State grant to fund road paving
♦ Work on Mount Berry Trail is on hold for drier weather.
New paving projects for Horseleg Creek Road, Branham Avenue and other short stretches of road are in the works.
Horseleg, from Winding Road to Shorter Avenue, will be repaved and restriped this year thanks to Local Maintenance and Improvement Grant funding from the Georgia Department of Transportation.
The city will receive just under half a million dollars in LMIG funds this year, Rome Public Works Director Chris Jenkins told members of the Rome Floyd Metropolitan Planning Organization Citizens Advisory Committee on Wednesday.
The Horseleg work, approximately 2.87 miles at a cost of $257,000, will represent the largest single project to get a new layer of asphalt from the grant.
Just over a mile of Branham Avenue will be repaved — from the South Broad Bridge at Myrtle Hill Cemetery all the way around to South Broad Street near Anna K. Davie Elementary School. The cost is projected at $115,000.
Other planned paving projects include West Ninth Street, behind Publix, and Butler Circle in West Rome.
Some of the grant will also be used for streetscape sidewalk work on East Sixth Avenue, from East First Street to Broad Street. Local money will be added to the pot to take the sidewalk improvements around Swift & Finch Coffee down to Doug’s Deli.
A separate grant program would help pay for the restriping on Horseleg Creek Road. The Public Works office has gotten a number of calls about the poor quality of the road markings, however Jenkins said they’ll wait to pave the road first.
Rome Floyd Transportation Planner Kayla Schaaf and Planning Director Artagus Newell each said that public hearings and workshops related to a Transportation Master Plan update for the city and county should start sometime this spring.
Consultants with Pond and Co. are doing a lot of background and demographic work right now, Newell said. The updated Transportation Master Plan is not due until
Rome-floyd Planning Director Artagus Newell (from left), Citizens Advisory Committee Chairman Terry Jones and transportation planner Kayla Schaaf listen to a report on plans to resurface Horseleg Creek Road. sometime in 2021. — is simply waiting on drier
Jenkins also told the committee weather. that work on the permanent Spriggs Construction has hard surface for the the contract for the Mount new two-mile segment of the Berry Trail work. They will Mount Berry Trail — on the also pave the Cantrell Street west bank of the Oostanaula connector from Kingfisher River from the U.S. Post Trail up Mount Aventine Office out to Big Dry Creek later this year.