ELLABELL ― Assembly-line workers at Hyundai’s recently opened factory churn out one electric vehicle per minute.
The roads around the plant, though, are often parking lots.
Traffic at shift change in this once bucolic stretch of rural Georgia rivals rush-hour congestion at Atlanta’s Spaghetti Junction and Downtown Connector. Locals here call it “the quagmire.”
Hyundai’s sprawling manufacturing center opened in October — quicker than road improvements meant to transform a seldom-used I-16 interchange into a gateway for an 8,500-employee campus.
Staffing is a fraction of that at this point — an estimated 1,500, not including crews building an EV battery plant on the site, which is about 20 miles west of Savannah.
That still gridlocks nearby roads as Hyundai employees collide with laborers of neighboring manufacturers, such as firearms maker Daniel Defense and vinyl products fabricator Orafol, and other local traffic.
“It’s bad, horrible, awful,” said Carolyn Sowder, a clerk at Ken’s IGA, a grocery store near the EV plant. “When I left the house this morning, I told my husband, ‘I’m off to go sit in traffic.’ And I don’t even pass through all that mess at the exit.”
Exit 143, where I-16 meets U.S. 280, borders Hyundai’s nearly 3,000-acre manufacturing campus. A factory frontage road branches from U.S. 280 several hundred yards from the interstate.
Road crews are busy installing five roundabouts on U.S. 280 and widening a mile-long stretch from two to four lanes while also extending and expanding the I-16 exit ramps.
Traffic routinely backs up onto the shoulder of the interstate in both directions during peak hours. Exiting commuters creep toward U.S. 280 as other motorists, including truckers moving cargo to and from the Port of Savannah, whiz by at highway speeds. On a recent predawn morning as Hyundai workers headed to the plant, the wait to leave the highway coming from the east topped 12 minutes.
Leaving the factory in the afternoon can be even more stressful. A Hyundai official said the average time to cover the 2.5 miles from the employee parking lots to I-16 is 30 minutes, down from nearly an hour last fall when the automaker launched production. Plant workers said the gridlock frequently stretches beyond the official estimates, though, with reports of 35 to 40 minutes just to clear the frontage road.
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Why is the roadwork so far behind?
The South Korean automaker built its 16 million-square-foot plant from cleared land to opening in two years, much faster than projects of similar scale across the Southeast in recent decades.
The roadwork kept pace until a trio of storms — Tropical Storm Debby, Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton — struck the area in successive months last year. Debby brought the heaviest rainfall in decades while Helene’s winds downed trees and power lines. Milton spared coastal Georgia, staying south, but prompted a precautionary work stoppage.
Only now, more than 7 months after the factory opened, is some of the roadwork nearing completion. The roundabouts and road widening near the plant will be done in June. One of the rotaries, the state’s first peanut-shaped roundabout, is designed to move Savannah-bound traffic from the plant onto U.S. 280 and I-16 east without stopping and will quadruple the number of cars that can move through the area each minute.
As for the widening of the exit ramps, the completion schedule is still to be determined, according to the Georgia Department of Transportation.
Another I-16 interchange is planned east of the site, but construction isn’t scheduled to begin until later this year with a 2027 completion target.
Hyundai’s Brent Stubbs, the factory’s chief administrator, labeled the roadwork as an “inconvenience” for Hyundai and praised GDOT and road crews for the “unprecedented progress” in addressing the issues.
“Everybody thinks there is something else that can be done, but they are doing what they can reasonably do,” said Stubbs, who once worked at the Gulfstream factory in Savannah and noted the frequent traffic bottlenecks outside the jet manufacturer’s gates. “GDOT has been a great partner to get it off the ground. It’s tough to do work when you’ve had the amount of flow we had in building out the site.”
Hyundai has made adjustments to ease congestion at peak times. The automaker shifted its manufacturing start by 30 minutes and encouraged office staff to come to the plant later.
Some stalled motorists are running out of patience.
“I don’t think they thought this out ahead of time,” said Tammy Castro, who works at NAPA Triple J Mechanical, an auto-parts store located along U.S. 280 south of the Hyundai plant. “Maybe they thought about what Hyundai would need, but not about the locals. You avoid that area at all costs.”
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
How do the locals deal with ‘the quagmire’?
Castro and her co-workers “take the back roads” to get to work.
She lives in Eden, 7 miles from the plant using the most direct route. But to get to the store, she jumps on I-16 one exit east of the factory, continues west on the interstate past the U.S. 280 exit and gets off 6 miles later at Exit 137. She then doubles back to the auto parts shop.
Her co-worker, James Burke, takes a similar “long way around” from his home in Guyton, located east of the Hyundai factory.
Yet both say local knowledge does not guarantee a less stressful commute, as more and more of those who work at Hyundai and nearby manufacturers seek out alternate routes.
One of those detours runs by Ken’s IGA some 4 miles north of the factory and the interstate. Since Hyundai opened, the crossroad by the supermarket is “almost impassable” from the time the Hyundai shift lets out and the store’s close at 6:30 p.m.
“They should have fixed the roads first, before they built the plant,” said Jackie Davis, a clerk at Ken’s IG. “It’s bad and getting worse.”
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The other Hyundai-promised traffic relief valve — the new interchange — sits at the end of Old Cuyler Road, a rarely traveled, unpaved path flanked by mobile homes, a shuttered church and a pair of cross-dock warehouses.
The plant frontage road currently dead-ends a half mile from where the new interchange will span I-16.
The planned exit will allow access to Hyundai from the east, convenient for those coming and going from Savannah and its western suburbs. Traffic planners estimate 5,300 cars will use Old Cuyler Road to connect to the plant starting in 2027.
For now, though, the Old Cuyler Road interchange is nothing more than a design on a traffic engineer’s computer. Standing atop a I-16 overpass near the future crossing, one can see the orange barrels, heavy equipment and hardhat-wearing crewman at U.S. 280 in the distance — as well as the brake lights of those navigating “the quagmire.”
“It’s been good for business,” said Castro behind the counter at the NAPA auto parts store. “Sometimes nightmares are.”
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Credit: Justin Taylor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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