I was disappointed by the 2-2 vote on the resolution before the Board of Commissioners to halt the widening of McDonough Road and State Route 54 East on the eastern side of the county.
First of all, this road project is not being handled by our own GDOT District 3 engineers. Instead, this modifications to our county road and the state highway is being dictated by GDOT District 13 (Clayton, Henry, South Fulton).
It’s easy to see why the neighboring GDOT district wants a project in Fayette County completed so badly as the new road will become a super thoroughfare connecting Fayette to the very congested Tara Boulevard in Clayton County.
Road projects have consequences and this GDOT endeavor is jam-packed with penalties for Fayette County citizens. After being presented with all the negative impacts to Fayette County citizens, Chairman Chuck Oddo and Commissioner David Barlow blocked the attempt to stop the neighboring district from building this project in our county.
Our roads will become the new cut-through and the expanded capacity will encourage more cars from outside the county to enter via the widening. The gains in capacity will be met with increases in automotive volume.
The key technical problem is we have no way to handle the increased traffic flow at the main intersection in downtown Fayetteville because the historic structures and large church in the median and assorted other buildings make widening impossible. So what you will have is a wide-mouth funnel that narrows to a point at one of the largest intersections in our county.
A map displayed at our meeting from the Atlanta Regional Commission entitled 2007 Regional Strategic Transportation System showed the downtown bottleneck issue has been a concern for years.
“The grand plan here is to relieve congestion,” said GDOT Spokesman Mark McKinnon. “It’s a very heavily-traveled roadway. The traffic numbers are up and are growing. We recognize that in the next several years, it is going to become a real problem to navigate this roadway with the growth that’s being experienced in this area” (“Lovejoy residents ‘fighting mad’ over road widening,” Clayton Daily News, July 12, 2015).
But who is generating the traffic? This is why GDOT District 13 is demanding to have this project built. The increase in road capacity will allow for more out of county traffic and accelerated development to occur. And what about the downtown Fayetteville bottleneck? How do you fix that and who pays for the expensive mitigation?
As if that was not bad enough, the McDonough Road widening also does significant damage to our county infrastructure. We lose a large section of our parking lot at the Water Utility headquarters building. Likewise, the widening and the new medians cripple our Public Works facility and our ability to move our large vehicles efficiently and safely, forcing us to make U-turns (which is next to impossible with dump trucks and heavy equipment trailers) to get back to State Route 54.
Then there is the significant problems surrounding the greatly impeded access, created by the widening, to one of the largest recreation sports facilities in the county, McCurry Park. Parents, coaches and other park-goers are going to loathe what they see when the widening eliminates and restricts points of entry.
These problems were officially brought to the GDOT District 13 engineer back in 2013 by the Board of Commissioners. GDOT has offered no solutions. Chairman Oddo and Commissioner Barlow seem content with letting the project move forward. However, neither of them can tell you how the county issues will be resolved or who is going to pay the significant expense.
So we let the neighboring counties and their GDOT District people tell us what is going to happen in our county, resulting in more out of county traffic flowing into our constricted spaces, accelerating development in those counties, crippling our county infrastructure, and placing a significant burden on our Fayette County taxpayers.
After many years, downtown Fayetteville was beginning to show some progress and the new superhighway to Tara Boulevard in Clayton County could turn it all back.
I hope the citizens of Fayette County are paying attention. Pay attention to who is fighting for your interests and who is not. We no longer have a strong majority on the Board of Commissioners willing to balance the budget, keep county business in the open and prevent the other metro counties and the state from turning us into something we do not want to be.
We need someone to win the Special Election who is not afraid to take a stand, who understands the importance of keeping our county unique, who will not make horrible decisions that have long-term impacts on our quality of life.
Steve Brown, commissioner
Fayette Board of Commissioners
Peachtree City, Ga.
