After years of planning and plenty of rush-hour grumbling, the South Barrett Reliever quietly opened last Thursday, giving Cobb County drivers in the Town Center area a fresh east-west route over I-75 that skips the famously jammed Barrett Parkway interchange. Local officials are betting the new connection will smooth daily commutes around the Town Center shopping and office hub and take some strain off the existing ramps.
County leaders marked the occasion with a ribbon-cutting on top of the new bridge, touting the project as a “transformative investment” that creates a direct link from Cobb Parkway to Barrett Parkway while avoiding the Barrett Parkway/I-75 interchange, according to Cobb County. The county release describes the reliever as a long-term, multimodal fix for the Town Center district, made possible through a mix of federal, state and local partners.
Cobb transportation director Drew Raessler told Atlanta News First that Barrett Parkway currently handles about 60,000 vehicles a day and that the new route could peel off around 12,000 of them, roughly a 20 percent traffic drop. He cast that shift as a way to boost day-to-day reliability for both commuters and freight moving through the Town Center corridor.
What the project includes
The Town Center Community Improvement District pegs the total investment at more than $62 million and says the work delivers a signature bridge spanning I-75 and the Northwest Corridor Express Lanes, modern multi-lane roundabouts, a four-lane divided roadway, sidewalks, bike lanes and a shared-use path. The reliever is described as the southern arc of “The Loop,” a 7-mile complete-street concept meant to tie together the district’s major corridors. Town Center CID…