I live near Atlanta, and worked downtown for 30 years. My recommendation is to stay off of I-285 West, unless you like trucks, construction, and rough roads. in my humble opinion, going straight through is the best bet, even with all the traffic, which can be quite intense at times. Get into the middle lanes, or even the carpool lanes, and just go with the flow. Atlanta has HERO trucks that help clear accidents as quickly as possible. Actually, in my opinion, downtown isn't really that bad. Many of the businesses have moved outside of the perimeter (I-285) where most of the traffic now is. If you time it, you should be able to get from I-285 to I-285 in 30-45 minutes. North and south of the perimeters is an all together different situation, and south of Atlanta can be the pits during the afternoon commute, through Henry county. As far as I know, any other route is going to take you longer. JMHO