Roundabout eyed for busy crossroad

By Charles Oliver
Dalton Daily Citizen

March 12, 2009 11:27 pm

— Donna Lee Davis has seen several accidents at the intersection of College Drive and Dug Gap Battle Road.
“It’s not an easy intersection to get out of,” said Davis, Dalton State College’s assistant director of student activities. “You have to look to your left not only for oncoming traffic but to make sure no one is turning off the interstate, and you have to make sure no one is turning left onto College Drive and no one is turning out of Red Lobster. There are so many places to look before you turn left.”
Daniel Sanchez, a DSC senior, agrees.
“It gets pretty hectic, especially when we are all leaving or going to lunch,” he said. “Traffic can get backed up (on College Drive) to the hotels.”
The intersection is within a few yards of the I-75 offramp and handles college traffic as well as traffic to the Northwest Georgia Trade and Convention Center and several motels and restaurants.
Now, Whitfield County officials are looking at putting in a roundabout, or traffic circle, at the intersection to ease congestion and improve safety.
Whitfield County officials listed the intersection for improvements funded by the Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (SPLOST) approved by voters in 2007. The county originally planned to move the intersection farther west, away from the I-75 offramp, and have it line up with West Bridge Road, which leads to Red Lobster.
“But the topography and the Chamber of Commerce building being located there made it very, very expensive,” Whitfield County engineer Kent Benson said. “So the option that we are looking at, and that the Georgia Department of Transportation has independently looked at, is a roundabout.”
Benson said both GDOT and local engineers believe the intersection is too close to the I-75 offramp to put a traffic signal there. Moving the intersection could cost about $2.5 million, while a roundabout would probably cost about $1 million, he said.
Benson said work on the intersection has been hampered because it is on federal property in the I-75 right of way.
“The reason the project hasn’t started is that we needed federal permission to work in their right of way,” he said.
Benson said they finally got that permission in February.
“They said that looked like the best option, and we got their permission to work directly with the state as far as working on the right of way,” he said.
The next step, he says, is to create a preliminary design and get approval for it from the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT).
“They want to see that before they give their final permission to us to use the federal right of way,” he said.
Benson said a request for bids on that design went out Wednesday. He said a completed preliminary design should be ready by mid-summer and a final design by late fall.
“I don’t expect construction will begin in 2009. It probably won’t start until 2010,” Benson said.
The construction should take no more than six months, he says.
“We’ll have to do construction on one stage of (the project) and allow traffic to flow on the other side,” he said. “During daylight hours, there will have to be a person or persons out there controlling traffic flow.”
Roundabouts aren’t very common in Georgia. Will drivers know how to handle them?
“The people who learn the quickest are these college kids, and they are the majority who use it. They’ll adapt pretty quickly,” said Dalton public works director Benny Dunn. “But there will be a learning curve.”
Local drivers might want to get used to driving in roundabouts. Benson said Gerald Ross, GDOT’s chief engineer and current interim commissioner, is a big advocate of roundabouts.
“He has proposed a change in their intersection approval process that designers must show a roundabout will not work before they approve a new signal light,” Benson said. “That hasn’t started yet. But it is on the way, so you’ll see more and more of them.”

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