"Split Grade" at 74/54?

[Bob Jensen]

Don, on the Citizen website you were discussing the merits of a "split grade" at highways 74/54 intersection.

Is a "split grade" when you make essentially a interstate-like bridge over one road, with access ramps and such?

We non-civil-engineer types want to know! :confused:

[Don Haddix]

Don, on the Citizen website you were discussing the merits of a "split grade" at highways 74/54 intersection.

Is a "split grade" when you make essentially a interstate-like bridge over one road, with access ramps and such?

We non-civil-engineer types want to know! :confused:
Yes it is.

Too bad I don't have access to their power point presentation. Would be easier to describe. Let me give it a shot here:

54
I
I
I
Post Office Avenues I Staples, etc.
Ramp ------------------------------------Ramp
----74---------------------------------------------------------74-------
Ramp ------------------------------------Ramp
I West Park
I
I

Access to West Park, The Avenues and the Staples are is cut off from access to 74.

The Post Office would become a right turn only ingress and egress.

The area could not survive, business wise, as retail.

Hope that is clear enough to show what would happen.

Problem is that since 54 and 74 are State highways, the State could do this, just as they widened 74, regardless of what PTC wants.

So, if and when this comes up, years down the road, we better make sure good people are on Council and at State to fight for us.

Unless something is happening I am not aware of, this will not be in the near future.

[Bob Jensen]

Don, on the Citizen website you were discussing the merits of a "split grade" at highways 74/54 intersection.

Is a "split grade" when you make essentially a interstate-like bridge over one road, with access ramps and such?

We non-civil-engineer types want to know! :confused:
Yes it is.

Too bad I don't have access to their power point presentation. Would be easier to describe. Let me give it a shot here:

54
I
I
I
Post Office Avenues I Staples, etc.
Ramp ------------------------------------Ramp
----74---------------------------------------------------------74-------
Ramp ------------------------------------Ramp
I West Park
I
I

Access to West Park, The Avenues and the Staples are is cut off from access to 74.

The Post Office would become a right turn only ingress and egress.

The area could not survive, business wise, as retail.

Hope that is clear enough to show what would happen.

Problem is that since 54 and 74 are State highways, the State could do this, just as they widened 74, regardless of what PTC wants.

So, if and when this comes up, years down the road, we better make sure good people are on Council and at State to fight for us.

Unless something is happening I am not aware of, this will not be in the near future.

Okay, that's what I thought.

I lived through split grading of SR141 over Tilly Mill Road and Winters Chapel road in DeKalb in the early 1980s. It was a tremendous help for traffic patterns (and was a huge boon for developers of property further out on SR141) but the local business at those intersections were annihilated.

I remember a Shoney's restaurant, a gas station and a movie theater being replaced by a mini-warehouse, a check cashing joint and a strip club respectively.

[Don Haddix]

That is normal to what happens.

Our problem is that being so close to Coweta, with their excessive building of everything, it will encourage them and they will bury us.

If you have driven on 54 to Newnan, recently, it is a jungle of commercial for sale and lease signs all the way over.

I can see it now, Fischers Crossing surrounded by high density housing, condo and apartment complexes. All based on feeding off of PTC.

We are paying for that kind of thinking in Clayton and Coweta. From increasing crime to people trying to enjoy our life style but at a lower cost of living.

Long term it will catch up and we will end up with major problems on our border along 54.

Our long term thinking has to start taking this into account now. And that does not mean build more commercial to get the shopping here instead of there.

Won't work and an area can only handle so much retail space. Coweta is already setting on over 30% vacancy, you see what is happening to Fayetteville and we are not far behind.