Effingham County commissioners are hoping to get more roads with stripes in the coming year.

Allen Davis of OMI, which handles the public works and roads for the county, submitted a list of proposed improvements to the commissioners at their Jan. 3 meeting, with more than 110 miles of striping and more than 12 miles of surface work recommended to be done.

On the list of roads to get either ash or surface treatment are Low Ground Road, Springfield-Egypt Road, Corinth Church Road and Beecher/Red Maple Estates. The work is being planned for 12.4 miles of road at a projected cost of $892,000.

“We had over 300 complaints on Low Ground Road,” Davis said.

New striping on roads that were improved last year will cover 48 miles with a projected cost of $14,731. There are 70 miles of roads to be re-striped at a cost of $64,481 on Davis’ list of recommendations.

Commissioners also may look at new signs on roads that have surface improvements.

“If we put hard surface on these roads, we need to put signage up,” Assistant County Administrator David Crawley said. “We’re getting complaints on the speed on roads now that are hard-surfaced.”

Davis also told commissioners that the state Department of Transportation has suggested repairs be made to Stillwell Bridge Road over Ebenezer Creek. The DOT put forth its recommendations after its biennial inspection of the county’s bridges.

“Of all the bridges, this was the only one being recommended having repairs to it,” Davis said.

The bridge, built in 1956, is in good shape, Davis said.

“It’s just typical maintenance on a bridge of that age,” he said.

Replacing the bridge could cost $1 million. Work on the bridge is expected to take about 10 days to finish, once it starts. Should the county undertake the repairs asked for, the bridge would be shut down, as would Stillwell Road from Mock Road to Ash Road Extension. Traffic would be detoured around Mock Road to Highway 119.

At their meeting last month, commissioners had concerns about surface treatment of existing roads and how much is being done to them by heavy trucks. Davis said there is still a considerable amount of truck traffic on Lowground Road coming from sand pits off that road.

Commissioner Hubert Sapp said the truck traffic volume was the reason ash was not put on sections of Lowground Road.

“I hate to go in there and put it in and have the trucks beat it out,” he said.

Sapp also asked that any request for a sand mine rezoning needs to have a bond attached to cover possible road repairs. He also said that trucks are causing a problem on Old River Road, and there are stretches of the road, 40 feet in some places, he estimated, that are in need of repair.

“They are tearing that road all to pieces now,” he said.