With so many major highways intersecting in the city of Atlanta, Auburn students heading home or trying to get back to the loveliest village on the plains often find themselves trapped in Atlanta’s infamous traffic jams with no way out. Natives of the Atlanta area are used to these frustrations, and they have some advice on how to survive Atlanta traffic.
Sophie Gelly (Freshman, Aerospace Engineering, Peachtree Corners, GA)
Q: How do you tell if traffic is going to be bad?
A: Like 10 miles out, there’s already a little bit of backup, and also, I just like know there are windows of time where there are going to be a lot of traffic, around like lunch time, and then morning or evening time when everyone is coming to or from the city for work.
Q: Would you say traffic is consistent?
A: Sometimes like there are random times where traffic is just awful
Q: Do you have a shortcut that helps you avoid the traffic?
A: Yeah
I don’t know if it’s as convenient cause I feel like when you take the longer route, you lose just as much time cause the speed limit is so low
Q: What’s the worst traffic you’ve seen?
A: SEC championship weekend
It was awful, we had just gotten to 285 which takes you around Atlanta, and then from there you can hit 85 and 75, and it took us from the entrance to Atlanta to get onto 285 it took us probably like an hour and a half to reach 85 which normally it probably takes you 25 minutes if that.
JT Vaughn (Freshman, Industrial Engineering, Tucker, GA)
Q: How do you tell if traffic is going to be bad?
A: So one of the important things is to know like if there’s any big events going on, like obviously, if there’s something like a conference going on or a big like football game, there’s going to be people like driving into town, so you kind of have to know like what’s coming into town, that’s one of the big factors, and obviously on most week days, around like the evening or so traffic is going to be bad because of work, probably the most important part is to just know like what’s going on.
Q: Do you have a shortcut that helps you avoid the traffic?
A: There’s really nothing I know of because especially when you’re coming from out of town, cause you kind of have to go into 285 unfortunately, I would say like using the Waze app, it shows you some shortcuts obviously that are kind of hard to find if you don’t already know, cause Atlanta’s a big city, there’s plenty of different off roads, but I would say you just kind of have to find out like for yourself what’s the best route based on where you’re going.
Q: What’s the worst traffic you’ve seen?
A: I would say three or four years ago there was a terrible snowstorm.
They called it snowmageddon, cause the highways all shut down, I was stuck on the highway for seven hours cause the traffic was so bad.
Sid Brendel (Freshman, Pre-Business, Berkeley Lake, GA)
Q: How do you tell if traffic is going to be bad?
A: You just got to know the times like 5 P.M. is a bad time, and just like, going to work in the morning like around 8.
Q: Would you say traffic is consistent?
A: [Traffic] can like vary based on construction
Q: What’s the worst traffic you’ve seen?
A: Just rush hour, like normally it takes you around 20 minutes without traffic to my house to the city, but it can take like an hour and thirty minutes at the worst
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