The unfortunate incident in recent weeks had absolutely nothing to do with the presence or lack of sidewalks along Rucker Road. The victim was driving on Rucker Road while looking for her dog that had gotten out of the house. It appears that she found the dog on Rucker and had gotten out of her car and was in the roadway to retrieve the pet when she was struck by an oncoming motorist.

Please do not use this incident to lobby for sidewalks.

The City Council agenda for December 7 includes a discussion on an option for completing Rucker Road corridor improvements. While public comment is not allowed during the meeting on workshop items, you may want to consider attending the meeting or watching the livestream (access at http://www.alpharetta.ga.us/index.php?p=523) of it to hear the plans being discussed.

The City of Alpharetta is hosting a public meeting on April 29 beginning at 7:00 PM at City Hall to present draft designs for the Rucker Road Corridor. These plans have been developed based upon public comments gathered during a series of meetings for residents along the corridor that were held throughout February.

The session will begin with a quick review of what we heard you tell us in the previous meetings; your ideas and your concerns. We will then present the draft designs for the Rucker Road Corridor and how we believe those designs address your comments. If there were ideas or concerns that you mentioned that we could not address, we will discuss why. Then, the floor will be yours as we ask for your feedback to find out how well our design matches your vision and if you have ideas for refining the plan.

We hope that you will plan to join us and that you will invite your neighbors.

A quick update on this item.

City Council has approved the concept designs for Rucker Road and included funds in the FY 2014 budget for development of engineered designs for the corridor. The approved corridor designs include 8-foot sidewalks along both sides of Rucker Road.

Staff is currently developing the documents necessary to put out for bid the engineering work necessary to complete the next level of designs. It is anticipated that the engineering work will be completed Fall / Winter 2013.

Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd like to thank the Admin for ensuring that this continued to remain a key topic and for keeping us updated on the situation. Let me also thank the city for finally addressing this issue. I hope this is completed sometime at the end of this year (2013) .

Please keep us updated.

Completion of engineered designs in Fall / Winter 2013 would allow for phasing plans and budgets to be developed in time for some projects to be put forth in the FY 2015 budget proposal. (Note: The City's budget runs from July 1 - June 30). Staff prepares capital budget requests in January of each year.

Based upon this schedule, it is anticipated that the earliest construction could begin on any of the phased projects would be Summer / Fall 2014, dependent upon funding priorities and allocations.