5th Street sinkhole repair timeline set

City hopes traffic can resume on road in two weeks.

Traffic should reopen on 5th Street in Midtown in two weeks after a sinkhole shut it down April 19, a city official said Friday.

“The City of Atlanta Department of Public Works is now completing repair work to 5th Street at Cypress Street,” spokeswoman Christina Cruz-Benton told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in an email.

“We plan to open 5th Street at Cypress Street to vehicular and pedestrian traffic in two weeks,” Cruz-Benton said, “and predict the final road restoration will be completed in four weeks, weather permitting.”

The cause of the sinkhole is still not known.

“The Department of Watershed Management conducted dye tests on their infrastructure and found no leaks,” Cruz-Benton said.

The sinkhole is the latest of several major traffic disruptions in metro Atlanta in recent weeks. These include the fiery I-85 bridge collapse, a chemical spill by a tractor-trailer on the Downtown Connector and the buckling of I-20 in DeKalb County.