Politics & Government
Atlanta Road Construction Ready To Begin
Road improvements from Windy Hill Road to the Spring Road/Concord Road intersection are about to start. Plans for the road median and streetscape concept between the Spring Road/Concord Road intersection and Ridge Road are still being developed.
Construction is set to begin on one section of scheduled Atlanta Road improvements, while another portion of the road median and streetscape concept is still in the planning stages.
Wade Lnenicka, council member Ward 6, explained that improvements along Atlanta Road from Windy Hill Road to the Spring Road/Concord Road intersection are about to start.
“My understanding is that project is getting ready to crank up soon,” he said. “That was funded a long time ago, five, six, seven years ago by federal funds; a grant that the city got. But it’s more than just the median. It’s landscaping and intersection improvements.”
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Plans for improvements to Atlanta Road between the Spring Road/Concord Road intersection and Ridge Road are still being developed. A for this portion of the Atlanta Road median and streetscape concept was held in April. Citizens were allowed to make comments and ask questions, which are now being incorporated into the plans.
“Where that project stands, based on the feedback we got from the public hearing, the consulting engineer and the city engineer were going to make some revisions, bring those back to me and the council,’’ Lnenicka said. “What I promised at the first meeting is if these plans are going to change, we’d have another public hearing to unveil the revised plans before we go forward.
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“I’m waiting for the engineers to get back to me with the revisions based on the citizens’ feedback and the suggestions that we got. I don’t know when that’s going to be. I hope fairly soon, this summer sometime.”
While the first phase of the Atlanta Road improvement (Windy Hill Road to Spring Road/Concord Road) was funded by a federal grant, the latter phase (Spring Road/Concord Road to Ridge Road) is funded by $2.7 million from the 1 percent Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) that was approved by Cobb County voters in 2005. It will include installing raised medians and designing and implementing intersection improvements.
According to studies conducted by the Georgia Department of Transportation, in urban and suburban areas, medians provide greater vehicle and pedestrian safety and reduce left turn movements and turning conflicts by up to 55 percent.