Clearing Those Clogged Arteries: ATLANTA

Atlanta is transforming its downtown connector highway from a bottleneck to a breeze. The connector had become congested because of the growth of Atlanta's northern suburbs. Thousands of commuters migrate south each morning on two interstate highways, I-85 and I-75, which funnel into the connector three miles north of downtown. By the mid-1970s, the four-lane highway was jammed with more than 100,000 autos a day, twice its capacity. Atlanta responded in 1978 with a $1.4 billion plan for "freeing the freeways." Computer models showed traffic engineers where to expand the system and where to streamline it by eliminating entrances and exits. Today the highway features as many as ten lanes, includes eight rebuilt interchanges and can handle four times as much volume as the old roadway. Although work on the southern portion of the highway is still under way, tie-ups north of downtown are rare. Says Dodi Fromson, an antiques dealer from Southern California who visited Atlanta: "I certainly knew I wasn't in Los Angeles."