New task force would study traffic congestion on Buckhead’s neighborhood streets

Residents living in some of Buckhead’s upscale neighborhoods are tired of thousands of commuters clogging their streets. A proposed new task force would develop a plan to address their concens.

Atlanta City Councilmember Mary Norwood introduced legislation in April to get a traffic plan for her constituents in District 8, which is on the western portion of Buckhead and is mostly residential.

Neighborhoods include Chastain Park, Loring Heights, Pine Hills and Tuxedo Park, and residents say their streets are being choked by commuters seeking to avoid interstate and highway traffic.

The city council is expected to vote on the legislation at its May 6 meeting.

“The genesis of this task force is the fact that residential streets are being overwhelmed by commuter traffic that is coming from the Interstate 75 corridor into, and perhaps through, the Buckhead job center,” said Jim Durrett, executive director of the Buckhead Community Improvement District (CID).

Buckhead neighborhood groups in District 8 have done their own traffic plans and estimate daily traffic patterns of 7,000 up to 20,000 vehicles on residential streets, according to Norwood.

The vehicles are most likely coming from Cobb County on I-75 and getting on Blackland, Broadland, Habersham, Mt. Paran and West Paces Ferry roads, two-lane streets that were not built to handle heavy traffic.

Residents living along and near these roads say the congestion sometimes makes it impossible for them to exit their own property. They also complain some commuters speed through their neighborhoods.

For commuters, the residential streets provide a cut-through into Buckhead ‘s central business district that surrounds Peachtree and Piedmont roads. Some commuters may also be taking the residential streets through Buckhead to get to Brookhaven, for example.

“We need to understand where people are coming from, where they are going and we need to understand what the impacts are,” Durrett said. “And then we need to understand what we might try to accomplish that will address the problems.”

In 2022, the city council adopted a resolution by Norwood requesting the Atlanta Department of Transportation to develop a traffic plan for District 8 “to determine the sources of traffic and propose strategies to address them.”

The 2022 resolution noted that 92% of those working in Buckhead’s central business district live outside Buckhead. The 92% figure comes from a housing and community study by Livable Buckhead.

A year later, the council approved another resolution by Norwood for the ATLDOT to use $250,000 of District 8 discretionary funding to conduct a District 8 traffic study . The study would assess the need for traffic calming devices, reduced speed limits, repaving and stop signs.

Buckhead is “impacted by unique traffic patterns created by commuters who account for up to 40% of all traffic traveling to the Buckhead Central Business District from I-75 through Council District 8 residential areas,” according to the 2023 resolution.

“What Councilmember Norwood wants to do is figure out what can be done to help get better options to for that commuter traffic to get into Buckhead without being as much on the local streets,” said Denise Starling, executive director of Livable Buckhead. “As it is now, all the cut-through traffic is going right across her district.”

If the task force is approved, it would begin meeting once a month with a goal of having a completed plan by Aug. 31.

There are planned to be 20 members on the task force including representatives from the city’s DOT, parks and recreation and planning departments; District 8 neighborhoods; Buckhead CID; Livable Buckhead; Atlanta History Center; Chastain Park Conservancy; Buckhead Business Association; and PATH Foundation.

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