Problem Intersection: Moreland Avenue and Ormewood Avenue

If you drive Ormewood Avenue to get to Moreland Avenue with any regularity, you know you have to be prepared for a wait when you get to the traffic light at the intersection — unless you're lucky to catch the green light.

Moreland is a state road and controlled by the Georgia Department of Transportation. As such, the DOT's main objective is to keep traffic flowing on Moreland as freely and fast as possible.

But Ormewood is a city road and takes a back seat to Moreland in terms of traffic flow. That explains why the red light for motorists turning onto Moreland from Ormewood Avenue is so long, compared with Moreland at the Memorial Drive or Freedom Parkway intersections.

It's also led to some testy or impatient drivers.

On several occasions, we've spotted motorists driving east on Ormewood signaling a left-hand turn onto Moreland.

But rather than wait for the westbound traffic that's driving straight through the intersection, they zoom out in front of them.

Some don't wait at all, preferring to illegally drive in the opposite lane of traffic and cut through the parking lot of the former Jiffy Grocery at the corner.

Now, with school back in session, a steady stream of kids headed to the ’s Ormewood Park campus, will walk or ride their bikes to school, using that intersection.

Though Ormewood Avenue is a bike route and ANCS received nearly $500,000 in a federal Safe Routes Initiative grant last year that covers the roadway, drivers don't pay attention.

The ANCS kids are savvy enough to walk their bikes across the street instead of riding. Even still, some discourteous drivers try turn before they have a chance to cross.

And as Atlanta's 11Alive News reported this week, metro Atlanta motorists hit four people a day on average.

Chances are, drivers all over the city might be encountering a lot more kids during their morning commutes to work now that Atlanta Public Schools is enforcing a longstanding rule about who can get a ride on the school bus.

"The policy is elementary school students qualify for pupil transportation if they reside more than one mile from their zoned school," APS spokesman Keith Bromery wrote in an e-mail to East Atlanta Patch.

"For middle and high school students, it is 1.5 miles. APS does not transport charter or private school students between home and school."

The rules were actually in place for a while, but the district is aggressively enforcing it this year, Bromery said.

So for motorists using the Moreland and Ormewood intersection the bottom line is: Slow down for the kids.