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What You Need
to Know about the Northern Arc
Editorial Commentaryby
Emily Lemcke
Emily Lemcke is the Cherokee County
Commission Chair.
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20. So, at best, the
Arc would be used for only part of the Cherokee trip length.
Claim #3: Highway 20 cannot be improved
to handle current and future traffic safely.
Response: GDOT considered widening
Highway 20 to 4 lanes. It did NOT consider reconstructing it as a limited
access facility with parallel service roads, allowing free-flowing traffic.
The topographic challenges and development relocations to reconstruct
Highway 20 should be no greater than those envisioned for the construction
of the Arc. Viable alternatives like reconstructing Highway 20 or expansion
of another east-west route closer to I-285 have not been seriously considered.
Claim #4: The Arc will be built in a greenspace
corridor.
Response: GDOT is planning a 400 foot
right-of-way — two twelve foot lanes in each direction, separated
by a 102 foot median, and with side buffers of 125 feet. Per GDOT, additional
buffer width may be acquired if funds permit. With a 400 foot ROW, the
cost is already $40 million a mile. Who knows how high the price tag would
be with wider buffers?
Claim #5: The Arc will be designed to
avoid further damage to the Etowah watershed and Lake Allatoona.
Response: The Arc will cross the Etowah
River several times, depending on its route. Because most streams feeding
the Etowah River flow in a north-south direction, and the Arc is an east-west
corridor, many streams will be impacted by the road. By state law, GDOT
is exempt from dealing with the cleanup of the stormwater runoff from
state roads. Runoff polluted by petroleum products and other chemical
agents will flow into streams and further degrade the quality of the Etowah
River, source of Cherokee's drinking water, and Lake Allatoona, source
of water for Cobb and Paulding Counties. Cost of additional purification
will appear on our water bills.
Claim #6: This road will not cost Georgia
taxpayers.
Response: Studies by the State Road
and Tollway Authority indicate that even with tolls at 17 cents per mile
(for almost 60 miles) for cars and 30 cents per mile for trucks, the Arc
tolls and excess GA400 tolls will be insufficient to build and operate
this facility. Since GDOT has stated that it does not intend to pay off
construction bonds with federal monies, (and federal monies could be withheld
if/when Atlanta fails to meet air quality standards in the future), without
adequate toll revenues, state taxpayers will be forced to fund this road
through taxes of some sort. In addition, many local roads will require
local taxes for rerouting or expansion.
You are invited
to a
Northern Arc Town Hall
Meeting at
Rose Creek Library on Monday, May 20 at 7 p.m.
The Meeting will
be hosted by
Commission
Chairperson Emily Lemcke.
The Northern
Arc Task Force will make a clear and factual presentation and answer questions
about this road in Cherokee and across the region. I hope that you can
attend and add your voice to the thousands in and out of the Arc corridor
who have many questions about this extraordinary project.
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You may already know
that the Northern Arc is planned for Cherokee's future, and also that
I, as your Commission Chairperson, am steadfastly opposed to its construction.
This past year has seen a groundswell in grassroots opposition to this
massive road project. Some of your fellow citizens have wondered why many
residents of south Cherokee have not yet weighed in on this issue. Because
the project is not in their backyard? Because they already live close
to a freeway? Because they don't think it will ever materialize? Perhaps
because they are resigned that it will be built, in spite of growing public
resistance?
The Northern Arc may not be on your radar
screen because you simply believe it will not affect you. You live where
you do because you commute south daily on I-575 or east across Highway
92, and figure another road might somehow take some of your fellow commuters
off to somewhere else!
This column will address some of the major
issues swirling around the Northern Arc. You can do more research at www.northernarc.com
(Georgia Department of Transportation, GDOT) and www.natf.com (citizen
opposition). And, if you still are curious, I urge you to come to a special
Town Hall Meeting later this month (see below).
Claim #1: The Arc will alleviate daily
commuting congestion.
Response: Almost 70% of the county's workforce
leaves the county daily. Only 2.2% of all daily trips originating in Cherokee,
Forsyth, and Gwinnett counties have destinations in one of the other two
counties. Of all daily trips, 83.8% have a destination either within the
county of origin or in the county just south of the county of origin.
Therefore, the Northern Arc, strictly an east-west facility, will not
correct current congestion problems. The current daily traffic volumes
on Highway 92 (30,000+), GA400 (154,000), and I-575 to north of I-575
(71,000) do not compare to the current Highway 20 volume (12,000). Volume
on the Arc (close to Highway 20) in 2015, 5 years after its opening, is
estimated to be about 39,000. How does the initial price tag of $2.4 billion
for the Arc compare, in terms of priorities, with relieving current congestion
along these roads?
Claim #2: The Arc will take truck traffic
off Highway 20 and I-285.
Response: The southeastern trucking
firm of Cardinal Logistics modeled potential use of the Arc, and can show
that less than 2% of trucks would ever use the road as a freeway. Few
trucks would reroute from I-285, and if constructed as a toll road, trucks
could not afford to use it because the proposed toll per mile would far
exceed the industry profit per mile. Further, trucks on Highway 20 are
predominantly local — going to the landfills,
the asphalt plants, the concrete plants, the quarries, the sawmills, the
building supply centers and construction sites, many of which are permanently
sited near Highway
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