Keep the gravel: growth plan pairs unpaved roads with a safety push

Safer roads do not have to mean paving the gravel. Chattahoochee Hills’ comprehensive plan, adopted in October, explicitly calls for leaving gravel roads unpaved while maintaining their safety and long-term functionality.⁠[1]

The same transportation priorities favor traffic circles over new signalized intersections, call for exploring speed-management strategies and seek continuous walking and bicycle connections among parks, villages, hamlets and other destinations. The chapter describes its role as guiding future investments and project decisions—not announcing a particular intersection redesign.⁠[1]

The plan’s public-engagement summaries show the tension behind that direction. Transportation working-group participants raised concerns about speeding on gravel roads and discussed lower speed limits, traffic calming and road-design improvements. Later feedback also urged caution about encouraging walkers and cyclists onto narrow gravel roads, even as participants considered ways to improve safety without losing the rural look.⁠[1]

Safety planning was already underway in the staff report included in the September 1 approved Council minutes. It describes coordination with Toole Design Group, review of preliminary crash findings and selection of corridors for further analysis. As we reported in our account of priority roads for safety analysis, those corridors include South Fulton Parkway/SR 70, Cascade Palmetto Highway and Campbellton Redwine Road. Those reported steps concern analysis and coordination, rather than a construction authorization.⁠[2]

The adopted work program supplies a next checkpoint: 2027. It puts completion of the Safe Streets for All and citywide transportation plans—and implementation of their action items—in that year. It also schedules a review of development regulations to improve connections between new development, existing parks and the community trail network. For the safety and citywide-plan work, however, the estimated cost remains “TBD.” The table identifies the general fund and grants as funding sources, not a dollar commitment.⁠[1]