DUBLIN, Ga. — Traveling around Central Georgia isn't always a smooth and easy ride. Sometimes you come across trouble spots, those places where driving is difficult, or even dangerous.
For two Dublin men, it's a road that they take every day to drop off and pick up their children from school -- Hillcrest Parkway. Dublin native Jeff Puckett says it's "the road you drive with faith and not by sight" due to constantly changing traffic patterns.
The expansion of the road was announced to start in April 2018. Fast forward to 2022, and construction is still major.
"I said it the other morning; once you get on it, it brings real meaning to praying without ceasing until you get off of it. My hashtag for it is #JesusLetMeBeInTheRightLane," said Puckett.
He understands with improvements comes construction.
"But growing pains are always unpleasant," he said.
And there seems to be a lot of them.
Raj Saxena, a Dublin Schools parent, says one of his biggest concerns is the constant pattern change on the road.
"Traffic in the morning and in the afternoon is very heavy. As the traffic patterns are changing, you've got parents who are talking to their children -- the normal things that parents do before they pick up and drop off their children," said Saxena.
Puckett and Saxena say sometimes people driving are not paying attention to the lane switches.
"Drivers are never sure that the lane that was opened yesterday will be open today. A lane that wasn't there yesterday might be the lane that you're supposed to drive on," said Puckett.
"You can see behind me that the speeds here are pretty high. It's supposed to be enforced 25 mph, but there's quite a few people that are exceeding that," said Saxena.
They both want to see a few things in place before someone gets injured.
"If there could just be a little less modification being done to the roads so that lanes could stay the same," said Puckett.
"We need to have a greater police presence so that people mind their speeds and so that people pay more attention to what's going on. If I were to ask for something, that's what I'd be asking for," said Saxena.
"We understand that eventually it's going to be a big improvement and we just look forward to the day that it's finished," added Puckett.
We reached out to Matthew Bradshaw with the city of Dublin and he says they started working on this project in January of 2020, and that the project is on schedule.
He says it should be done by the last quarter of this year.
Bradshaw also says that updates in traffic pattern changes are always updated on the city's Facebook page.
He says the city of Dublin looks forward to the completion of the project and being able to use all of the improvements it will bring to their local transportation system.