Truck-only lanes on Interstate 75 could be good news for Henry County’s struggles with traffic gridlock, according to a study commissioned by the county.
In attempt to improve highway safety, state leaders are considering a northbound two truck-only lanes from Macon to the Ga. 155 exit in Henry before the end of the decade.
But Henry leaders have expressed concern that terminating the truck-only lanes just miles into the county could tie up traffic when long haul drivers leave the dedicated lanes and migrate back into general traffic.
Marietta-based Croy Engineering, which analyzed the plan for Henry, said the truck-only lanes would become a three-mile auxiliary road at its termination point to allow tractor-trailers to slowly integrate into regular traffic.
“With the design that they are currently proposing with that auxiliary lane, that does add capacity so there is no choke point or bottleneck that’s going to occur as those commercial vehicle lanes come back online,” Aimee Turner, traffic engineering project manager for Croy, told the Henry County Commission during a recent meeting.
The discussion comes as Henry, the second-fastest growing county in metro Atlanta, is trying to play catch up on road construction as its growth has outpaced infrastructure investment. Residents in 2021 approved a penny TSPLOST sales tax to address the county’s road woes.
The state has been studying the truck-only lane for years and is still in the design phase. If it is built, it will be the first in the nation, Henry Transportation Planning Director Sam Baker said.
“This is going to be the first project where we’re building lanes specifically and only for trucks,” Baker said. “So this is going to be a game changer.”
Commissioner Kevin Lewis was skeptical of Croy’s findings that the trucks merging with general traffic won’t cause congestion.
“I find that hard to believe,” he said. “When you have six lanes and merge (them) down to four at some point there’s going to be a chokepoint.”
While Henry leaders expressed concerns about the state’s current plan, they suggested they could get behind a truck-only lane that extends up to Interstate 675.
“These are the things we have to go through with growing pains,” interim District 2 Commissioner Neat Robinson said at a recent commission meeting.
