Yesterday, I stopped by the Georgia DOT map sales office in Chamblee and picked up a couple of copies of the 2008 Georgia Official Highway and Transportation Map.



At the time of the Atlanta Winter 2008 Roadmeet, GDOT did not have copies available at their office, but ironically, the Georgia Welcome Centers had copies. I would not have known that if it weren't for Brian Reynolds having a copy he picked up on his way into Georgia. Now ain't that funny that GDOT doesn't have copies of their own latest map, yet the welcome centers did? Oh, well. At least now I have copies and here's my review...

Two of the things I noticed immediately about the new map was that Georgia's Interstate symbols were changed to a red, white, and blue color to make them look more like the signs themselves, plus there are hurricane symbols to show Hurricane Evacuation Routes coming from the coastal regions and Florida.

If you are wondering where the weigh stations are, now there are green truck symbols showing their locations.

As for road type markings, GDOT finally brought back the thick lines with dashes to denote multilane undivided highways (i.e. 4 or more lanes with a middle left-turn lane). Having been a collector of official Georgia maps for nearly 30 years, I missed those markings and was happy to see GDOT put them back.

Georgia's newest US route, US 29 Alternate, was finally denoted, following the South Fulton Parkway to GA 70/154 and then southward along GA 154 to rejoin US 29/GA 14 in Palmetto. Just as I had speculated in a prior blog, the corresponding Georgia State Route for US 29 Alternate is, indeed, GA 14 Alternate. However, the highway was not colored in red as other Georgia US routes are. Hopefully, GDOT will correct this oversight on the 2009 map.

Like the prior maps, Georgia Scenic Byways are highlighted. The most interesting IMHO was that I-185 (a.k.a. "Chet Atkins Parkway") from I-85 to Exit 12 (Williams Road) in Columbus-Muscogee County was designated a scenic byway. Granted, the view is really nice along I-185, which BTW is still the only Interstate with motorist aid callboxes, but I don't usually think of Interstate highways being designated as such. For a map of the newly designated I-185 byway, please click here.

Limited-access toll roads are now colored in gold, though the GA 400 tollway in Atlanta is the only one with this designation. If Georgia ever plans to go on a toll road building binge like Florida has (especially around Orlando), then this would be a great way to denote them in the future.

On the back of the map, just below the major city insets, there is a section called "Georgia's Driving Trails", which includes, but is not limited to, US 27/GA 1 (Border-to-Border) from the Tennessee State Line to the Florida State Line, US 84/GA 38 and US 82/GA 520 (Plantations and Pines) from the Alabama State Line to Brunswick, and US 441 (US 441 Heritage Highway) from the North Carolina State Line to Douglas.

There are 2 things on the map that IMHO were still not corrected from the prior year's version...

- In Chattooga County, US 27/GA 1 is still shown as a divided highway from Gore-Subligna Road to a point just between there and Summerville. To give you an idea, if you look on the map just north of the dot for the Tidings community on 27, and then just 2-4 millimeters above it, you will see where a scenic byway intersects it. At that point, the highway has narrowed down to 2 lanes. Since US 27/GA 1 is a GRIP corridor, there are plans to widen the road, but for now, it is still 2 lanes from Gore-Subligna Road to Summerville.

- In Augusta-Richmond County, I-520 is still shown as a red limited access route (instead of green) from Exit 10 and dead-ending at the banks of the Savannah River. For the last few years, I-520 has been extended into South Carolina (where it becomes the Palmetto Parkway) and currently dead-ends at US 1/78 in Aiken County.

One other thing that has been on the map for several years was that GA 5/515 (Zell Miller Mountain Parkway) from I-575 to where US 76/GA 2 joins it in Ellijay is colored red instead of black. When Georgia colored all non-limited-access primary highway corridors in red (regardless of route type), that was okay, but since Georgia has gone back to denoting US routes in red and State routes in black, this section needs to be changed back to a black color.

I could probably point out a few more things about the map, but I hope that you will pick up your own copy at either GDOT or the Georgia Welcome Centers and check it out for yourself.

Overall, I think the new 2008 Georgia roadmap was very well done and I always look forward to this time of the year when I can add the latest copy to my collection of official state and provincial roadmaps.

That's it for now. Thanks for reading and please come back again.

        

 

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