STATESBORO, Ga. — Statesboro has reached a significant milestone, as every road within the city is now paved, marking a first in its history.

This achievement was cemented with the completion of the Anderson Street Paving Project, which covered a 385-foot stretch that was the last unpaved connector road in the city.

“Ensuring all roads in the city are paved has been a major objective for us,” remarked Brad Deal, the city’s director of public works and engineering. His comments highlight the significance of this accomplishment for the Statesboro community.

While Deal noted that a few one-way alleyways remain unpaved, Anderson Street was indeed the final dirt road open to two-way traffic within the city limits.

Deal also explained that the paving of Anderson Street had faced delays, originally planned over a decade ago but postponed due to funding challenges. The introduction of the Transportation Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax (TSPLOST), a one-penny sales tax, has been pivotal in accelerating such infrastructure projects.

“Prior to TSPLOST, we lacked an effective funding mechanism for these ventures,” Deal explained. “Without it, we could only resurface about one to three miles of streets annually. With TSPLOST, we can now achieve at least double that amount each year.”

The city also recently completed its FY2024 Street Resurfacing Project.

“We just completed resurfacing of about five miles of streets in the city,” Deal said about the project. “We’ve got plans to do a couple of major routes through the city on the next round, which will happen early next year. One of those will be Zetterower Avenue.”

Deal said now that the city has accomplished its goal of making sure all roads inside the city are paved, it will turn its sights to keeping up with growth.

“We’re planning to put it towards a lot of capacity improvements we need to make,” he said. “In other words, roads and intersections that have a lot of traffic congestion. We’ve got plans to make some improvements at several locations. The city is experiencing a lot of growth right now, and so we have a lot of projects that are aimed to address that growth.”