From Richard Arena

Managing Roswell’s Growth for a More Livable Community

If the great Scottish bard, Sir Walter Scott, were among us today, he might have penned:

Breathe there a man with soul so dead,
Who never to himself has said,
This is my own native land,
What are we going to do about the traffic?
     How did Roswell become so overrun with traffic? Sprawl. Sprawl is development that forces people to drive to virtually every out-of-home activity, be it work, shopping, recreation, or school.

Sprawl is neighborhoods with no real sense of community. Sprawl is pockets of specialized development where commercial, residential, recreational and educational areas are located in isolated pockets along collector and arterial routes – routes that become increasingly clogged as development progresses.

Roswell is by no means alone in this state of affairs. The entire nation began falling prey to sprawl back in the late 1940’s and early 50’s. Prior to that, American cities were built from the center out in mixed-use squares or blocks. The advantage of the traditional mixed-use block form of development is that as a city expands, a network of connecting streets is created to handle the increased traffic levels while placing most of life’s necessities within easy walking distance.

Roswell is choking on traffic because our development model is sprawl rather than the expanding grid model.

Where do we go from here? I’m sure some would like to put developers in timeout, but even if we had the political will for a building moratorium, which we don’t, that wouldn’t solve our current traffic problem nor would it save us from the ever rising tide of traffic barreling down upon the city from Georgia highways 400, 92, 140, 120, and 9.

How to stop the sprawl:


There is an old expression that goes; “When you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.” We will not shed ourselves of traffic congestion spawned by sprawl if we continue to permit sprawl. The cure is not cheap and it won’t happen overnight, but if we commit ourselves to the principles and course of action outlined below, we will eventually solve the traffic problem and make Roswell an even better place in which to live and thrive.

1.    Require that all new development and redevelopment form part of a comprehensive local traffic grid. No more disconnected shopping centers or residential developments.
2.    Wherever possible, connect existing developments even if it means acquiring homes and businesses for needed right-of-ways.
3.    Put mixed-use (low-rise) development on an accelerated approval track.
4.    Pressure MARTA to extend rail service to 400 and 120. To help pay for the extension MARTA can place a surcharge on single trips to and from the Roswell Station. Regular passengers would be able to use a discounted Breeze Card that works like the automatic toll on 400.
5.    Install an intra-city “smart” trolley transit system on Roswell’s collector and arterial routes. See: http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/membersonly/may98/features/smarter/smarter.html
6.    Avoid and, to the extent possible, eliminate road cuts and traffic lights on state routes passing through the city. Retail establishments in mixed-use neighborhoods will eventually take business from outdated strip centers on the state routes. As those strip centers atrophy, they can be revitalized in the mixed-use on the local street grid.
7.    Discourage intercity traffic from using city surface streets through traffic calming and by restricted non-local from traffic using local connectors during commuting hours.
8.    Discourage further concentration of schools and daycare facilities. Schools (both private and public) should be placed where they serve local populations in the immediate surrounding areas. Private schools serving non-resident populations need to be situated with easy access on state routes. Concentrating schools and daycare facilities draws unacceptable levels of cut-through traffic on the affected area’s residential streets.

Connectivity is the key to making a success of mixed-use development and redevelopment. High-density mixed-use development in isolated pockets worsens rather than relieves the overall traffic problem because there are more people per acre to use the same overcrowded roads.

That is a prescription for making Roswell a more viable community and where intercity traffic passes through with a minimum of disruption from and to the residents of Roswell.

Richard Arena