The benefit of a school bus route shortcut was not enough to convince the Peachtree City Council last week to support paving Sims Road, a gravel road that would connect to Astoria Lane in the Kedron Hills neighborhood.
Sims Road is outside of the city’s jurisdiction in the unincorporated county, and since only a handful of people live on the road the Fayette County Commission last year asked the city if it wanted the road paved or not, as the commission is looking to prioritize its road paving projects.
If the road were to be paved, it would cut several minutes each way for bus-riding students living in the Kedron Hills area who are zoned to attend Bennett’s Mill Middle School off Ga. Highway 54 in east Fayetteville.
Sara Yeager, who lives on Loring Lane, the main entrance road to the Kedron Hills subdivision, said traffic speed and volume is already a problem on the road, which lacks sidewalks.
Yeager said she has a 7-year-old and a 2-year-old whom she’d rather spend a few extra minutes on the bus instead of being endangered by even more traffic posed by a shortcut.
In the future it’s almost certain the Sims Road connection will be made, as the road section is part of the long-planned “northeast collector” road that will be largely built by a developer who is planning future phases of the Smokerise Estates subdivision. The intersection is already stubbed out, providing a visual cue of what’s to come, even if it won’t be for any number of years.
The northeast collector as proposed would reach from Ga. Highway 54 at Sumner Road, eventually connecting with Kedron Hills and up to Dogwood Trail via Sims Road.
Before council voted against the project, Mayor Don Haddix asserted that the owner of that undeveloped property along the route, Scott Bradshaw, was “waiting for the road to be built before he starts building.”
Councilman Eric Imker, prior to the vote, said he was going to vote against paving Sims Road “not because I don’t want Mr. Bradshaw to develop his property, but because I want to protect the neighbors.”
