What I might do as Road Czar of Oconee County

Time for a little fantasy work here about our roads in Oconee County. I do not suffer the Georgia Department of Transportation gladly, but I drive enough roads around these parts that I can share a few ideas no matter how far fetched they may seem.


  1. Leave Simonton Bridge/Whitehall Road substantively alone. Build some bike paths off the road, maybe add a turn lane here or there, sidewalks would be welcome as well.
  2. Add extra lanes on 441 from the Watkinsville By-Pass all the way to the Athens Perimeter. Here too bike lanes would actually make sense and a couple of sidewalks would do wonder to the health and beauty of Oconee County.
  3. Extra acceleration lanes off the Perimeter on to Highway 316 (at least past the Oconee Connector past the perimeter).
  4. Hook up the new fly over the By-Pass behind Lowe's and across the Perimeter to the Jennings Mill Superhighway. Then it will only take four minutes instead of five for Jennings Mill residents to take the back way to Sam's Club.
  5. Make sidewalks to and from each and every school to all the others a bare minimum or starting point, not some distant pipe dream.
  6. Connect Oconee Veterans Park with Herman C. Michael via footbridge with timed stop lights at both intersections of what was once Autry Road not very long ago with the much busier Elder Road. I would also eventually open up the back side of Oconee Veterans Park with Hodges Mill Road like Autry Road once did after they build an aquatics center, sometime after 2035. I would love to be proven wrong on that guess of a date, but I remain dubious of whether we will ever really see a public swimming facility in this county.
  7. Connect Experiment Station Road  with Simonton Bridge Road behind OCAF and the cemetery as sort of a mini-Watkinsville By-Pass.
  8. Pave Mulberry
  9. Widen Third and Wilson Streets with sidewalks.
  10. Pave all the dirt roads down by Farmington and elsewhere.


This is just a start. Feel free to add any suggestions of your own. I thank you in advance for your input

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