Heavy equipment began mobilizing this week along Decatur’s North McDonough Street, between Trinity Place and Howard Avenue, the beginning of a streetscapes project in the making for six years. The road has already been sliced from four to two lanes with all on-street parking eliminated.
McDonough will remain two lanes permanently, with additions including a two-way bicycle parkway on the west (Decatur High) side, wider sidewalks, street furniture and streetlights on both sides.
The project’s most intriguing feature, however, is its green infrastructure: 17 bio filtration waterbeds comprised of plants in a base that’s 75 percent sand and 25 percent organic dirt, filtering silt and pollution from surface runoff water.
Green infrastructure concepts originated in the mid-1980s, domestically in the Maryland/Washington D.C. region, but this is one of the first such systems in metro Atlanta.
Total cost is $5.5 million, $3,750,000 of which comes from federal grants, the rest local. The work was delayed nearly a year to synchronize it with the College Avenue railroad crossing improvements at both McDonough and Trinity Place.
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