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[Tom958]

I expect at the time an in-place upgrade or thereabouts would have been fairly viable. The terrain is also a bit more amenable to a new location freeway than the current I-75 corridor. It'd be nice to have closer access to Peachtree City and Fayetteville from I-75 too.

That was more or less my argument, though I suspect the equation was decisively altered by the construction of the raceway.

Peachtree City didn't exist then (you knew that, right?) and Fayetteville wasn't very big. Beyond that, today's I-75 is more evenly spaced between I-85 and I-20 than US 41 was, and the section between Stockbridge and Forest Park provided a very useful new corridor. Actually, that was a more compelling reason to move I-75 than the raceway was, and one that wasn't operative for I-20.

As far as the four-laning of 41 south of Griffin, along with the not-terribly-useful-these-days Griffin bypass, I expect it was a political consolation prize for Barnesville not getting I-75. You can also sorta-kinda argue that 41 was carrying both the traffic for 41 and 341 north of Barnesville, and the old alignment is not very good.

To me, it would almost be easier to understand if they'd built that section before starting on the rerouted I-75 north of Forsyth. Once they started that, though, IMO it should've been completed before a reliever that wouldn't have been needed for more than three years or so. After all, traffic straight from Macon to Atlanta had the option of taking US 23 instead of US 41 if Barnesville-Griffin was really that bad, especially if they figured out that it was better to use GA 87 before US 23 was routed there.

I'm actually a fan of the Griffin bypass because as a freeway it'll be forever free of the scourge of traffic lights. I guess it'd be nice if the rest of US 41 into Atlanta was as well, but IMO not at the cost of having I-75 in its current, superior location.

[Tom958]

I drove to Huntsville and back for work yesterday, and there are two things I wanted to note:

First, on GA 140 between Adairsville and US 27, a very high proportion of the new eastbound roadway is striped and seemingly ready for traffic, with additional sections nearly as far along. However,  one quarter-mile section about two miles west of US 41 still looks so chaotic that I can't really even tell what the finished product will be like. In particular, the barrier-faced retaining wall in this Streetview image (it was too dark for photos, and the scene snuck up on me) is very much lower than the new eastbound roadway upon which all traffic now flows. In fact, throughout the project, there seems to be more difference in elevation between the two roadways and variations in median width than GDOT has typically been tolerating, which I like.


Second, the last half mile or so of the climbing lane on US 27 headed southward out of Summerville has been striped away, seemingly greatly reducing the utility of the lane. Here's the former beginning of the lane, with the old striping still slightly visible. Weirdly, instead of using the extra width to provide a turn lane or other buffer between opposing directions of traffic, the freed-up width is in the form of a striped-away right shoulder lane on the northbound side. I can't imagine why they did this.

There's a place on southbound GA 48 where a passing lane had been shortened well before the hillcrest, but at that location, there were several driveways plus a more-important climbing lane meeting it from the opposite direction that may have led to safety problems. I don't see anything like that on that part of US 27. If the idea on US 27 was to separate the two head-on climbing lanes there, I would think that it'd be better to truncate the northbound one instead so as to slow traffic entering that steep downgrade rather than to impede southbound trucks that may already be struggling to maintain speed on the upgrade. But, hey, what do I know?

[roadman65]

What’s up with the only two lane Argyle Bypass on US 8 & GA 38?
https://goo.gl/maps/wgVtnJwetRZ9f94n7

Doesn’t make sense to upgrade a corridor to four lanes and create another two lane segment along its path including a grass median.

[lordsutch]

What’s up with the only two lane Argyle Bypass on US 8 & GA 38?
https://goo.gl/maps/wgVtnJwetRZ9f94n7

Doesn’t make sense to upgrade a corridor to four lanes and create another two lane segment along its path including a grass median.

My guess is the traffic volumes didn't really justify 4 lanes there. It's also signed at 45 mph.

It's goofy but given the choice between that and GDOT's usual M.O. on GRIP corridors of putting a flush median section straight through town with some gratuitous traffic signals (usually dropping to 35 mph or less), I'll choose the bypass.

[Tom958]

What’s up with the only two lane Argyle Bypass on US 8 & GA 38?
https://goo.gl/maps/wgVtnJwetRZ9f94n7

Doesn’t make sense to upgrade a corridor to four lanes and create another two lane segment along its path including a grass median.

My guess is the traffic volumes didn't really justify 4 lanes there. It's also signed at 45 mph.

It's goofy but given the choice between that and GDOT's usual M.O. on GRIP corridors of putting a flush median section straight through town with some gratuitous traffic signals (usually dropping to 35 mph or less), I'll choose the bypass.

Maybe GDOT really, really wanted to use roundabouts for traffic control there but didn't want two-lane roundabouts.