CUMMING, Ga. — On Wednesday, the Cumming-Forsyth County Chamber of Commerce hosted its 6th annual transportation summit.
“Forsyth County has been very innovative in their thinking and their partnerships,” Chris Tomlinson, one of the panelists, said. “They reach out and partner closely with the Georgia Department of Transportation and my organizations which are the state road and tollway authority, as well as the new Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority.”
The Atlanta-Region Transit Link Authority (appropriately dubbed “the ATL”) is a state authority focused on planning transit on a regional level.
“We cover a 13-county region which does include Forsyth,” Tomlinson said. “And we’re just saying as a state and as a region, as we look at our different priorities, be they in Atlanta, or Henry County, or here in Forsyth County, how do we prioritize all of those so that Georgia is in the best position to pull down much-needed federal dollars to bring these projects to reality?”
He says a transit study will be done in Forsyth County to determine the wants and needs of locals. Also on Wednesday’s panel with Tomlinson was Russell McMurry, the Georgia Dept. of Transportation commissioner.
“The future is really bright for transportation here in Forsyth County with a lot of projects going on,” McMurry said. “The county had a $200 million bond program starting back in 2015 that they're actually administering now, and we partner with them on many projects. There's a lot of activity on the horizon here in Forsyth County such as the expansion of state route 9 from Alpharetta all the way up to Cumming. There's also state route 20 from Cumming all the way over to Canton.”
He says there’s been great progress on state route 9, but the project is behind schedule because of all the wet weather in recent months. That project is expected to wrap up by December 2020, McMurry said.
As for the work along state route 20 between Cumming and Canton, the project has been broken into six separate projects, but McMurry says there’s more work to be done before construction gets underway.
“It's almost 20 miles, and so we're actively working on that project now and the right-of-way acquisition process,” he said. “Over the next two or three years we will be advancing the different parts of that to construction. Once the right-of-way is bought and the environmental permitting is done, then we get a firm construction date.”
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