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Traffic summit next week By J.FRANK
LYNCH and JOHN
THOMPSON
Way back yonder before cell phones and the Internet, before DVDs and wars played out live on TV, it took a good 40 minutes or more to get from the heart of Peachtree City to the airport. Downtown? Make it an hour, in good weather and little traffic. Back then, Ga. Highway 74, the "gateway" to Peachtree City, was a meandering two-lane blacktop winding its way past cow pastures and old cotton fields. You had to slow to 35 miles per hour inside the Tyrone town limits, past the Masonic Lodge, the elementary school, the Shamrock Cafe. In the late 1980s, the highway lords smiled upon western Fayette County, launching a project to four-lane the road the 12 miles from Hwy. 54 to I-85, and bypassing the heart of Tyrone altogether. Thanks to that fast and direct link to the airport and downtown Atlanta, Peachtree City boomed in the 1990s. But except for some steady residential growth, Tyrone remained mostly unchanged. And on the north end of the route, where it intersects with the freeway, the city of Fairburn was stuck in a permanent no-growth rut. Today, as Peachtree City nears buildout, development along the rest of Hwy. 74 is taking off at lightning speed. In Tyrone, the town's first large-scale shopping center anchored by a Publix supermarket is rising from the red clay, and in Fairburn, fast-food outlets, apartment complexes and gas stations are sprouting like wisteria at the I-85 intersection. The growth isn't all on the north end of town, either. South of Peachtree City, around the Starr's Mill school complex, the county has rezoned land for shops and offices, though construction has been delayed. The future of the corridor concerns Peachtree City Mayor Steve Brown, who recognizes that Fayette County's economic well-being depends on easy access to the airport and the interstates. The highway bisects the city's industrial park, home to companies like Cooper Lighting that cite the convenience of Hwy. 74 as top reasons to locate here. But Brown also realizes he has little influence on what becomes of the road north and south of the Peachtree City limits. So he's organized a meeting of leaders from each of the jurisdictions theroad touches to begin talks on how best to manage development and maintain traffic flow. "It may be much ado about nothing," Brown said. "But I'm trying to at least get us to work out an agreement before it's too late on how the road should be developed, what the alternatives are." Brown recognizes that such cross-jurisdictional highway talks are usually handled by the Atlanta Regional Commission, but he said that planning agency is ineffective when it comes to a local traffic situation. "They've proven that 10 counties can't work together to solve a problem on the local level like this," he said. "What does some official in Gwinnett or Cherokee really know about a highway in Peachtree City?" The first meeting on Hwy. 74 will be this Tuesday at 5 p.m. at City Hall in Peachtree City. Representatives from Fulton County, Fairburn, Tyrone and Senoia have agreed to attend. Fayette County was the only government to decline the invitation, Brown said. In a letter to Brown, Fayette County Commission Chairman Greg Dunn said the county was very concerned with the Hwy. 74 corridor. "Our concern, in fact, moved us to contract with URS Corporation more than a year ago to perform a comprehensive update to the entire county's transportation plan," Dunn said. Dunn expects to get the consultant's recommendations back in the near future and will then ask the cities for input. "While we appeciate being invited to meet with you about our traffic woes, we don't believe that our participation in studying the issue is appropriate at this time," Dunn said. "I really don't have any ideas to put forth," the mayor said. "This first meeting will be just a meet-and-greet, an opportunity to get to know the players and air some of the concerns." The meeting is open to the public. For more information, call the mayor's office at City Hall, 770-487-7657. Senoia city administrator Murray McAfee will be at the meeting and plans to bring up the issue of a desperately needed traffic light at the Hwy. 74 and Rockaway Road intersection. "It's just real simple. We need a light there," he said. McAfee is coming to the meeting armed with a recently completed traffic study from Street Smarts, which outlines the need for a light now. McAfee has been working with Peachtree City officials to fund a light at the intersection. DOT officials have said it will cost $330,000, but that includes four-laning Rockaway and including turning lanes. "It's just ridiculous to think that Peachtree City should pay that much for that intersection," he said. Instead, McAfee favors a simple $60,000 traffic light that Senoia and Peachtree City officials could work to fund jointly. McAfee thought the situation might have been resolved a few months ago when a developer approached Peachtree City about rezoning the property. In addition to building a subdivision, the developer had planned to reroute Rockaway to align with the traffic light at the Publix shopping center on Hwy.74. But the Peachtree City Council unanimously turned down the request. McAfee has learned the issue will be discussed again by the council in the next month. Officials at Tuesday's meeting will also discuss other issues surrounding the busy highway and try to find a solution to keep from having the highway becoming gridlocked.
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