It isn't much of a plan, really, trying to improve Atlanta's air quality by calling a halt to road widening. But it's about what you'd expect from a bunch of distant bureaucrats. The lab coats in D.C. are standing tall, the in-town scribblers at the Atlanta newspapers are silly with joy, and the rest of us are sitting in traffic, the air around us not improving one jot. Consider this the second federal siege of Atlanta. The idea, near as I can tell, is that keeping roads narrow will keep traffic snarled and keep people from moving to suburbialand and creating sprawl.
Problem is, sprawl has already arrived.
The people are here. The houses are built. The SUVs are in the driveways. The jobs and stores and daycare centers are scattered hither and yon. And most Atlantans simply can't get from here to there and back without a car.