The location of the North Columbia Street red light in front of Ruby Tuesday, first installed in October 2023, was designed as a temporary fix. However, now the Georgia Department of Transportation has decided to make the light’s installation permanent.
In the area around the traffic light, however, there will be some tweaks.
At some point next winter, road crews are expected remove the yellow “delineator” sticks and replace the sticks with a concrete median. The length of the of the new barrier will extend slightly farther north on North Columbia. Also, a new “signalized intersection” will replace the current red light, complete with mast arms, a sidewalk and a crosswalk, according to Will Volk, a communications specialist with the Georgia Department of Transportation.
An average of 38,100 vehicles pass through that stretch of North Columbia Street daily, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation’s most recent “average daily traffic count” figures.
The red light made its debut in the fall of 2023. At the time, the DOT maintained the light was a “temporary” solution. The longterm solution at the time called for the creation of a new stretch of road carved out of the Big Lots Shopping Center. The road was slated to hug the El Amigo property on one side and the Mattress Firm property on the other.
As a random piece of Milledgeville trivia, the Mattress Firm property is owned by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp. According to tax records, an LLC called D3 Milledgeville purchased the .6-acre property in February 2016 for $325,000 and then turned around and sold it to Kemp Properties LLC six months later for $2.148 million.
On Monday, The Baldwin Bulletin posed the following question to the supersized Milledgeville Roadblocks Warnings Facebook group: “What’s your general opinion of the new light and the ‘traffic sticks?’ Has it made safety better or worse, and has it made the overall stretch of North Columbia better or worse?”
After more than 100 answers, a consensus was formed, which was “the new light makes it safer to turn out of the mall, but.” The but centered around increased congestion and longer lines at lights, especially on Friday afternoons.
(Last Friday) northbound lanes were backed up to the light at Garrett Way. Southbound was backed up nearly to Andalusia,” read one of the comments.