Atlanta doesn’t have a spotless record on civil rights but Mayor Kasim Reed agreeing to meet with #BLM leaders on July 18, 2016, is a welcome contrast to response in the police state of Baton Rouge, for example.
During this “cooling off” period, I want to address Mayor Reed’s concern for the safety of #BLM protesters and motorists should #BLM protests move onto the Downtown Connector.
Being able to protest on the Downtown Connector would be far more effective than blocking random Atlanta surface streets, by day or night. Mayor Reed’s question is how to do so safely?
Here is Google Maps’ representation of a part of the Downtown Connector:
That view isn’t helpful on the issue of safety but consider a smaller portion of the Downtown Connector as seen by Google Earth:
The safety question has two parts: How to transport #BLM protesters to a protest site on the Downtown Connector? How to create a safe protest site on the Downtown Connector?
A nearly constant element of the civil rights movement provides the answer: buses. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Freedom Riders, to the long experiment with busing to achieve desegregation in education.
Looking at an enlargement of an image of the Downtown Connector, you will see that ten (10) buses would fill all the lanes, plus the emergency lane and the shoulder, preventing any traffic from going around the buses. That provides safety for protesters. Not to mention transporting all the protesters safely to the protest site.
The Downtown Connector is often described as a “parking lot” so drivers are accustomed to traffic slowing to a full stop. If a group of buses formed a line across all lanes of the Downtown Connector and slowed to a stop, traffic would be safely stopped. That provides safety for drivers.
The safety of both protesters and drivers depends upon coordination between cars and buses to fill all the lanes of the Downtown Connector and then slowing down in unison, plus buses occupying the emergency lane and shoulder. Anything less than full interdiction of the highway would put both protesters and drivers at risk.
Churches and church buses have often played pivotal roles in the civil rights movement so the means for creating safe protest spaces, even on the Downtown Connector, are not out of reach.
There are other logistical and legal issues involved in such a protest but I have limited myself to offering a solution to Mayor Reed’s safety question.
PS: The same observations apply to any limited access motorway, modulo adaptation to your local circumstances.