From constraints to creative solutions

Complex projects succeed when design, communication, coordination, and community needs move forward together.

When it comes to roadways, sometimes the best solution is rethinking the design altogether. Incorporating multi-modal travel in a high-capacity roadway that provides local access to residents and businesses can be a challenge – but that was the task for the Windy Hill Boulevard project in Smyrna, Georgia.

This innovative urban highway design incorporates local access lanes, bicycle lanes, pedestrian trails, and express lanes to improve east/west traffic flow. Two strategically placed bridges allow local vehicles and pedestrians to safely cross over the express lanes, reconnecting neighborhoods once cut off from the rest of the city. Given the corridor’s density and high volume of daily travel, the project required a significant level of coordination with the public, the school system, and public safety officials.

From a simple drawing on a napkin to full construction, Windy Hill Boulevard evolved through challenges and decisions that ultimately shaped its outcome. Along the way, several key takeaways emerged – less about the final design, and more about what it takes to successfully deliver a complex project:

• Effective communication requires as much attention as the design itself. The project was funded by both the City of Smyrna and Cobb County Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax. This created a unique partnership between the city and the county that required ongoing communication and alignment throughout the life of the project.
• Helping people visualize the project can change the conversation. A major component of the public outreach and engagement strategy was the development of a 3D rendering video, complete with moving cars, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Showing the project in motion – at the Public Information Open House, numerous stakeholder events, and on YouTube – helped the community better understand the project scope, concept, and impact.
• Complex designs can lead to streamlined solutions. The final design provided parallel, but separate, roads to provide dedicated spaces to pedestrians, cyclists, local traffic, and commuter traffic. These design elements added significant complexities to the project, but the end result is a much safer corridor that allows all modes of travel to enjoy the corridor while still meeting the aesthetic requirements set by stakeholders. One of these elements was the inclusion of two strategically placed bridges that carry local traffic, cyclists, and pedestrians over the express lanes. The extensive traffic modeling conducted by our traffic engineering team ensured the bridges accommodated traffic flow while closely aligning with existing grades to minimize impacts on local businesses. Working through these design elements early in the design process helped avoid larger challenges later in the project.
• Maintaining traffic can shape the design as much as the final condition. The existing roadway presented many challenges such as hilly terrain, high water tables, and an aging corridor that did not meet current speed design standards. The corridor experiences a large volume of commuter traffic – nearly 40,000 vehicles daily – in addition to significant pedestrian traffic from students walking to three separate schools along the corridor. To minimize the impacts to traffic flow, the city maintained four lanes of traffic throughout construction. Providing these travel lanes shaped the phasing, temporary signals, and other traffic strategies for the construction phase of the project. The existing signals were upgraded or rebuilt, and temporary signals were installed to maintain access for businesses, residents, and schools. Our team coordinated closely with the Cobb County Department of Transportation and city engineers, public safety officials, transit officials, and school representatives to ensure these systems functioned safely and minimized disruption throughout construction.
• Budget considerations must remain top of mind. Despite rapidly inflating general construction costs in the region, our design team undertook a significant value engineering analysis effort during the design process. The selected VE options maintained the overall functionality and appeal of the project, while reducing cost impacts and resulted in savings of more than $5 million.
• Early coordination sets the pace for the entire project. Utility coordination began early in the design process. While widening was shifted to the north to avoid power transmission poles, the project still required relocation of a large AT&T duct bank. Our municipal utilities team also designed new water mains and sanitary sewer lines. Both the duct bank and water and sewer efforts were bid separately and let to construction ahead of the roadway project to avoid potential delays.
  In addition, the project required an intricate storm network design to accommodate not only the new roadway, but the anticipated redevelopment along the corridor. This work was done simultaneously to a broader storm basin analysis for the city, allowing the corridor improvements to integrate into larger drainage basin planning for the city.

Now complete, the Windy Hill Boulevard corridor is already delivering a range of benefits to the surrounding community. By separating local, pedestrian, and commuter traffic, the design has improved safety while also reducing congestion and increasing overall mobility. Enhanced pedestrian features – including safer crossings, walking paths, and protected bus stop locations – make the corridor more accessible, particularly for students and residents. Improved connections to transit and surrounding neighborhoods, along with a more cohesive and visually appealing environment, are helping support future redevelopment and better link key destinations such as parks, schools, and local amenities.

The Windy Hill Boulevard is a cornerstone for the many improvements planned by the city to the overall Windy Hill Road area. By combining thoughtful design, early problem-solving, and extensive coordination with the community, the project shows how transportation improvements can serve both regional mobility and the surrounding community. This award-winning urban highway design is an excellent model of what local collaboration and ingenuity can accomplish.

Chris Rideout, PE serves as Vice President in Transportation at Croy, a more than 100-person full-service firm with offices in Alabama, Georgia, and Tennessee. He can be reached at crideout@croyeng.com.