Historic Gateway/South Atlanta Street (Hwy 9)

The stretch of SR 9/South Atlanta Street that runs between SR 120 (Marietta Highway) and the bridge over the Chattahoochee River has been the City of Roswell's #1 priority for transportation investment for almost a decade.

Also known as the "reversible lanes" and the "Historic Gateway," the City of Roswell and the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) have been working for several years to fix dangerous conditions on this road, which is among the top corridors for crashes in the Atlanta region.

The approved concept of this road involves removing the reversible lanes and constructing a four-lane street that will accommodate all users.

The project will feature:

• Two permanent lanes in both directions
• Safe access for pedestrians and cyclists, including multi-use trails, sidewalks, and dedicated pedestrian crossings (find out more)

• Raised medians
• Planting strips for more than 200 trees to help restore and enhance the existing tree canopy (find out more)

The design of the Historic Gateway project was approved by City Council in 2012. All the work that has been conducted since 2012, including environmental studies and right-of-way acquisition, has been based on the approved design. Right-of-way acquisition by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) began in April 2018 and is currently ongoing (as of August 2022).

Any major changes to the project design would alter right-of-way acquisition and would cause significant delay (multiple years) and potentially jeopardize the project.

Small adjustments to the project within the footprint of the approved design that do not affect right-of-way acquisition may be considered.

For additional information about the project, please visit GDOT's project website here.

Public Meetings

Two public hearing open houses will be held in October, 2024, to allow the public to view the designs of the Historic Gateway Project, as well as review the Environmental Assessment and Mitigation Plan.

In-person
Oct. 8, 2024, 4-7 PM
St. Andrew Catholic Church, 675 Riverside Road, Roswell
There is no presentation for this meeting, so the public is invited to stop by at any time during the open house and speak with staff and view information.

Virtual Q&A
Oct. 10, 2024, 5-7 PM
Please click this link to listen to the audio recording of the Zoom meeting.

Please click here to leave comments on the project (GDOT's website), until Oct. 22.

Below you will find eight renderings designed to give residents a better understanding of what the project will look like when it is complete.

Roswell Transportation worked with the City's TSPLOST Program Management team (Atkins) to complete them.

Renderings were shared with our Mayor and Council in late September 2019.

Year	Milestone
2008	Project development restarted by Roswell Mayor and Council
2009	Consultants hired (firm was Parsons Brinkerhoff, acquired by WSP since then)
2010	Project Framework Agreement (PFA)—Signed by GDOT and Roswell—The PFA outlines expectations and tasks each party is responsible for leading up the project's delivery
2011	Public Meeting campaign (March 2011 – April 2012) 4 public meetings 14+ additional meetings with interested stakeholders
2012	Project won 2012 "Best Context Sensitive Design and Public Participation Award" by Georgia Partnership for Transportation Quality. City Council selected the project's Preferred Concept (August 29, 2012)
2013	Concept Report approved by GDOT (February 5, 2013). Concept has remained unchanged to present day (2020).
2014	Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) signed by Roswell, GDOT, and National Park Service
2015	Roswell applied for Federal Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Grant for Gateway Project construction—project was not selected by USDOT because it was many years away from starting construction Roswell requested $800k in Federal funds (for Design) from Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) Funds authorized in 2016
2016	Draft Environmental Assessment (EA) submitted to GDOT for approval City Council adds Gateway project to Fulton County’s TSPLOST project list / ballot in Spring 2016 Public Meetings Fall 2016 3 Public Meetings (TSPLOST) 30 Public Engagement meetings held with Civic Groups, HOA's, and stakeholders for TSPLOST Voters passed TSPLOST (November 2016)
2017	PFPR (Preliminary Field Plan Review) Meeting—held December 11, 2017. Achieving a PFPR meeting is a Major Milestone in the design process as preliminary engineering completes.
2018	National Park Service Commitment Letters signed by City and GDOT GDOT Authorized Right-of-Way funding and activities (Spring 2018) 1 Public Information Open House (PIOH) held at Roswell City Hall (December 2018)
2019	City Council approved requesting $10m in Federal funds (amount includes local matching requirement) from Atlanta Regional Commission
2020	GDOT submitted BUILD grant application in May for Federal funds for project construction. Project was not selected for funding by USDOT.

Committee Meetings

• March 30, 2011
• July 27, 2011
• November 28, 2012
• December 19, 2012
• January 30, 2013
• May 29, 2013
• March 26, 2014
• July 30, 2014
• February 25, 2015
• August 26, 2015
• April 27, 2016
• March 29, 2017
• November 29, 2017
• January 24, 2018
• February 28, 2018
• October 24, 2018
• November 28, 2018
• March 27, 2019
• June 26, 2019
• August 28, 2019
• May 27, 2020

• Transportation Advisory Committee Meeting (June 16, 2022): Staff Presentation

Work Sessions

• January 9, 2012*
• July 23, 2012*
• March 10, 2020

*Minutes were not recorded for work sessions prior to 2017.

City Council Meetings

• March 28, 2011
• October 10, 2011
• August 13, 2012
• February 11, 2013
• April 29, 2013
• January 13, 2014
• January 27, 2014
• May 12, 2014
• March 9, 2015
• May 11, 2015
• January 11, 2016
• June 1, 2016
• July 11, 2016
• April 10, 2017
• May 8, 2017
• May 22, 2017
• February 12, 2018
• March 12, 2018
• April 8, 2019
• July 8, 2019
• August 26, 2019
• September 23, 2019
• April 13, 2020
• June 8, 2020

As a state road, this project is being overseen by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). GDOT is responsible for acquiring all right-of-way and easements for the project and will be responsible for construction.

