Sunday Solutions — Aug. 6, 2023
Endless construction, constructive social media and communications from outer space are all part of this edition. Now we have to make sure we have enough popcorn popped for watching federal — and possibly Georgia — courts action on the attempts to change the 2020 election results.
Heading west? That construction isn’t going anywhere soon.
For anyone headed from Coastal Georgia to Atlanta, the $500 million construction project at the I-16/I-75 interchange in Macon is impossible to avoid. The highways funnel hundreds of thousands of cars monthly through the middle of the state from south to north and east to west, including truck traffic from Savannah’s port and midwesterners headed to Florida. Both roads are primary hurricane evacuation routes: I-16 serves much of Coastal Georgia and I-75 serves Floridians and some south Georgians. The constantly changing zig-zagging temporary lane changes dwarf the I-95/I-16 interchange construction just outside Savannah. This week drivers got a shock from Georgia’s Department of Transportation: There’s no completion date for the Macon project. The work started in 2017 and was set to be completed by 2030. Now there’s no end date because so much of the work is delayed; only 2 phases of the 7-phase project are considered complete. Here’s the update from Laura Corley in The Macon Newsroom.
More questions!
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Here’s your quiz link for the week.
From the week
- Plant Vogtle Unit 3 starts feeding your power grid. Indeed, after a 7-year delay a portion of Georgia Power’s nuclear power project is pushing power to the grid for about 500,000 homes. While it’s good to know there’s more power available, customers have already been paying for the new plant and will see more price hikes follow the project’s end.
- Savannah traffic growth brings more serious and deadly car crashes. Savannah city officials are requesting $23 million to redesign intersections and streets for safer car, bike and walking traffic. The Current’s Jake Shore looks at the problem spots and recommendations for making them safer.
- Chatham County District Attorney Shaleena Cook Jones didn’t join a group of Georgia DAs protesting the new Prosecuting Attorney’s Qualifications Commission but she did voice her displeasure at a roundtable, saying the move targets people and not problems. Benjamin Payne of GPB News reports on the meeting and her comments.
Warehouse this way, warehouse that way
Warehouses are popping up like mushrooms, covering farmland and wooded areas along the coast. It’s no wonder why as Georgia Ports grow busier and Coastal Georgia draws more manufacturing. After all, the shipments coming in or going out have to go somewhere before the items can go to their final destinations. The Current’s Kailey Cota and Mary Landers are working on stories about sheer growth and impacts of the warehouses along the coast — what questions do you have about them? Send your queries to thecurrentga@gmail.com and we’ll try to find answers for you.
Can facts win on social media? Maybe.
Social media platforms and the freedom they offer are commonly blamed for polarization, misinformation and degrading discourse. Some of that could change, according to new research. While most social media algorithms spotlight information that draws the most response, it can also be changed to reward users who share or create posts with high ratings for accuracy and fact-based reporting. Two social psychologists and a marketing scholar presented solutions at the 2023 Nobel Prize summit, and their explanation for how the social media world could improve with a few tweaks is here, from The Conversation.
Pew research from last year shows 31% of adults get their news from Facebook and 70% use the platform regularly; smaller but significant percentages of people get news from and use YouTube, Instagram and X aka Twitter regularly. In the past few months, we’ve expanded our outlets for sharing our journalism: You’ll find The Current’s work on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and X/Twitter: We go where you are and hope you’ll join us at thecurrentga.org. Want to share some fact-based journalism? Send a friend this link to sign up for our newsletters.
Your second cup: A word from deep space
Sometimes it’s hard to get a response from a spouse or child who’s sitting 2 feet away, so we have to appreciate that NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory re-established communication with the Voyager 2 spacecraft that’s 12.3 billion miles away. Actually, we have to appreciate almost everything about the Voyager 2 that’s been traveling in space since 1977 and sending back information every day about deep space — until late last month. A blip in code sent to the craft misdirected its antenna and cut off communications until early Friday morning. Read about the successful effort to restore communications and listen to or read an NPR interview last week with Suzanne Dodd, the scientist who’s managing the Voyager program.
Enjoy.
GDOT: ‘No final completion date’ for I-16/I-75 interchange expansion
The groundbreaking for the $500 million interchange expansion was in June 2017. A GDOT spokesperson told The Telegraph in 2021 that work on the interchange was likely to be completed by 2030. More recently, GDOT spokesperson Gina Snider said, “there is no final completion date currently.”
Long-delayed Plant Vogtle nuclear expansion goes into service
Last week, a panel of experts told members of the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) during a hearing that Georgia Power’s 2.7 million customers will pay significantly more for the nuclear expansion than if the company had used natural gas.
Savannah requests $23M grant in response to rising car crash deaths, injuries
Data shows car crashes in Savannah resulting in death and serious injury for drivers, cyclists and pedestrians grew again in 2022 after record high reached in 2021.
Savannah DA slams Georgia’s new prosecutor oversight board as ‘dangerous’ to criminal justice reform
The district attorney in Savannah’s Chatham County is denouncing the Georgia’s new Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission, which is tasked with investigating complaints of alleged prosecutorial misconduct.
Social media rewards behavior. Research shows it can be used to encourage accuracy
Research shows that social media has the ability to create user habits to share high-quality content. After a few tweaks to the reward structure of social media platforms, users begin to share information that is accurate and fact-based.
Jeff Cown named EPD director
The EPD’s new director is a 33-year veteran of the Department of Natural Resources.
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