MTO: Still stalled

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Still stalled
As costs grow, Fall Line Freeway through Bibb awaits approval

By Anna Clark
The Macon Telegraph

The already lengthy wait to build the Fall Line Freeway through Middle Georgia has gotten even longer and more expensive. Local businesses anticipating a boost from this controversial portion of the highway may need to rethink their business plans.

The increased delay comes mostly from the state not being able to convince the federal government that traffic volumes alone warrant building another crossing of the Ocmulgee River in Macon. The DOT's plan for Macon's portion of the freeway has hinged on a new bridge to link the east and west sides of the four-lane Fall Line Freeway.

After hiring consultants last December, the Georgia Department of Transportation planned to have a federally mandated environmental study completed and approved within 18 months. But now, eight months into the process, the state has not even cleared the first hurdle in getting the project approved, and the cost of the study has grown from $1.8 million to more than $2 million.

"We are behind schedule significantly," said Mark Cheskey, project manager for the DOT's consulting firm, HDR Engineering in Atlanta. Cheskey said he could not specify exactly how many months behind the project is.

While the Fall Line Freeway - a cross-state highway connecting Columbus and Augusta - itself has not caused controversy, its route through Macon certainly has.

Environmentalists in town became upset in the early 1990s over the DOT's route via the Eisenhower Parkway Extension, because it would traverse wetlands in its path from the downtown industrial district across the river to Ga. 57. When the route was planned to come within 100 feet of the Ocmulgee National Monument, the Muscogee (Creek) Indians in Oklahoma got involved in trying to block it. Although the route was then moved about a mile south of the park's main southern boundary, the Creeks still opposed it, because it would bisect the Ocmulgee Old Fields, their ancestral land.

The Keeper of the National Register determined that the Old Fields were eligible to be listed on the national register a year ago. That triggered the need for a federal study to see if any other prudent or feasible alternative route existed. The Federal Highway Administration will make the final decision about whether to build through the controversial land.

The state DOT then hired a consulting firm to complete the study. By now, DOT officials expected to have a list of alternative routes and several spring and summer public hearings in Macon and Oklahoma behind them. But none of that has happened because the federal highway department has yet to approve the DOT's justification and definition of the project, according to DOT records.

The federal highway department has rejected two such documents and is reviewing a third that was submitted on Aug. 5. The biggest stumbling block has been traffic projections, which fell short of expectations, including new traffic studies done in April. Those studies did not show significant growth in traffic over the last decade.

"Traffic was probably not exactly what we expected it to be," Cheskey said.

Opponents to building the freeway through the Old Fields said that fact supports their position.

"I am not surprised that traffic flow wouldn't justify the route," said Jack Sammons, a law professor at Mercer University. "That's the same problem they ran into when they tried to complete the Eisenhower Parkway Extension before it was to be a part of the Fall Line Freeway."

Those on the other side, however, say this is just bureaucracy at work.

"It's just an inordinate amount of red tape that we're trudging through," said Damon King, the newly appointed leader of supporters for the Eisenhower Parkway Extension. "Everyone is optimistic that one day we'll get the project approved and built."

Officials in charge of the project from the DOT did not return telephone calls for this story.

Cheskey said the new tack the state is taking is to use traffic needs in conjunction with economic development and safety concerns to justify the bridge for the freeway. All factors combined support the need for the project, Cheskey said.

But the state did not use an economic impact study prepared in the spring by the Middle Georgia Regional Development Center for Bibb County. That study claimed the Eisenhower Parkway Extension would have a $2.4 billion impact in the county over five years while it was being built.

DOT documents, however, show that its consultants felt the impact was inflated by the number of jobs it would create and the ripple effect that each dollar spent on the project would have in the county.

"It wasn't as objective as we would have liked to see it," Cheskey said.

William Schaffer, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wrote the consultants that the RDC's statistical multiplier of 3.3 to calculate the ripple effect was too high.

"A multiplier of 3.3 assumes that 70 percent of every dollar spent in the community stays in the community," Schaffer wrote. "Just a little introspection says that is much too large."

But Claire Erk, who prepared the report, said the RDC is standing by its study. She said that some had even told her that the figure was too low.

Federal highway officials said they will decide in the next few weeks whether to give the state the green light to proceed to the next step in the project.