Macon mayoral candidate Jack Ellis threw himself back into the fight against the widening of Forest Hill Road on Thursday, saying he regrets turning more control of the road to state officials in a previous term as mayor.
“At no time did I mean for the state to come in here and literally bulldoze,” Ellis said in a news conference near Forest Hill Road, Ridge Avenue and Drury Drive.
Ellis said he thought turning Forest Hill Road into a state route would bring state money, not cede some local control.
Ellis was joined at the news conference by CAUTION Macon member Tom Scholl, who said Ellis’ views match those of the roads organization. Scholl said the group has not endorsed Ellis or other candidates.
The Macon Area Transportation Study’s draft Transportation Improvement Program for the next four years calls for Forest Hill Road to be widened to three lanes after July 2012 between Wimbish Road and Northside Drive. A bigger widening, to four lanes between Wimbish Road and Forsyth Road, isn’t in the latest draft of the program.
Widening opponents generally say roundabouts or turn lanes, complemented with bike lanes or sidewalks, would cure the road’s ills.
Ellis fought the widening as mayor, and said that, since he moved to a Forest Hill Road apartment about 11 months ago, he’s become even more opposed.
“They want to turn this neighborhood, with all of these mature trees, into another Zebulon Road. I say not ‘no,’ but ‘hell no,’ ” Ellis said.
Ellis said he had been keeping in contact with the opposition group since he left the mayor’s office about three and a half years ago. He said he has not attended CAUTION Macon meetings or Macon Area Transportation Study meetings, nor has he seen the latest road designs.
Ken North, a planner with the Macon-Bibb County Planning & Zoning Commission, said a comment period on the regional transportation plan ended June 17. Most of those comments were about Forest Hill Road, and most of the Forest Hill Road comments were in opposition to the widening projects, he said.
The transportation plan will remain intact unless policy committee officials decide to reopen it, he said.
Ellis called on Macon Mayor Robert Reichert, who is running for re-election, to join him in opposing the road project.
Reichert said the project has been scaled back as far as it can go without risking federal money needed to recoup several million dollars already spent on the project.
Reichert is the vice chairman of the Macon Area Transportation Study policy committee, and two years ago he wrote letters to urge the project be completed in a scaled-back form.
Scholl said the road project has been buoyed by false or misleading information, including traffic projections that showed the road would become much busier. Local traffic counts suggest the road is seeing about the same, or less, traffic in parts, rather than the increased traffic predicted in road studies.
The Forest Hill Road issue has also split neighbors.
Neal Jackson said the road becomes a “nightmare” with traffic at intersections coming to a halt at rush hour. He said widening and left-turn lanes are the solution.
“They should have done it 30 years ago,” Jackson said.
But his neighbor on the other side of Drury Drive, Jack Thomas, said the proposed cure would be worse than the disease. He sees no reason to create more lanes of the road other than at intersections, which would benefit from left-turn lanes or roundabouts. Smaller changes would cure traffic woes just as well as the proposed widening.
“It would ruin the neighborhood,” Thomas said of the plan that would affect the house where he got married 60 years ago. “It makes no sense.”
Staff writer Jim Gaines contributed to this story. To contact writer Mike Stucka, call 744-4251.
