Atlanta is preparing to hunt down its remaining dirt, gravel and rocky roads, then figure out which ones should be paved or otherwise fixed. A proposed City Council push would ask the transportation department to catalogue unimproved streets that can leave residents, delivery drivers and mobility vehicles fighting mud and potholes. The city may finally have to answer a basic infrastructure question: how many rough roads are still out there?
City Leaders Want A Complete Road Count
Councilmember Antonio Lewis and colleagues want the Atlanta Department of Transportation to identify unimproved, unpaved, dirt, gravel and rocky roads in their districts, according to Axios. Councilmember Alex Wan pushed for the inventory to cover the entire city instead of stopping at a handful of districts.
The current legislative language described by the Atlanta City Council is more district-specific: It calls for ATLDOT to inventory roads in District 12, assess their conditions, identify needed infrastructure improvements and recommend fixes. That makes the proposal a map-first plan rather than an immediate promise that every unpaved street will suddenly get a ribbon-cutting.
Southwest Atlanta Residents Have Already Made The Case
The urgency is easy to see on Ewing and Roswell streets in southwest Atlanta, where about 20 homeowners told FOX 5 Atlanta that vehicles and delivery trucks routinely struggle with deep potholes. Residents also said MARTA Mobility vehicles have gotten stuck, while rain makes the roads harder to navigate and can keep people from reaching their mailboxes.
Homeowners described years of frustration, with the city often responding by adding more gravel instead of delivering a permanent solution. One resident told FOX 5 that city officials had discussed a price tag of roughly $2 million to $3 million for paving and related work, underscoring why drainage and road design may matter almost as much as the asphalt itself.
A citywide inventory would give those complaints a common framework: location, road condition, drainage needs, the number of households served and the cost of bringing each street up to standard. It could also make it harder for small residential roads to disappear into the infrastructure equivalent of a junk drawer.
Atlanta Is Already Funding Some Unpaved-Road Work
The new inventory effort is not arriving in a vacuum. The City Council says members are also considering a first renewal of the Unpaved Roads Phase 1, Group 2 project, at a cost of approximately $2.9 million.
ATLDOT's current project materials list “Unpaved Roadways Phase 1, Group 1 & 2” among active roadway improvements in Council Districts 1, 3, 5, 6 and 9, according to the department's current project list. The proposed inventory could show whether those projects are reaching the most heavily used or most populated unpaved streets, rather than simply addressing roads one contract at a time.
Full Council Will Consider The Push Monday
The full council is expected to consider the legislation Monday, when members return from summer recess. Hillis has called for prioritizing projects based on how many residents live along each unpaved road, while Wan's citywide approach would create a broader baseline for that decision.
The measure would not pave a road by itself, and it does not yet establish a final timetable for construction. But if it passes, Atlanta would be taking the first practical step toward turning its remaining dirt roads from scattered neighborhood complaints into a citywide infrastructure list.
