Construction work has gotten under way on a road project designed to prevent accidents at the intersection of Georgia Highway 296 and Ga. 88/Fall Line Freeway in Jefferson County, southwest of the town of Wrens.
The Augusta Chronicle reported June 24 that the work started one week earlier.
Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) contractors began building a Reduced Conflict U-Turn (RCUT) design that will force drivers using Ga. 296 to cross the Fall Line Freeway in a completely new way with the aim of saving lives at what some Jefferson County emergency responders have said is by far the deadliest single intersection in the area.
Dave Beachy, chief of the nearby Hillcrest Fire Department, told the news publication that he has begun to loathe the alarm tone for a motor vehicle accident, adding he feels far too many occur at the junction of the two state highways.
"When they drop the tone, you just know it's going to be at that intersection," he explained. "It seems like we're averaging one there every two or three weeks, and we have had two in one day there. [Plus], we have had as many as five fatalities in one vehicle."
According to Will Volk, a District 2 communications officer for GDOT, the new design will prevent vehicles traveling both north and south along Ga. 296 from going straight across the intersection or from crossing two lanes of oncoming traffic to turn immediately left onto the Fall Line Freeway.
Instead, he said, all vehicles approaching the intersection from Ga. 296 must turn right onto the freeway, with an opportunity to make a U-turn a short distance away. Vehicles traveling east and west along Ga. 88/ Fall Line Freeway, will be able to use a new concrete median to turn either north or south onto Ga. 296.
"There is a Federal Highway Administration study that said [RCUT designs] reduce severe crashes in intersections like this by more than 50 percent," Volk noted. "Basically, you're cutting off a lot of conflict points here by restricting traffic on [Ga.] 296 from going straight or left. That reduces the number of types of angle collisions you can have there."
Construction crews have already begun adding "extra padding" that will allow larger and longer vehicles will have more space to make their turns once the current intersection is blocked by a concrete median.
Drivers moving through the area have been notified to expect temporary lane closures near the intersection over the next several weeks as construction is anticipated to continue until August. The project will also include new signage and pavement markings.
The RCUT is only a temporary solution, Volk explained, as GDOT plans to follow the recommendation of a recent traffic safety study on the Jefferson County intersection that suggests a roundabout as the best long-term solution.
Plans for the roundabout are still in the pre-construction phase, he added, with work estimated to begin in 2027.
"[This RCUT] is just an interim, quick response. If you go further down the Fall Line Freeway, there's [a roundabout] that was recently installed at [the junction of] Ga. 540 and Ga. 24 in Washington County. The roundabout [here] will be the ultimate solution, but RCUTs are proven to work."
Rural Intersection Has An Infamous History
In past years, Georgia's transportation agency has added rumble strips, yield signs, stop-ahead signs, and flashing lights leading up to the Ga. 296/Fall Line Freeway intersection, but collisions continue to occur there.
"That intersection has a very long history of fatalities, and lives matter," Beachy said. "These deaths need to stop. And not only the deaths; there are wrecks that happen, and lives are ruined."
Wrens Fire Chief Keith Boulineau noted that his department is dispatched to nearly every major motor vehicle accident at that intersection to provide support and — often — to cut away the twisted metal that has trapped people in their wrecked vehicles.
In fact, Boulineau's records show that Wrens firefighters have responded to 34 calls at the intersection in the last seven years.
Now, he worries about complications that may come from the way drivers negotiate the RCUT changes.
"I think you are going to see people on [Ga.] 296 who try to weave their way through the intersection," Boulineau said in speaking with the Chronicle. "And when you have these big log trucks that are going to have to try to make that U-turn, they're going to swing wide and they're going to take up every lane."
He added that while drivers on the freeway are often driving too fast, he believes the problem is more about drivers on Ga. 296 attempting to cross the intersection.
Beachy summed up the feelings of a number of local residents who have expressed concerns online that the RCUT design may not be enough — or soon enough.
"I feel like they should go ahead and put the roundabout in instead of doing this," Beachy said. "They put down rumble strips and then they put in lights and then they added stop signs and yield signs. To me, it's like they're giving a crying baby pacifiers instead of going ahead and feeding the baby. This mess has been going on for eight years."
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