The City of Roswell is working in partnership with GDOT on the project and is responsible for its engineering phase, as well as enhancements—such as improved lighting and connections to the National Park Service—which are funded through the City's T-SPLOST (Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax). Find out more about T-SPLOST.

Once GDOT finishes right-of-way (ROW) acquisition and establishes construction funding, construction of the project will begin. The project is expected to take 24-36 months to build.

Safety

This corridor has traditionally been among the top corridors for crashes in the region and has had double the GDOT statewide average for crashes. According to data from 2015 to 2018, the corridor experienced 698 crashes (23 head-on collisions), 181 injuries, and one fatality. Over a 20 year period, it has been the site of multiple fatalities. And based on data from 2007 to 2009, this corridor experienced a 247% higher crash rate and a 208% higher injury rate than statewide average.

The reversible display system is obsolete and an ongoing maintenance challenge. The system sometimes "goes dark" for hours at a time, creating a safety hazard and needing extensive repair work.

Operational Improvements

This corridor currently is currently operating at a Level-of-Service (LOS) Rating "F" (national rating scale A-F).

The commute operates poorly due to:

• Extensive queuing
• Lack of turn lanes
• Stopped buses

To address these problems, the new project will include:

• The removal of the reversible lanes.
• A grade-separated intersection at Riverside/Azalea and SR9 with a new traffic signal at a T-intersection on SR9 and a roundabout on Riverside.
• A design that will facilitate safer traffic flow.

Bike/Pedestrian Facilities

The existing corridor has poor bike and pedestrian facilities. Much of the infrastructure in public ROW is sub-standard including pieces of narrow sidewalk with utility poles in the middle, and there is no pedestrian crossing opportunity.

Area residents have been asking for pedestrian accommodation along and across SR 9 for decades. There are no crossing opportunities today between the MARTA bus stops and businesses/residents. The project as being designed provides pedestrian features along both sides of the corridor with multiple crossing opportunities.

The Historic Gateway project incorporates improved facilities for both:

• New multi-use paths and sidewalks.
• New trails into the National Park (Vickery Creek Unit)
• Five crosswalks across Highway 9/South Atlanta Street
• This project designed for all users, regardless of whether they are travelling as drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists, or public transportation riders.

The map below illustrates how the Historic Gateway project, the Chattahoochee Bike/Pedestrian Bridge, the existing Riverwalk trail system, and the National Park System hiking trails will all connect seamlessly once the Historic Gateway project is complete.

Trees

The vision for this project is to have a tree-lined boulevard between the two traffic-calming roundabouts, creating the feel of a linear park, and providing a physical and aesthetic buffer for pedestrians on sidewalks.

The road includes raised medians and planting strips that will include more than 200 large-caliber urban canopy trees.

Narrow Lanes

The design incorporates 11-foot travel lanes, which is as narrow as is permitted by GDOT for this project. Narrow lanes promote slower speeds (as compared to wider lanes) while still providing enough of a buffer to accommodate comfortable driving and decrease the potential for side-swipe collisions.

The narrow footprint of the road minimizes impacts within the Historic District along the entire corridor and, along with the inclusion of the tree-lined boulevard design, preserves the aesthetic impact of this historically narrow corridor.

The proposed project is the narrowest footprint that GDOT will support while still achieving the city's goals of a tree-lined corridor and a consistent bicycle/pedestrian connection from the square to the river.

Community Involvement

Since the start of this project, the City of Roswell has tried to balance the needs of all of stakeholders along the corridor while still accommodating the purpose of the project.

Some highlights of community outreach include:

• The creation of a Citizens Advisory Group, which met multiple times in 2011-2012 to help create the current concept. This group included residents, business owners and other stakeholders from Roswell's Historic District.
• 18 public information and community outreach meetings held 2011-2012.
• The Historic Gateway project was also presented during the T-SPLOST community education campaign in 2016, during which more than 30 staff presentations were given to the community.
• Multiple site visits and stakeholder meetings as requested.
• A History Gateway Public Information Open House to recap and review the project to-date in January 2019.
• Two Public Hearing Open Houses were held in 2024. An in-person meeting was Oct. 8 and a virtual Q&A was held Oct. 10, 2024.

Roundabouts

Multi-lane roundabouts have been included in the project to allow safe access to all commercial properties and allow the overall footprint of the road to be as narrow as possible.

The multi-lane roundabouts also include crosswalks to allow pedestrians to move safely from one side of SR 9 to the other, which is not present in the road's current condition.

The Federal Highway Administration has concluded after many years of research that "roundabouts reduce the types of crashes where people are seriously hurt or killed by 78-82 percent when compared to conventional stop-controlled and signalized intersections."

These safety benefits are intrinsic to the roundabout's basic design that reduces the number and severity of conflict points, and forces vehicles to interact with each other at slower speeds under a yield or merge condition.

Higher-speed right-angle collisions, one of the most potentially serious types of collisions, are almost entirely eliminated with a roundabout. Furthermore, roundabouts are an excellent choice to complement other transportation objectives, including multimodal mobility, context sensitivity, and corridor access management.

The primary reasons for the two roundabouts are crash reduction, speed control, and their ability to provide safe pedestrian crossings from one side of SR 9 to the other. If either roundabout were to be removed, the footprint of the proposed road would be increased at least 5-10' on each side of the road in order to provide turn lanes into the commercial areas. The roundabout pair narrows the footprint of the road, calms the traffic down and provides safe pedestrian crossing options.