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Decatur’s Church Street cycle track project on schedule to be finished in June

Decatur

Decatur’s Church Street cycle track project on schedule to be finished in June

Church Street cycle track construction in the city of Decatur on Feb. 6, 2022. Photo by Dean Hesse.
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Decatur, GA — The construction of the Church Street cycle track will be substantially completed by the end of May and is on schedule to be finished in June, City Manager Andrea Arnold said during the March 20 Decatur City Commission meeting.

“Already if you’ve been down Church Street, you’ll see the new sidewalks and cycle track. For the most part, that is complete. There’s a little bit closer to Commerce [Drive] that is yet to be completed,” Arnold said.

“As Hugh Saxon says, it will continue to be noisy, messy and inconvenient, but just for two more months,” she added.

The cycle track project includes intersection improvements at Clairemont Avenue and Commerce Drive, as well as Church Street and Commerce Drive to reduce crossing distances and remove vehicle slip lanes. Church Street will also be permanently reduced to two lanes, wider sidewalks will be added, and a one-way cycle track, also known as a protected bike lane, will be added on each side of Commerce Drive and Church Street.

The current number of lanes on Commerce Drive will remain when the work is completed.

Weather permitting, trees will also be planted along Church Street beginning next week.

“Putting those trees in is going to definitely change the whole look and feel of that corridor,” Arnold said. “As I told the mayor, Saturday morning, I ran the entire stretch of that Church Street sidewalk from downtown all the way to the city limits and observed people, even in the early hours, walking, biking, running, already making use of the Church Street trails.”

Work is also underway on Commerce Drive between Clairemont Avenue and Church Street. New stormwater infrastructure is being installed, and most of the underground installation is expected to be finished this week.

“That’s been a pretty messy part of the project, and pretty disruptive,” Arnold said. “Also along that same stretch on Commerce, between Church and Clairemont, new sidewalks and cycle tracks are being built on the north side of Commerce.”

In addition to that, each of the corners of the intersections of Commerce and Church Street, and Commerce and Clairemont Avenue will be rebuilt to shorten the distance that pedestrians have to cross. The southbound slip lanes on Clairemont Avenue and Church Street have already been removed.

“The next messy part of the project, and this is likely to begin in April, is [the] milling and repaving of the entire project corridor. There will be about a two-week period for curing of the new asphalt and then lane markings and paint will be applied,” Arnold said.

In other construction related news, work was taking place on March 21 on the sidewalk near the intersection of East Trinity Place and North McDonough Street.

“This was for the repair of an accessible ramp. The curb kept getting busted by large vehicles turning the corner from North McDonough on to East Trinity,” Capital Projects Manager Hugh Saxon told Decaturish. “We may want to keep traffic off it for a couple of days, but I think it’s finished.”

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