Last week, at an open house meeting at City Hall in Sandy Springs, officials said the Roswell Road bridge widening project at Interstate 285 will be completed by Oct. 31.

Click here for Staff Writer Noreen Lewis Cochran's article on the subject, which in part states:

Construction on the Roswell Road bridge over Interstate 285 will hopefully result in fewer headaches for drivers caught in congestion between Northwood Drive and Allen Road.

The city of Sandy Springs and the Georgia Department of Transportation held the first of two open houses last week at City Hall — the second will be Feb. 1 from 6 to 8 p.m. — displaying maps and plans of the $3.6 million project to about 30 residents.

“The schedule is to be totally finished by the end of October,” department spokesman Mark McKinnon said. “We’re fast-tracking it. We don’t want Roswell Road to be backed up any longer than necessary. Construction is painful, but people will be pleased with the results.”

Motorists may have noticed crews on the shoulders of I-285, which McKinnon said is the prelude to the actual extension of the east side of the bridge.

"They’ve already started,” he said about Marietta-based contractor C.W. Matthews. “They’ve done utility relocation. They started to take out some striping on I-285. Most of the work is going to be on I-285 first in order to put up a support structure for a bridge. That’s what will be done for the first couple of months.”

Anticipation far beyond months — all the way to 2032 — has been factored in by the project’s engineers at Denver, Colo.-based Arcadis Engineering Consultants, whose $250,000 drawings helped land the GDOT project.

The bridge currently handles about 43,000 vehicles a day, a number slated to bump up to more than 52,000 in another 20 years.

"Right now, anyone knows that another 9,000 vehicles on Roswell Road would be pretty devastating,” McKinnon said.

However, not only adding a turn-only lane in the middle of the bridge but also extra lanes to the I-285 on-ramps will improve traffic flow, he said.

“You’ve doubled your storage capacity,” McKinnon said. “You’ve added all this storage that helps keep traffic from backing up into the general purpose lanes that causes congestion.”

Personally, I avoid Roswell Road at I-285 whenever possible, especially betwen 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. My office and home are both in southern Sandy Springs on Roswell Road near the Mount Paran Road intersection. To get to 285 from either one, I usually take the back way (Lake Forrest Road to Allen Road to Roswell Road). I've spent 30 minutes in traffic on Roswell Road between just Glenridge Drive and 285, even in off-peak traffic times, such as 2 p.m.

I'm glad something is finally being done about the traffic on Roswell Road at 285. I hope the widening helps tremendously with easing congestion there.

What do you think about the project? Do you feel it's enough to help with the traffic issues or should more be done?

We want your comments on the issue.