Chatham County considers changes for State Route 204 corridor

CHATHAM COUNTY, Ga. (WSAV) – Chatham County is conducting a study that evaluates the existing and future capacity of the State Route 204 corridor from U.S. 17 and Ogeechee Road to King George Boulevard.

News 3 spoke with Nathaniel Panther, assistant county engineer, about the changes they are seeing.

"It's showing right now that there's about 57,000 vehicles a day that travel that corridor,” Panther said. “I think it's by 2030, you're looking about 62,000 and then by 2050, we're looking at about 75,000. So, that's a significant jump. It's all driven by the growth that's happening on the west side."

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Panther said the 204 commuters experience long delays and congestion approaching the Pine Grove signal and U.S. 17.

“Right now, the existing traffic signal at Pine Grove is a constriction point,” he said. “It delays it in the morning coming to Savannah and it delays it in the evening when you're trying to get home and leaving Savannah.”

He told News 3 that this raises safety concerns. According to the county, in 2022 there were 166 corridor crashes. Forty-four of those were injury-related crashes.

County engineers are considering potential short-term and long-term alternatives to improve the corridor. Some improvements include possibly widening Highway 204 from four to six lanes or adding roundabouts.

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“On the short term, there may be some modifications to the intersections looking at making some possible U-turn movement down Ogeechee Road,” Panther said. “There's several short-term things we think we can coordinate with GDOT (Georgia Department of Transportation) on to make some improvements out here, maybe for less than $10 million, which is a pretty good value.”

Winter of 2025, engineers will fine-tune and adjust alternatives and analysis. By the summer of 2025, they will finalize recommendations.  

Before then, they are looking for public feedback.

“We want to get feedback from the folks that live there and the folks that drive it every day to make sure that we are not missing something, or they see things that we haven’t seen,” Panther said.

On Tuesday, an open house will be held at the Coastal Georgia Botanical Gardens from 4 to 7 p.m.


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