Local & State Headlines

Officials look for road project support

• Short-term improvements will ease traffic on Nottingham Way until a Westover Boulevard extension is completed, a traffic planner says.

Susan McCord

ALBANY — Traffic on north Albany’s Nottingham Way experienced a dramatic snarl when the city’s only Wal-Mart relocated for the third time to Ledo Road in Lee County, Walter House, a traffic planner for the City of Albany detailed to members of a civic group recently.

Originally sited on Old Dawson Road, Wal-Mart moved from its previous location on Dawson Road beside Publix to its current home on the 2800 block of Ledo Road, across the county line in Lee County, in 2001, House said.

“In 2001, when Wal-Mart moved from that developed area (Dawson Road) over to Ledo Road, where it was an undeveloped area — also the store was a superstore — it caught us pretty much by surprise,” he said, “creating a sudden and dramatic change in traffic patterns along Nottingham and Ledo Road.”

With state help, Lee County widened Ledo Road to three lanes from U.S. 19 to Nottingham, and to five lanes from Nottingham further west, House said.

Except during the holiday shopping season, traffic congestion on the Nottingham didn’t get particularly bad until 2005, when “development really began to take off out there,” he said.

In January, 2006, the City of Albany approved a $69,900 Nottingham Way corridor study, with federal and state aid.

“That’s where this project was born,” House said.

The study concluded that Nottingham could not be made wide enough to handle the traffic expected to use it, he said.

“Even if they did widen Nottingham,” House said, “it would have to be 6-8 lanes and the right of ways would be prohibitive for us to do that.”

Instead, the study recommended finding another point in the vicinity of Nottingham by which traffic could cross Liberty Expressway, he said.

Two possible scenarios were examined — the extension of Westover Boulevard north, or the extension of Archwood Drive, and traffic volume projections for the year 2030 were used, to determine “which alternative would reduce the most traffic along the Nottingham corridor,” House said.

The extension of Westover north drew more traffic away from Nottingham than Archwood, he said.

With a very short distance in which to cross Liberty Expressway, planners determined the extension should go under, instead of over, the expressway, House said.

Costs of the project include $300,000 for construction of 1,200 feet of roadway, $400,000 for installation of two traffic light interchanges and $9 million to bridge Liberty over the extension, which currently terminates at Ledo Road, he said.

The city has several short- term plans in place to ease congestion on Nottingham, including a left-turn lane and thruway at Ledo Road and a traffic light at the 16-theater complex.

The second phase of short- term improvements includes an eastbound thruway on Westover at Nottingham, House said.

One of a large group of Dougherty Rotary Club members to attend the election day meeting asked if Lee County “was going to pay half.”

Lee has agreed to assist with funding, House said, particularly at the new traffic light at Westover and Ledo Road.

Ledo Road’s southern margin forms the Dougherty-Lee county line, and the Lee Board of Commissioners recently agreed to join Albany and Dougherty officials in signing a letter of support for the project.

The project will take 7-10 years to complete “unless we get support,” House said.

One Albany official at the meeting said commercial growth in Lee and Dougherty counties made the project one “that we have to have.”

As Wal-Mart, Chili’s, IHOP, Kohl’s, Carmike Wynnsong theaters and other businesses have sprung up, the area has become “a hub of retail,” Albany-Dougherty Economic Development Commission President and Executive Director Bobby McKinney said.

But Albany can’t complete the project by itself, and will need state and federal assistance, as well as help from neighboring Lee County, McKinney said.

“We’re joined at the hip,” he said.

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