Planning began on the Railroad Crossing Improvements at Candler and McDonough Streets with a community workshop at City Hall on Thursday, November 12. The materials provided to residents and others at the workshop are available on the City website at www.decaturga.com/rrcrossings. A comment form is included asking for suggestions about how to make the railroad crossings safer and more accessible for pedestrians, bicyclists and others. Comments and suggestions received by November 30 will be summarized and published on the City website.
Thanks for the opportunity to comment. I wasn’t able to attend the meeting last week, but I did go to the initial meeting last year and gave comments to the consultants. My main concern is the fact that you now cannot make a left-hand turn from S. McDonough onto W. Howard next to the high school.
I sit at that intersection each morning on College heading east to work and see tons of cars coming from the south heading north on S. McDonough, crossing the tracks and turning left onto Howard (with many of them turning into the DHS parking lot on the immediate right). If this isn’t rectified, folks on the southside will be heavily impacted and have to circle and entire block and three lights just to get into the high school lot. I fear people will also attempt U-turns in front of the high school just so they can turn onto Howard instead of driving around the entire block to Trinity, Commerce and then Howard. Atlanta Ave. will also have to bear much the burden of the overflow as well and it’s already very unsafe.
When I spoke to the consultant, they said that it’d be easy to make this change, but I see that no change was made. I also know that Dr. Edwards spoke to Peggy about this issue a while back and expressed her great concern over it.
Also, can we please get a left-hand turn signal on College Ave. heading east?!!! I know it’s a county issue, but I was told years ago that y’all were working on it with them. When Fifth Ave. opens back up and many northsiders try to get back home from dropping off their kids at 5th Ave., they will see how hard it is to cross the tracks heading east….and I’m afraid the complaints will start really coming in!!
Thanks for listening!