Georgia Avenue
Plans for Georgia Avenue include:
1. Intersection redesign of Georgia Avenue and College Street--Information to be posted soon
2. Major redesigns of Georgia Avenue, Monroe Street, Hardeman Avenue, and Forsyth Street in conjunction with I-75.
Regarding #2 above:
On Georgia Avenue, the Georgia DOT preliminary project proposal map shows plans to close Georgia Avenue at Monroe Street (at the fire station) so that Georgia Avenue curves around in front of the fire station intersecting with Hardeman where Monroe Street currently is located. Monroe Street will intersect with Georgia Avenue in the parking lot of a small business and threatens several other businesses along the section of Georgia Avenue intended to be closed to traffic.
The DOT Blueprint proposes to convert Georgia Avenue from College Street to Hardeman Avenue from its current two (wide) lane one-way design to four lane two-way traffic. Hardeman is widened from 3 lanes of one-way traffic to four lanes of one-way traffic from Monroe Street to I-75. The Hardeman widening results in a very difficult and dangerous situation for traffic exiting from the many businesses on Professional Drive attempting to enter the north bound I-75 ramp. The several medical offices, who treat many elderly and young patients, are concerned, as well, with the increased speed the road widening would encourage. As usual for the road projects in Macon, speed problems are not addressed by the engineers.
The plans for the intersection at Georgia and College were designed by our Road Program assuming the current two lane one-way lane design of Georgia Avenue. At the other end of Georgia Avenue, the DOT is designing assuming four lane two-way traffic for the same road! There is no excuse for this lack of communication and coordination. It does not inspire our confidence in the management of the road-building program.
Residents and business owners have for years appealed for a traffic light at the intersection at the intersection of Monroe and Hardeman. There have been 28 serious accidents, 5 serious accidents within a 30 day period in August and September (2 in one hour). However, the most cost effective and less intrusive solution appears to be the installation and synchronization of two traffic lights at the current Georgia/Monroe and Forsyth/Monroe intersections. This project appears to be ideally suited to the expertise of Walter Kulash. Since, Kulash is reviewing all road improvement projects, it only seems to make sense to see if Kulash has some ideas to integrate this project with the other projects located so close to this project. Our projects definitely need communication and cooperation!