HNTB looking into traffic congestion in Atlanta

The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) has selected HNTB Corp. to update its Congestion Management System (CMS) in a contract that will last 12 months and is renewable for one additional year.

The requirements of ARC’s CMS are to monitor conditions of the entire transportation system network in Atlanta, identify where congestion problems are most severe and evaluate the impact of various congestion mitigation strategies to relieve current or projected congestion.

As the prime consultant, HNTB will identify and rank congested facilities based on a series of physical and operational characteristics including turn lanes, medians and signal timing and coordination. This congestion blueprint will provide ARC with a tool to assess transportation conditions, and based on the region’s limited resources, prioritize investments that can deliver the most traffic relief.

The CMS also provides Atlanta a basis for analyzing all reasonable alternatives to expanding single-occupant vehicle highway capacity in Transportation Management Areas (areas over 200,000 population) that have air quality issues or concerns. “Congestion and air quality are some of the most critical issues in the Atlanta region and the CMS is the primary tool to address immediate concerns,” said HNTB Project Manager Andrew Smith “The CMS can potentially provide a mechanism to directly measure the economic and environmental consequences of current system performance and future proposed improvements,” noted Smith.