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Georgia Dept. of Transportation contractor workers are making preparations to complete the US Hwy. 441 widening project in Putnam County. MARK ENGEL/Staff -
Brush and debris are cleared to prepare for the widening of US 441. MARK ENGEL/Staff
The project to widen US 441/SR 24 to four lanes from the bypass around Eatonton to the Putnam-Morgan County line got a green light on April 4. Since then, E.R. Snell Contractor Inc. has begun the laborious task of clearing the right of way south of Rock Eagle 4-H Center.
The 9.2-mile stretch of road from the bypass to the Morgan County line is expected to be completed in August 2025 at a cost of $78.3 million, including right-of-way acquisition, preliminary engineering work and construction.
In Putnam, US 441 varies from two to three lanes, where the center lane is a passing lane for one direction or another. Widening to four lanes with a 32-foot grassy median will run to the east of the existing roadbed from the bypass to Rock Eagle. To avoid affecting the historical site, the DOT says the project will then follow the current right of way to the Morgan County line.
There it will hook up with the companion widening project that will run to Interstate 20. The Morgan County stretch, already under construction, is expected to be finished in March 2024.
The Putnam project is currently in the early process of clearing the right-of-way of trees, roots and underbrush.
“They started near the Rock Eagle Technology Park earlier this month and moved south toward Eatonton,” DOT District 2 Communications Specialist Gil Pound told the Lake Oconee News. “You’ll soon see clearing and grubbing focused on the northern end of the project at the Putnam-Morgan County line.”
US 441 is a major artery through the southern United States, running 939 miles from Miami, Florida to just outside Rocky Top, Tennessee.
Completion of the 371-mile US 441 corridor through Georgia is projected to cost $995 million. It is the longest stretch of the Governor’s Road Improvement Project (GRIP), which was adopted by the state legislature in 1989 and includes construction or improvement of 19 major highways in Georgia. The DOT says that when completed, the GRIP project will put 98 percent of Georgia’s population within 20 miles of a four-lane road.
Major road work goes slowly to the average driver who often must deal with orange barrels creating narrow passage and redirected lanes over uneven paving. Still, once approvals and funding are in place, the pace is usually deliberate and dramatic.
Some projects such as the four-laning of Highway 44 (Lake Oconee Parkway) from outside Eatonton to I-20, which is still in the final planning stages, get mired in political and public pressure. As a result of that, the 25-year Highway 44 project has been shortened to run from Harmony Road in Putnam to just north of I-20 in Greene County. A location and design approval was signed last July and acquisition of right of way is said to be continuing. As of April 2022, the estimated total cost of the Highway 44 widening project is $139.7 million.