Funds Will Put New Diverging Diamond at Ashford Dunwoody and 285

Dunwoody is getting a new diamond.

Monday the contract to build a diverging diamond interchange at Ashford Dunwoody Road at I-285 was awarded by the Georgia Department of Transportation.

The low bidder was ER Snell Contractor of Snellville, which bid the project at $4.63 million.

The Ashford Dunwoody interchange had been .

The interchange, which is set to be finished by September 2012, will be the first diverging diamond interchange in Georgia.

When construction is complete, the new road configuration will have drivers shift to the "wrong side of the road" as they approach either side of the bridge. Drivers heading to I-285 will turn directly onto a ramp without having to cross on-coming traffic. Drivers heading straight through the interchange will return to the "right side of the road" after crossing the bridge.

The idea originated in France and will be just the seventh use of the design in the United States since the first was built in Missouri in 2009, according to the GDOT.

“We think this is going to be something that, once motorists become accustomed to, they will really embrace,” Georgia DOT Commissioner Vance C. Smith, Jr., said in a press release. “We believe DDIs are going to enable us to make meaningful, relatively inexpensive, improvements at clogged interchanges without having to expend huge amounts of money and time rebuilding the entire structures. We can do DDIs faster and cheaper. And where they have been done, crashes have declined and traffic movement across interchange bridges has improved markedly.”   

The design work for the project was paid for by the Perimeter Community Improvement Districts (PCID) and DeKalb County. 

PCID President/CEO Yvonne Williams said the new exchange is key for development in the area. “And this economic health is important not only to our businesses, but also to local and state governments that depend on the tax revenues generated in the Perimeter area,” she said in the press release.

The interchange was one of 18 projects worth $34 awarded by the GDOT.