The solution to some of Fayetteville’s current and future downtown traffic congestion might be found where two X’s mark the spot.

Council members April 19 decided to pursue a proposal that would have the traffic flow along Ga. Highway 54 crisscross on the east and west sides of downtown at the turnaround areas where Hwy. 54 splits into Stonewall Avenue and Lanier Avenue, essentially reversing the current flow of traffic on the two streets.

Thus, the current eastbound lanes would become westbound, and the current westbound lanes would become eastbound.

Current traffic count data by consultant Kimley-Horn & Associates showed approximately 70,000 vehicles crossing the downtown Fayetteville intersections of Hwy. 54 and Ga. highways 85 and 92 each day.

Traffic counts along Hwy. 54 showed 32,549 vehicles per day traveling east-west with 37,935 vehicles traveling north-south on Hwy. 85 and Hwy. 92.

If that is not bad enough, at least in terms of traffic congestion, Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) projects Fayette County’s population to increase by approximately 2.5 percent annually through 2030, resulting in a population of more than 187,000, nearly double what it is today.

And that does not count the out-of-county traffic making its way through Fayette County and Fayetteville each day.

With that in mind the city tasked Kimley-Horn with coming up with possible alternatives to help alleviate future congestion on the downtown old courthouse square.

Two of the alternatives called for installing additional lanes that would turn Hwy. 85 into a seven-lane or eight-lane roadway as it passed through the downtown area. Those alternatives were rejected by the council.

The council’s consensus was Alternative C. The plan would reverse the current east-west directional flow of Lanier and the west-east directional flow of Stonewall.

Traffic lights would be installed on Hwy. 54 on the east and west sides of the downtown area where the road currently splits at the turnarounds.

“It reverses the direction, so that what goes westbound would go eastbound, and vice versa,” said Fayetteville City Engineer Don Easterbrook. “The traffic would cross where the turnarounds are now on both sides of downtown. There would be traffic lights at each of those locations. It’s a simple traffic phasing plan at the traffic lights because there are only those two phases. There would be no left turns to worry about that would bog down traffic.”

One of the benefits of reconfiguring the traffic flow, Easterbrook said, is that the plan would neutralize the issues with left turns that add to the daily traffic backlog in the heart of downtown.

Another incentive for Alternative C is that preliminary indications are that additional lanes might not have to be added to put the plan in place, he said.

Other plan components call for installation of a traffic light at Hwy. 85 and Lafayette Avenue and a landscaped median on Hwy. 85 between Stonewall and Lanier.

“Traffic congestion impacts the downtown, the commuters, the people that live here and the downtown businesses. A part of what happens is that you reach the point where the road won’t carry any more traffic but the rush hour lasts longer,” Easterbrook said. “We’ve got an idea and a concept of where we want to go. We know that we want to try to reverse the current one-way flow of Stonewall and Lanier. The next step is to start working out the details of the design and begin discussions with Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT), and ARC if necessary, for approval of the project, for financing and programming it into both of their schedules. And we need to get with the county as well. This is not a done deal because others have to approve it, but it is the direction we would like to go.”

The Kimley-Horn study looked at traffic conditions over a 20-year time frame, using data from sources such as U.S. Census, historical GDOT traffic counts, ARC, historical Fayette County school enrollment and the Fayetteville Livable Centers Initiative.