As a resident or visitor to Saint Simons Island, GA., I urge the Joint Water and Sewer Commission, the Glynn County Manager and Board of Commissioners to identify ways to eliminate or significantly reduce the need to close Sea Island Road for three weeks in February. This will result in creating essentially gridlock on Demere and Frederica roads - - both of these roads are already bumper-to-bumper during peak travel times.
As quoted in the Brunswick News, “People will still have access to their homes and to the shopping districts, but Sea Island Road will be closed to through traffic,” county manager Alan Ours said. “The public will have to find another route to get through.” This appears to indicate that no real attention has been given to the ensuing chaos that residents and visitors will experience during the shut-down period.
Failure to find a better solution will only increase the perception that county management is more focused on developers than caring for its residents.
How does the added cost of selecting some combination of conventional ditch digging and horizontal directional drilling that allows the road to remain open, compare to the value of thousands of hours of lost time incurred by taxpayers stuck in traffic jams?