Loganville council approves DOT partnership for road safety

By Jim Thompson – The Walton Tribune

After several years of kicking the idea around, the Loganville City Council voted 5-1 at their Sept. 10 meeting to more formally engage with the Georgia Department of Transportation regarding potential safety improvements along U.S. Highway 78, a major traffic artery through the heart of the city.

In a discussion shepherded largely by Councilman Bill DuVall, the civil and structural engineer who chairs the council’s Transportation and Public Utilities committees, the council took its first serious steps in the wake of its most recent discussion of the Highway 78 corridor. In a broad first step toward planning safety improvements to the corridor, the council set some wide parameters for improvements to the route between Logan Drive and C.S. Floyd Road.

Lined on both sides by fast-food and other restaurants, grocery stores, big-box retailers and a host of other businesses, that section of the highway has become increasingly busy, problematic and dangerous over the years, particularly as motorists negotiate left turns at those locations that require crossing multiple lanes of traffic. In addition to the danger of crossing multiple lanes of the busy route, left turn movements can back up traffic at businesses as motorists wait to make those turns.

Because U.S. 78 is also a state route, its path through Loganville has, according to DuVall, been on a GDOT list of potential projects, but the city’s lack of action regarding the highway could jeopardize that status.

“If we’re not moving forward with it, they’re going to take it off the list,” DuVall told Mayor Branden Whitfield and the city council.

One way the city might demonstrate an interest is by offering to fund some preliminary engineering studies of potential solutions to the route’s problems, DuVall said. From there, he added, GDOT could allocate state funding to actual construction of improvements to the section of U.S. 78 between Logan Drive and C.S. Floyd Road.

In broad terms, DuVall suggested that the city could pitch to DOT some suggested improvements to the problem area. Among those suggested improvements, based on council discussion, could be the installation of a foot-high concrete median strip which would make left turns onto U.S. 78 impossible. Other potential improvements, DuVall suggested, could include installation of left-turn lanes at intervals between Logan Drive and C.S. Floyd Road, along with the installation of a traffic light at the Publix grocery-anchored shopping center. Modifications to the Publix parking lot and other business parking lots along that section of the corridor could make it easy for motorists to access the traffic signal from that side of the road to safely make left turns.

In fact, according to DuVall, a GDOT look at the corridor in 2019 produced the suggestion for installation of a raised concrete median as an improvement for the route.

The proposal to more formally engage with GDOT got some criticism from Councilwoman Melanie Long, who wondered whether the state agency might force the city into accepting a solution for the route that was unacceptable to city officials and residents. But according to DuVall, any partnership in working on the route would require the signing of a memorandum of understanding between GDOT and the city.

Loganville Police Chief Dick Lowry told the mayor and city council Thursday that he was supportive of boosting safety on the U.S. 78 corridor. “If you reduce the number of left turns coming out on that corridor, it’s going to reduce accidents,” Lowry said.

Lowry went on to acknowledge that installing a foot-high concrete median could delay emergency response times along and around the section of U.S. 78 where they would be installed. But, he quickly added, “We’re going to get there (to an emergency scene).”

Interestingly, Councilman Wes Johnson, a captain with Walton County Fire and Rescue, was the lone vote against the city engaging with GDOT over addressing issues on U.S. 78 in Loganville.

In a brief interview after the council meeting, Johnson expressed some concern that installing an additional traffic light and a concrete median would unnecessarily hinder emergency traffic. During the council meeting, Johnson pointed to residential growth in Gwinnett County and the traffic it will bring — Loganville straddles the Gwinnett County-Walton County line — as a reason not to impede traffic further with an additional stoplight on U.S. 78.

Prior to the council vote, DuVall called the U.S. 78 initiative “a pretty simple project,” but he cautioned that it will take some time to get it done. Once any sort of project proposal is in place, DuVall said, it could take as long as two years before any construction begins.