Ernest W. Barrett Parkway - Reliever Projects

Reliever Projects

Previously, the only other east-west route across the Town Center area was Chastain Road, one exit to the north on both I-75 and I-575, which run parallel to each other between the Barrett and Chastain exits. Both of these are choked with traffic, particularly due to the mall (which can take nearly an hour to travel across during Christmas shopping weekends), and due to the rapid expansion of Kennesaw State University (KSU, which now covers several location distant from the main campus). Because of this, two new parallel routes were planned.

As of 2012, the South Barrett Reliever is partly completed, extending the four-lane divided Barrett Lakes Boulevard southwestward down formerly two-lane Greers Chapel Road to Cobb Parkway (where it continues as Ridenour Road, renamed from its historic name for a new development of expensive homes adjacent to it). This portion was completed by 2011. According to medium-range plans, the original Roberts Road behind (south of) Costco will later be widened in the same manner, and eventually reconnected with itself across I-75 south of The Home Depot on the other side. In longer-range plans, a new roadway will be constructed from this point eastward to Bells Ferry Road, including a second bridge across I-575. This would take the road through untouched forest and next to a neighborhood around Laura Lake, which feeds Noonday Creek.

The North Barrett Reliever consisted of reconnecting the severed portions of Big Shanty Road, which from I-75's construction in the early 1970s until July 2012 ran only from Bells Ferry Road west under I-575 to Busbee Parkway. Instead of terminating before I-75 as it did, it now continues west across a former go-kart track to the other side, crossing Barrett Lakes Boulevard and a bridge over an unnamed tributary of Noonday Creek, to meet the southern tip of a loop road south of Chastain Road. To carry traffic around the KSU area, the western half of that road was also widened to four-lane divided with turn lanes like the rest of Big Shanty Road (west of Chastain Meadows Parkway), and the name was changed to match as well, again making for a single continuous Big Shanty Road to all the way north of Chastain, and leaving the eastern half of the loop as a three-lane side street.

To complete this, traffic on I-75 was detoured in 2011 onto temporary roadways in the very wide median where trees used to be, and much of the dirt removed to construct new bridges, a project done by the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT). Completed and opened in early June 2012, the detour roads and the rest of the dirt below them and the bridges was removed during the remainder of the month, and the already-completed portions of the road on either side were quickly connected under the bridges for the July opening. This new alternate route connects KSU with its new soccer stadium, and would also be a bus rapid transit station and an interchange with the reversible express lanes on the proposed Northwest Corridor HOV/BRT.

There is also a further "wish list" that includes ramps from I-575 southbound to I-75 northbound, and vice versa, so that traffic will not have to use Chastain or Barrett to do so. However, this is unlikely to have an impact on traffic, as very few cars do this, and the few motorists that do would be unlikely to make a backtrack of five total miles (8 km) extra just to use the ramps. The ramps would also likely be expensive due to the large amount of rock in the area, as is seen on both freeways where they cross the ridge immediately north of where they split.