It won’t start until the Monday after Thanksgiving, but plenty of Peachtree City residents will be thankful it is finally underway.

Construction is set to begin Nov. 30 on the path approaches to the cart path bridge over the CSX railroad tracks on Ga. Highway 54 West. The project, delayed more than three years after the bridge’s completion, is expected to be complete by the first week in February, City Manager Bernie McMullen told the City Council Thursday night.

The city received the official “notice to proceed” from the Georgia Department of Transportation Thursday, McMullen said.

Without the path connections, the bridge has been unusable for three-plus years. The bridge will join with two cart path tunnels under the highway to allow golf carts, pedestrians and other users to navigate to either side of the highway.

The bridge and tunnels were completed when the Hwy. 54 was completed in September 2006. Once the paths are complete, the system will link the Marketplace and The Avenue shopping centers along with an entry path to the McIntosh VIllage shopping center into the Best Buy parking lot.

With the bridge unusable, many golf cart drivers have resorted to crossing the highway at a stoplight.

The project has taken so long to complete that several members of council and staff have taken to calling it “the bridge to nowhere.” The DOT scheduled the path connections as a separate project, and it got stuck in DOT bureaucracy for some time. At one point, DOT was unsure if it had funding to complete the project and at another, the city had a longer than expected negotiation time with landowners for easements.

But all that is likely to be forgotten once residents start to see progress on the project.

The contractor on the project is Lewallen Construction Company Inc. of Marietta. Of the total $157.490 cost, the city has to chip in $31,498 as its 20 percent matching grant.