Part of Dick’s Hill Parkway to Be Re-striped for Temporary Lane Shift

Crews will re-stripe a portion of Dick’s Hill Parkway, or Old U.S. Highway 123, in Stephens County because of a safety issue due to road damage.

The re-striping is set to take place Thursday, if weather permits, in the area of the residence owned by Clifford Cabe.

This is not far from Patterson Pump.

Stephens County Administrator Phyllis Ayers said that road crews noticed the culvert damage while inspecting the road.

“We found, after we had several days of rainfall, there was a slope in the area that was slipping off,” said Ayers. “Further evaluation found that the concrete box culvert underneath that carries the stream under the road bed had some severe structure cracks in the culvert floor.”

Ayers said that as a result, most of the stream water was exiting the structure through cracks in the culvert floor creating possible voids under the roadbed.

She went on to say that while repairing the cracks, stress fractures were also discovered in the walls and ceiling of the box culvert.

According to Ayers, this damage is apparently the result of vibrations caused by heavy trucks passing over the structure.

She said that was something observed by crews making repairs.

Ayers said that temporarily re-striping the road is designed to take vehicles off of the section of the road that has been deemed as unstable.

“In an interim time before we can assess what the corrective action will be, how much it will cost, we will be re-striping a certain section,” said Ayers. “There are currently two uphill lanes and one downhill lane and we are going to shift the downhill lane over to the more stable center lane, removing the traffic from the damaged lane.”

Ayers said that while this shortens the uphill climbing lane in that area of Dick’s Hill Parkway, once past the slope area, almost a mile of that climbing lane will be available to traffic.

During Tuesday’s Stephens County Commission meeting, commissioners unanimously approved spending $10,050 with Parker Traffic Markings to have the road re-striped.

Stephens County Commissioner Debbie Whitlock asked if the county could save money by using signage and cones instead, but Ayers said that was deemed not to be an option because of the amount of traffic.

As for a permanent fix, Ayers said that the county does not have an idea as to what exactly will have to be done or how much it might cost.

She said this is the same area of road that has caused the county problems going back several years to at least the 2009 flooding.