Without much to-do for a project long in the making, the Georgia Department of Transportation three months ago let a $60.6 million contract for four-laning 9.2 miles of U.S. 441 in northern Putnam County.
The vast bulk of the funding, typically in the 80-plus percent range, plus the construction standards, flows from the federal Department of Transportation’s gasoline taxes.
The contract was won by the sprawling Atlanta-area E.R. Snell road construction company, which does a lot of the state DOT’s major road projects, including the ongoing widening of U.S. 441 in southern Morgan County.
While there is not yet a set starting date for the Putnam work, it appears there will be a piecemeal shifting of Snell’s heavy equipment southward into Putnam by this summer or fall as the Morgan work winds down into 2023. A completion date of August 31, 2025, has been set.
However, the state DOT’s Tennille district office this week issued the firm a “notice-to-proceed” order on the Putnam project, and the Putnam County Board of Commissioners has this month become involved in a couple of related projects.
One of the local preparatory projects involves the relocation of 2,100 feet of a 12-inch water main connecting the Harmony Road-Bethel Church Road line with the Rock Eagle Technology Park and Putnam County High School.
The rights-of-way for the widening range from 250 feet to 360 feet in some places, probably to accommodate retention ponds. Rural areas will include a 32-foot grassed median.
A second development will come more at the end of the project. The county’s development officers and commissioners were excited last week on learning that Snell plans to spend about $200,000 grading out an eight-acre “pad” in the Rock Eagle Technology Park for a temporary asphalt plant. When construction work is done, it will turn the “industry-ready” pad back over to the Putnam Development Authority, which owns the park.
The completion of the northern Putnam leg of the U.S. 441 four-laning in 2025 will mark the fourth (and final) stage of the widening through Putnam. First came the bypass around Eatonton (two lanes and grading for two more) in the 1990s, then the paving of the other two lanes in the 2000s. The third began in March 2010 with the $34.5 million contract to widen the road between Eatonton and Lake Sinclair.
Generally, the same pattern has occurred on north-south and east-west federal highways all over the state in what was dubbed in the 1990s as the state’s “developmental highway” system, following all the attention (and funding) for the interstate highway system in the 1960s-80s. While there are some remaining gaps, such as in southern Oconee County, U.S. 441 will eventually be four-laned from the North Carolina line to Florida.