Dooly County Residents Offer Input on Replacing 2 Bridges

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT) – Some Dooly County citizens are not happy about replacing two bridges over Turkey Creek.

The Georgia Department of Transportation plans to replace two bridges along State Route 230 in Dooly County.

One is about 4.5 miles west of Vienna and the other is about 10 miles north of that, near Unadilla.

Tuesday night, citizens met with GDOT representatives about the project.

“The biggest concern from locals was the length of the detours,” says Sue Anne Decker, project manager for the south bridge project.

“Both bridges, either north or south on 230, it’s going to require 24-34 mile detours, and so that is a big concern for the residents that live along that route,” says GDOT’s District 3 Director of Communications, Kimberly Larson.

Some residents don’t like the sound of that.

“My brother lives probably 100 yards beyond the bridge there, and every single day, he crosses that bridge,” says Jacobs.  “Now, he’s going to have to take at least 25, 30, 40 minutes to drive around every single day.  To me, that’s a problem.”

Jacobs suggested adding temporary bridges at both sides to avoid long detours but GDOT says those could cost upwards of a million dollars or more, because since it is a state route, the temporary bridges would have to support all types of traffic.

“It’s expensive to build an on-site bridge that we just tear out,” says Decker.  “And we’ve had complaints in the past that it was misuse of taxpayer money since the bridges are extremely expensive.”

Temporary bridges are still a possibility, but all those details must still be worked out.  GDOT expects this project to get underway in 2016.

GDOT will continue to hear feedback from the public through February 1st.  To offer comments, write to:

Glenn Bowman
State Environmental Administrator — Georgia DOT
600 West Peachtree Street, 16th Floor
Atlanta, Georgia 30308

All comments will be considered in the development of the final project design but must be received by February 1st.

You can also offer your thoughts online and view the plans on the GDOT website.

To view the plans, choose “Information Center” then “Public Outreach” and select the project’s county and choose “Go.”  As list of active DOT projects in that county will appear. Select the project to view.