Thursday night the Peachtree City Council voted unanimously to petiton the Fayette County Board of Commissioners for funding help for two big-budget transportation projects. The city wants help making improvements to the intersection of Peachtree Parkway and Crosstown Road, and with building a new “gateway” cart path bridge across Ga. Highway 54 at the far western city limits.
The city is hoping to convince the Fayette County Commission to fund both projects with revenue from the countywide transportation sales tax that ran from 2004-2009.
City staff is recommending that a proposed traffic light for the Parkway/Crosstown intersection be removed from the project.
Instead, the city would be adding additional lanes to the intersection to help traffic move better. With the traffic light, the city was due to get $444,000 in state funding, but another $774,000 would be needed to finish the project.
Those figures most likely will change without the traffic light, assuming its removal meets with approval of the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The “gateway” cart path bridge on Hwy. 54 West will need a $1.03 million contribution from the county. The city already owns land for the bridge site on the northern side of Ga. Highway 54 West, at the corner of MacDuff Parkway. The bridge would link the Shoppes at Village Piazza shopping center with the path along MacDuff Parkway.
The bridge could also be accessed via the Platnerra Ridge subdivision by going through the Line Creek Nature Area, noted City Manager Bernie McMullen.
It will take about several years for the gateway path bridge to be built, as the city will have to start the state’s plan development process that takes several years to get through, said City Engineer Dave Borkowski.
While the intersection work at Peachtree Parkway and Crosstown Road will also require a DOT approval, the project is already approved as designed and the nod is necessary to remove the proposed stoplight. If approved, that would allow new turn lanes to be built at the intersection to improve traffic flow.
The unanimous vote from council also cancelled a path project that was completely isolated from any current path section. The cancelled project would have led from Cooper Circle to the city’s Baseball and Soccer Complex which is on the west side of Ga. Highway 74 south, where no other path curently exists.
