Before a Freemanville Road bridge closes and detours commence, citizens took advantage of a special opportunity to listen, learn, and share their opinions.

The closure of the bridge spanning Cooper Sandy Creek (south of Providence Road) was supposed to start on Friday, May 7. Thankfully, the Georgia Department of Transportation pushed that back to May 26 – after the school year’s end to help minimize the initial disruption. Still, it’s going to impact transportation within Milton one way or another likely well into the fall (and perhaps beyond). Come August, school traffic will be impacted greatly with traffic detoured from Freemanville to Birmingham Highway, but ideally the summer will provide useful opportunity to adjust to the new traffic patterns.

While GDOT is handling this project overall, the City’s Public Works team wanted to go above-and-beyond to engage with the public ahead of the significant change. That’s what happened at last Wednesday’s open house style event, with people talking with City staff about what’s to come next.

Detours will very much be part of the future. Freemanville Road will be cut off just north of Creek Road and about 0.5 miles south of Providence Road , necessitating that drivers take different routes. The City also plans to close Landrum Road, likely at Birmingham Highway, to prevent excessive numbers of drivers from using that gravel terrain as a cut-through route and causing damage to the road and inconvenience for local residents on the road.