing a modern transit system by Gwinnett becoming part of the regional transit network is part—we emphasize only part—of the solution.
Granted, it will take quite a few years for heavy rail—that is the current MARTA system—to provide much relief in Gwinnett. But it we don’t start now, it will take even longer.
Encourage your neighbors to go to the polls on March 19 and vote YES for long-term traffic relief. That’s your job as a citizen, to encourage your fellow Gwinnettians to find a better way in solving our transportation problem. Turn out and vote to move us forward.
New subject: One of the major national columnists, Russell Baker, died last week. In a tribute in the New York Times, Robert Semple, who knew Baker well, remembered Baker, in writing about President Richard Nixon on the campaign trail: “There were darknesses in his soul that seemed to leave his life bereft of joy. He was a private, lonely man who never seemed comfortable with anyone, including himself, a man of monumental insecurities for whom public life, I thought, must be a constant ordeal.”
Semple adds: “In those two sentences lie a good part of the explanation of Watergate.”
- Have a comment? Send to: elliott@brack.net
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