What do you do about Atlanta?
Headed from WI to FL next month and no reasonable way to miss Atlanta. Best I could do was schedule my drive-time so that I hit Atlanta at about 1p on a Wednesday. No matter when I look at a map, ...
Forum Discussion
You could route around Atlanta well to the west with very little extra distance.
There are some large cities I like to avoid because of impossible traffic densities at the time I will get there (as you are treating Chicago) and Atlanta is one of them that stays messed up for much of the day. But avoiding one bottleneck on the Interstate system will often put me through a different one, so it is about the timing as much as the route.
Consider I-65 out of Nashville to Montgomery, US-231 from Montgomery to Dothan, US-84 to Bainbridge, US-27 to I-10, then over to I-75. Or from Montgomery, US-231 down to I-10.
I now go through Atlanta west to east (I-20) to get to S. Carolina, as a 5 AM start from NE Mississippi or NW Alabama gets me there about 9:30-10:00 AM, which is not so bad west to east (but it is pretty bad for folks coming in from the east). But I don't go through Atlanta east to west because I hit it at the wrong time of day, afternoon to evening rush hour. My westbound route is I-40 rather then I-20 with a night stop before crossing the mountains, an early start ahead of regional commuter traffic, which gets me through or past Nashville mid-day, and counter-flow to afternoon commuters at Memphis.
There is probably a good time for I-75 north to south, but I don't know what it is. Going through north to south, I would usually hit Atlanta around 10 PM and stay on I-75. I do know that the loop roads the truckers are forced to use are currently slow for much of the day, because of construction projects.
There are some large cities I like to avoid because of impossible traffic densities at the time I will get there (as you are treating Chicago) and Atlanta is one of them that stays messed up for much of the day. But avoiding one bottleneck on the Interstate system will often put me through a different one, so it is about the timing as much as the route.
Consider I-65 out of Nashville to Montgomery, US-231 from Montgomery to Dothan, US-84 to Bainbridge, US-27 to I-10, then over to I-75. Or from Montgomery, US-231 down to I-10.
I now go through Atlanta west to east (I-20) to get to S. Carolina, as a 5 AM start from NE Mississippi or NW Alabama gets me there about 9:30-10:00 AM, which is not so bad west to east (but it is pretty bad for folks coming in from the east). But I don't go through Atlanta east to west because I hit it at the wrong time of day, afternoon to evening rush hour. My westbound route is I-40 rather then I-20 with a night stop before crossing the mountains, an early start ahead of regional commuter traffic, which gets me through or past Nashville mid-day, and counter-flow to afternoon commuters at Memphis.
There is probably a good time for I-75 north to south, but I don't know what it is. Going through north to south, I would usually hit Atlanta around 10 PM and stay on I-75. I do know that the loop roads the truckers are forced to use are currently slow for much of the day, because of construction projects.
