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More road dollars for new city

The city of Sandy Springs plans to spend millions of dollars over the next few years fixing transportation problems it says were neglected by Fulton County during the area's decades-long fight for incorporation.
/ Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

The city of Sandy Springs plans to spend millions of dollars over the next few years fixing transportation problems it says were neglected by Fulton County during the area's decades-long fight for incorporation.

Sandy Springs, which won its independence from the county in 2005, boasts four of metro Atlanta's 15 Fortune 500 companies and average household incomes well above $100,000.

It also suffers from some of the region's worst surface-street traffic -- Roswell Road being the prime example -- exacerbated by interchanges with perimeter highway Interstate 285 and major north-south corridor Georgia 400.

The city is the second-largest in metro Atlanta, with an estimated 87,000 residents and 19,000 more expected by 2025. But for years, those residents had little say in how the county used the revenue it collected from them. Fulton has admitted spending millions of Sandy Springs tax dollars on poorer residents in the southern part of the county.

"It's understandable that people are concerned about transportation in key arteries," said Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts. "They have been neglected."

Fixing Sandy Springs' snarled traffic was one of the main reasons residents pushed so hard for cityhood. Now that the city has control over local tax revenue, it is working on everything from filling potholes to allocating more money to leverage state and federal funds for major intersection improvements.

Sandy Springs recently began work on its first-ever comprehensive transportation plan, which may forecast projects as far out as 2030 to mesh with the long-term plans of the Atlanta Regional Commission, the pass-through agency for many federal transportation dollars. The report is due out in fall 2007.

The city won't know how much funding will be available for sizable capital projects until then, when it will have a full year of revenue under its belt. But Mayor Eva Galambos said the figure should be significantly higher than the roughly $3 million spent annually under county rule.

"Fulton County spent almost nothing on us," Galambos said. "Now we have the opportunity to make some real improvements."

The county's total transportation budget is only about $10 million annually, said Public Works Director Angela Parker. She said the county pitched in on several intersection improvements and lane-widening projects in recent years but was often hamstrung by the high cost of right of way in Sandy Springs, where land is pricey.

"I know there's the perception that the public works department didn't pay attention to Sandy Springs," Parker said, "but we provided the same level of service to all areas of the county."

The budget pales beside the tens of millions spent in other metro counties like Cobb and Gwinnett, but those jurisdictions don't use their penny sales tax for transportation to fund MARTA, as Fulton does. Parker said the county spends up to $200 million a year financing the beleaguered transit authority, money that could otherwise be spent on roads.

In the short term, Sandy Springs is ramping up its maintenance efforts on the more than 300 miles of roads for which it is responsible. It started by filling dozens of potholes and surveying every road to determine its physical condition and level of congestion.

Many streets failed to make the grade, said Transportation Planning Manager Jon Drysdale, with Abernathy and Roswell roads among the top offenders in terms of traffic flow (although the Georgia Department of Transportation is primarily responsible for Roswell).

Then there's the repaving.

"Some of our streets are 30 to 40 years old and have never been repaved," said Drysdale, who works at City Hall for Lowe Engineers, a subcontractor to CH2M Hill Cos., the private corporation that runs most city operations. "It would take about $50 million in today's dollars to repave everything."

Parker said most of the roads in dire need of resurfacing are not in Sandy Springs but in South Fulton, where construction equipment used in the residential boom has torn them up.

In addition, Drysdale said the city wants to fix nearly two dozen aging bridges from which the county banned heavy truck traffic, rather than spend the money to repair them. The city has also repaired the traffic lights at its 116 signalized intersections and is working with GDOT to synchronize them for the first time.

Fulton County did put up some matching funds for transportation projects in the area before its incorporation, many of which are going forward. These include the widening of Abernathy, a bridge for Perimeter Center Parkway over I-285, various intersection improvements, and new sidewalks, streetscapes, bicycle lanes or pedestrian enhancements along Hammond Drive and Roswell and Peachtree-Dunwoody roads.

In the long term, Sandy Springs has identified close to 50 stretches of road in desperate need of more through lanes, turn lanes and other modifications. Galambos would like to see a tunnel for Sandy Springs Circle under I-285, for example, and new entry ramps to Ga. 400 from Hammond Drive.

Even with more money available to pursue matching state and federal funds with the ARC, GDOT and the Perimeter Community Improvement Districts, Sandy Springs -- like all other city and county governments in a region strapped for transportation dollars -- will still have to pick and choose, said City Councilman Rusty Paul.

"We're trying to retrofit transportation solutions across a fully developed community, and it's difficult and costly," Paul said. "We'd like to do everything, but we'll have to prioritize."

Paying for pavement

Sandy Springs plans to spend far more on transportation than the $3 million Fulton County invested annually when it ran the show. Current or potential improvements include:

  • Repaving roads (potential cost: $50 million)
  • Filling dozens of potholes
  • Rebuilding old bridges
  • Synchronizing traffic lights
  • Adding through lanes, turn lanes and bike lanes
  • Adding sidewalks and improving streetscapes