Parallel parking, high visibility crossings: Georgia Avenue traffic study under review

It was in November of 2022 that North Augusta started collecting input for how traffic along Georgia Avenue, from the bridge to Martintown Road, could be improved for both safety and business access.

Now, that input, plus the engineering analysis behind the full traffic calming study, has come back with a draft set of recommendations on what the city’s best options might be.

Block-by-block analysis yielded block-by-block recommendations, but the broader picture is one that takes all that angled parking and makes it parallel; adds center medians and makes pedestrian crossings high visibility.

Full implementation of these recommendations would be a $2.5 million effort.

The city has taken no action yet on any of the recommendations, and certain of them — those for where Georgia Avenue meets with Jackson and Carolina avenues — aren’t going to cut it, officials say.

The proposed solution would cut out some of the existing pavement and curve Carolina Avenue slightly. That lessening of asphalt would result in those coming down Carolina Avenue then turning south onto Georgia Avenue before turning onto Jackson; current practice is a direct turn from Carolina onto Jackson, avoiding Georgia Avenue altogether.

“It won’t solve for what we need,” Mayor Briton Williams said.

Whether creating a roundabout for that tri-junction is an option is unclear. Georgia Avenue is a state road, and normally South Carolina Department of Transportation wouldn’t look favorably on a two-lane roundabout, said Joe Robertson, traffic engineer and project manager with Kimley-Horn.

And bringing Georgia Avenue down to one lane in either direction at that point isn’t recommended for the bottle-necking this would cause, Robertson said.

There could be more options out there, though, and the city is likely to pursue additional study of Georgia-Carolina-Jackson convergence.

That’s not to hold up implementation of other improvements.

A final report from Robertson’s group is forthcoming, and Georgia Avenue is likely to leapfrog other initiatives also being funded by the current round of the penny sales tax: North Augusta City Council has indicated it’s likely to pass the necessary resolution to do so on March 4.

The city is also looking at funding all $2.5 million of recommended improvements with the next round of the sales tax, which comes to voters in November.

If this all goes to plan, the first improvements could get underway next fall or early in 2026, with phase one centering on the stretch between Pine Grove and Spring Grove avenues.

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These improvements, as now drafted, are estimated at $1.19 million and would convert all angled parking in that block to parallel parking and narrow each of the drive lanes to 11 feet. With the extra space these changes would create, the idea is to install a 12-foot-wide central median — not just a striped median but the kind that’s got dimension to it.

High visibility crossings at both intersections, and for all four crossings at each, are also part of the recommendations.

Business, walkability in downtown

The Georgia Avenue traffic study was commissioned with the goal of creating a downtown corridor that promotes business and walkability.

“What we want is to have things here [on Georgia Avenue] to where it’s not your thoroughfare anymore. It can be, but in the meantime, I’m also stopping here and here and here,” Mayor Williams had said during those public input sessions of 18 months ago.

Councilwoman Jenafer McCauley had said then that figuring out Georgia Avenue was “one piece to the whole vision of downtown.”

Kimley-Horn’s Robertson said it’s estimated that Georgia Avenue, 10 years hence, could see its vehicle traffic increase by up to 70%, at least at its lower end, between Center Street and Buena Vista Avenue.

This section of Georgia Avenue sees about 25,000 vehicles a day, according to traffic counts taken in August of 2022. By 2032, that could be closer to 43,000 vehicles at Center Street and 34,500 at Buena Vista.

Which would make “stopping here and here and here,” per Williams’ comment, trickier for pedestrians unless improvements are made to accommodate the additional vehicles — and new development going up nearby, namely Beacon Bluff at Georgia Avenue and Center Street, but also possible new construction in Riverside Village.

Few changes to this lower section of Georgia Avenue, though, are recommended in the draft reviewed by Council last month, and officials indicated they’d like to build in the pedestrian crossings, particularly at East Clifton, that could catch the spill from new development and from the future downtown Greeneway connector.