The flood of workers at the main campus of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention caused extreme traffic backups and other delays Monday morning.
Employees said driving the last two miles took as long as 40 minutes. One said a CDC administrator greeted employees coming back with a card that said: “YOU ARE APPRECIATED!”
Many CDC employees began working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic. But the Trump administration ordered employees living within 50 miles of the office to show up in-person starting Monday.
Many of the employees have been dreading the return, in part because the CDC in the last few years has been reducing the amount of office space it leases in the Atlanta area, meaning fewer desks and parking spaces.
A CDC spokesperson told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution the agency saw an increase of traffic on Clifton Road that improved after 8 a.m. The agency plans to monitor traffic levels this week.
Parking was “near capacity,” but a few empty spots remained by around 11 a.m., the spokesperson said.
“We continue to encourage staff to consider commuting by mass transit, carpool, vanpool, walking or biking whenever possible,” the spokesperson said.
A steady stream of cars was seen coming in and out of campus late morning. Security guards told an AJC photographer he couldn’t take photographs of the front gate or buildings.
The agency anticipated the number of returning employees would exceed available parking. The number of employees reporting to the main campus was expected to more than double.
Parking at the CDC’s headquarters has been an issue for years. Nearly a decade ago, the agency said the main campus was at full capacity and urged telecommuting. Officials warned that exceeding parking capacity could lead to “failure conditions” and long delays at intersections near the campus.
The spokesperson told the AJC that the agency plans to streamline traffic flow into the main entrance off Clifton Road and is working with partners to implement traffic mitigation measures like traffic-light timing.
— Photographer Ben Hendren and The Associated Press contributed reporting to this story.
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