After hearing from local citizens and officials, the engineering and planning consultant firm GMC has identified a wish list of 87 projects in the Statesboro-Bulloch County Long-Range Transportation Plan, including “fiscally constrained” lists of 28 city projects and 30 county projects with identified funding available within five years.

Consultants from Goodwyn Mills Cawood, also known as GMC, presented the draft of the long-range plan update during a public open-house event Thursday evening, Sept. 19 in the social hall at Statesboro First United Methodist Church. They had launched the project roughly one year earlier, Sept. 25, 2023, with a workshop, collecting specific concerns and general ideas, at the same location. That was followed by a workshop in Brooklet last November, and another in Statesboro in March, as well as an online survey with 1,000 responses, four meetings with a technical advisory committee, and further updates for Statesboro’s mayor and council and the Bulloch County Board of Commissioners.

Somewhat different but overlapping priorities emerged from the city and county input, reported GMC project manager Glenn Coyne.

“In the city, folks were most interested in having less traffic congestion, more bus stops and more sidewalks and bike lanes, and this came out both in public meetings and the survey,” he said. “In the county, folks were really most interested in better road conditions, less potholes, better paved surfaces, that type of thing.”

But county residents and local technical advisors expressed interest in less traffic congestion as well, and “there was concern out in the county about safety – signaling, lighting, things like that – areas that have grown that don’t have any traffic control.”

GMC expects to deliver the finished plan in November.

20 years ahead, 5 funded

Officially, the total plan looks forward 20 years, and the update, first for the city since 2009, will push the supposed end date from 2035 out to 2045. But the identified funding for the “fiscally constrained” list includes only current funding from fiscal years 2024 and 2025 and conservative estimates of funding from the same sources through FY 2029.

“Having a fiscally constrained plan is a requirement,” said Kalanos Johnson, a GMC senior planner.

“We have a five-year funding cycle, and so it has to make sense,” he explained. “You know, you can’t just arbitrarily throw projects out. We have to account for is it locally funded or is it funded through state coordination or is it a federal coordination, such as Transportation Alternatives.”

Identified funding from fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, through fiscal year 2029, totals a little over $100 million for the road and street improvements, sidewalks, bike lanes and transit system projects in the plan.

Those funding sources, estimated to total almost $66.4 million for the county and roughly $33.85 million for the city, include the local 1% Transportation-Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax, or T-SPLOST; annual Local Maintenance and Improvement Grants, or LMIG, from the Georgia Department of Transportation; and limited for now to one county project – namely the S&S Greenway Trail extension – a Transportation Alternatives Program, or TAP, grant which is federal money administered through the state.

Suggested projects were scored on 23 metrics in eight categories: 1. congestion and connectivity; 2. roadway operations; 3. roadway conditions; 4. active transportation; 5. regional mobility and economic development; 6. transit; 7. environment and equity; 8. feasibility.

They were then prioritized: very high priority, high, medium or low priority. Then they were ranked for the project lists, which only generally and not strictly drop from “very high” to “low” priority down the list, because of costs and the availability or appropriateness of local funding.

For example, bridge widening at Georgia Highway 67 and I-16, labeled “very high” priority on the county list and, at an estimated cost of $12.85 million the most expensive single project, nonetheless appears next to last on the list. It is among projects labeled “N/A” as not applicable for local funding, because that would have to be a state or federal project.

Top county projects

These are the first five of the 30 projects on the Bulloch County “constrained” (identified short-term funding) list:

1.      Construct sidewalks and bike lanes along Lanier Drive from Veterans Parkway to Langston Chapel Road, estimated cost $ 5 million, from T-SPLOST.

2.      Install roundabout or signal at intersection of Langston Chapel Road and Lanier Drive for an estimated $1.5 million from LMIG.

3.      Roundabout at Country Club Road and Highpoint Road, $500,000 T-SPLOST.

4.      Roundabout or signal at intersection of Burkhalter Road and Cawana Road, $400,000, T-SPLOST.

5.      Improvements (traffic signal) in U.S. 301 South and Ibo Anderson Road area to address increased industrial traffic.

Of those, the first two projects were assigned “very high” priority, while the next three were only “high” priority. However, the ninth and 10th projects on the list, construction of sidewalks and bike lanes along Langston Chapel Road, projected to cost more than $4 million, and construction of sidewalks and bike lanes along Old Register Road and Langston Chapel to Veterans Memorial Parkway for nearly $4.58 million, were rated “very high” priority for T-SPLOST funding.

Top city projects

These are the first five of the 28 projects on the city of Statesboro “constrained” list:

1.      A transit (city bus system) pull-off on South Main Street at Queensborough Bank, estimated cost $400,000 from “transit” earmarked T-SPLOST funding

2.      Intersection improvements at Turner Street and Northside Drive, $572,000 from LMIG.

3.      Sidewalk construction at West Main Street from Stockyard Road to Foss Street, $350,000 from LMIG.

4.      Bike lanes and multi-use trail at Lanier Drive from Georgia Avenue to Veterans Parkway, $2 million from T-SPLOST funding earmarked for “roads.”

5.      Sidewalk construction at Stockyard Road from Bryant’s Landing to West Main Street, $200,000 from LMIG.

Just a ‘framework’

City and county staff members who attended, such as City Manager Charles Penny and county Planning and Development Director James Pope, noted that the long-range plan will provide a guideline or framework. Coyne and Johnson also acknowledged that it will not bind the local governments to carry out all of these projects, since costs, funding sources and other factors are subject to change.

“Once this plan is adopted it will be a framework for us to follow in making development decisions and how we frame projects today in how they’re going to follow along with an overall plan for 20 years down the road. …,” Pope said. “Having this knowledge now helps us reserve right of way and make zoning decisions.”