Friday, September 4th. PM drive. Good ol' retro gridlock returned to Atlanta’s freeways, driven by the pre-Labor Day mass exodus. Since the start of the pandemic, the average Atlanta commute has been lighter, as we have noted here many times. But the sheer volume that has returned to the freeways gets highlighted when incidents block lanes.And marquee traffic issues - ones that block multiple lanes for extended durations - cause similar traffic jams as they did before drivers' COVID-19 routine changes. The punchline for that first Friday in September, however, wasn’t about wrecks. It was about the volume, which made for the worst hour since March.

Delays started popping up around town at lunchtime, which is typical for Fridays and even more so on Fridays before long weekends. Before 2 p.m., I-75 was in horrible shape in Henry County with 15-30 minute delays in each direction between Locust Grove and Stockbridge. There were several wrecks on that stretch that made matters worse, but the delays on I-75 were expected and were similar to those seen on the Friday before Memorial Day.

I-75 south side delays were not surprising, but the amount and distance of other backups were. I-285 truly looked like the rush hours of the past. Late afternoon trips on the Outer Loop, I-285/westbound/southbound from GA-400 to I-20 in Fulton County were over 30 minutes and not because of wrecks. Drivers on I-285/eastbound/southbound, the Inner Loop, from Dunwoody to I-20 in DeKalb also needed at least that long for that whole trip. Those levels have not been seen concurrently and absent of wrecks in six months.

I-75/northbound in Cobb had lots of help from the tolled Express Lanes, which debuted just after Labor Day two years ago. Its delays weren’t extreme, but certainly were worse than normal and there were also some inbound backups from Acworth, a common sighting on vacation travel days.

GA-400 was slower than normal in both directions near I-285 in Sandy Springs, but really jammed north of Cumming with vehicles Lake Lanier-bound. I-85 got stacked early to and from Norcross, with problems each way near Jimmy Carter Boulevard (Exit 99). And even when those cleared, I-85/northbound traffic was as slow, if not slower than it has been since before spring.

I-75/85 (the Downtown Connector) also had its worst backups since March with southbound slowing like old times the entire way from Buckhead to I-20 and, at one point, northbound slow from Highway 166 to Midtown. I-20 was also a big, slow beast in DeKalb, with jams both ways between Lithonia and I-285. And I-20, the West Freeway, was very heavy from I-285 into Douglas County. The eastbound side was even more congested than normal in those right lanes connecting with I-285 in Fulton County.

But outside of all these outlier delays were, too, a litany of wrecks. Games of bumper tag broke out left and right during this confluence of travel. The 2 and 3 p.m. hours spit out so many problems that WSB Triple Team Traffic colleague Mike Shields and I had to do triage to both broadcast and digitally plot them. This was a stressful handful!

An oil spill before 2 p.m. shut down Highway 316/eastbound at Cedars Road in Dacula. Two wrecks in Henry and Butts counties made I-75/northbound even worse below Locust Grove. Multiple wrecks on I-85 tattooed it with backups in both directions between Braselton and Jefferson. An I-20/eastbound crash near Lee Road blocked multiple lanes and jammed the ride from Arbor Place Mall, flanked with just annoying onlooker backups on I-20/westbound. And the “garden-variety” wrecks all over the packed roads closer to Downtown Atlanta just exacerbated an already throbbing wound.

So what are the takeaways here? Much like we covered in this column two weeks ago, Atlanta traffic still can reach the same levels of nostalgic ugliness. Travel conditions just need an accelerant, such as rain, a holiday travel push, or even other wrecks. And we as drivers seem to be responding poorly when these backups do unfold. Delays seem more likely lately to trigger more wrecks and driving these days just simply seems to be less refined. So we all need to take a deep breath, put our eyes on the roads and hands upon the wheel, and drive deliberately, emotions aside.

Overall, Atlanta traffic isn’t routinely as bad as it once was, but it can be bad once as it ever was.

Cox Media Group