June 10, 2015 -- Early morning motorists traveling to and from the Main Gate entrance at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany can expect to experience fewer tractor trailer rigs and vendors’ vehicles on their commute to the installation in the coming months.
Construction is currently underway, which is designed to reroute big rigs and vendors’ trucks from the Fleming Road truck gate to the Mock Road entrance, which is now being upgraded to accommodate all commercial traffic.
According to base safety officials, the Fleming Road truck gate personnel inspects an average of 30,000 commercial vehicles annually.
“Between 100 -200 each day comes through that gate,” William McNulty, director, Public Safety Division, MCLB Albany, said. “As you know, Fleming Road is a two-lane road and we’ve had instances where we’ve had traffic backed up because of the tractor trailers waiting. And, it’s just not conducive to have that type traffic through the Fleming Road area. So, we looked at other places that we thought about putting the gate; we’ve been looking at this over the past 2 to 3 years, and we finally decided on Mock Road, through the Wilkinson Road gate, which goes through the warehouse area and intersects at Weed Street.”
McNulty discussed some of the strategies and benefits of moving the commercial traffic from Fleming Road to Mock Road.
“The majority of the truck traffic is for the (Defense Logistics Agency) and they are located in the warehouse area,” McNulty added. “So, this will put the truck traffic in their area where it probably belongs. Mock Road consists of four lanes -- two lanes each way -- and it has a turn lane in the middle, plus it also has a turn lane at the Wilkinson Road gate. So, we’re going from two lanes to possibly six available lanes (to facilitate truck traffic).
“For us, that’s a no-lose situation,” McNulty pointed out. “We’ll be able to process trucks in and out; we’ve constructed a new big-top, tent-type arrangement; we can inspect four tractor trailers at one time out there; we've got a parking area out there and we've got a lot more room to get them in and get them out safely.”
According to McNulty, once construction is completed at the Mock Road gate, all commercial traffic, including vendors, will be redirected to that entrance and the Fleming Road gate will be closed.
“We have a tentative date at the end of July for the infrastructure to be in place,” he continued. “And from that point, once that's in place and we've accepted it and it's available for us to use, we will start socializing with the trucking companies, with DLA and some of our tenants and letting them know when our expected move and change in operations will (commence).”
McNulty indicated October 1, 2015, as a target date and goal for implementing the official opening of the Mock Road gate for commercial vehicles, which will also mark the official closing of the Fleming Road gate for through traffic on and/or off the installation.
According to Donald Frey, contractor, his employer, S & S Concrete and Construction Company, Albany, Georgia, was awarded the bid to construct the physical security officers’ building at the Mock Road entrance. Frey said he and his fellow contractor team had been working on the project for roughly six weeks.