Intersection design to save money for I-75 connector
Rome and Cartersville are still waiting on final route selection.
Georgia Department of Transportation engineers may have come up with a way to make the Rome-Cartersville Development Corridor significantly less expensive. Rome Floyd Chamber Director of Business and Existing Industry Services Ken Wright said that GDOT officials are proposing to construct at-grade intersections on the connector to I-75 as J-Hook intersections.
The J- Hook concept involves through traffic on the corridor itself without traffic lights, ac- complishing what Rome and Floyd County have desired all along, unimpeded access to the Interstate. Traffic on cross streets would be able to make simple right turns onto the connector; however, if traffic wants to go straight through the intersection or make a left turn, they would first have to make a right turn, travel a short distance before making a U-turn and coming back to the intersection.
“This eliminates the need for bridges and could drop the cost of the project by millions of dollars,” Wright said. “I don’t know what Bartow’s input (into the intersection design) is going to be.”
Wright said a similar design was put in place at an intersection in Carroll County and there have not been any serious traffic wrecks at the intersection since the project was completed.
Mohamed Arafa, the northwest region communications director for GDOT, confirmed the agency has scheduled the next Citizens Advisory Committee for the Rome-Cartersville Economic Development corridor for July 27 from 5-7 p.m. in the Clarence Brown Conference Center across from the Cartersville campus of Georgia Highlands College.
Wright said that the GDOT has narrowed the potential routes for the road to two and is hopeful that a final route selection will be pre- sented at the meeting next week in Cartersville.
The improved connection from the U. S. 411- U. S. 41 interchange west of Cartersville to I-75 was first identified in the mid- 1970s. The initial route was studied and approved in 1989, but it was thrown out following a challenge by Cartersville Ranch LLC owned by the Rollins family.
A second alternative was developed and signed off on by the Federal Highway Administration in 2008. Six long years later that route was essentially halted by challenges that focused on issues related to “historic” manganese mines.