A stretch of I-285 on the west side of metro Atlanta is being completely torn out and rebuilt, and drivers will feel it on weekends for the next three years. The work covers both directions of I-285 between Exit 7 at Cascade Road and Exit 9 at Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, running through Fulton and Cobb counties.

What’s New: Crews started in May. Workers are using a machine to crush and haul away the old concrete, digging out all six lanes of the highway before rebuilding the road from the ground up with a concrete base and asphalt surface. Bridges along the corridor are being replaced as well.

By the Numbers: The west side of I-285 sees about 200,000 vehicles a day, including roughly 35,000 freight trucks. The state has spent about $60 million just maintaining the highway over the past 10 years. Officials say doing the rebuild through full weekend closures will take three years. Closing only individual lanes would stretch the project to about six years and create more danger for both drivers and road crews.

What This Means for You: When weekend closures are active, all traffic is pushed onto detour routes. During the first closure weekend in May, some large trucks skipped the official detour and cut through smaller neighborhood roads that were not built to handle that kind of weight. Officials are now using in-cab trucking alerts and highway signs placed miles ahead of the closure to steer trucks onto the right routes. Traffic signal timing on nearby surface streets is also being adjusted to keep cars moving and make sure residents and emergency responders can still get in and out of their neighborhoods.

Catch Up Quick: The I-285/I-20 West Interchange construction is a separate project with different goals. It is not part of this rebuild, even though both are happening along the same stretch of highway in Fulton and Cobb counties.

The Path Forward: Scheduled weekend full closures between Cascade Road and MLK Jr. Drive will continue over the next three years as crews work through the rebuild one section at a time.

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B.T. Clark is the Publisher of The Georgia Sun and author of Principles Are Like Pants… You Ought to Have Some. Over two decades in journalism, he has served as Managing Editor of Neighbor Newspapers in metro Atlanta and Digital Director at Times-Journal Inc., earning multiple awards along the way. His work has appeared in newspapers across the state, including The Cherokee Tribune and The Marietta Daily Journal.

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