The Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) has initiated bids for major transportation improvement projects all across the state, with the agency awarding $73.7 million in new work, including significant, multi-million-dollar projects in Gordon, Hall, Fulton and Dougherty counties.

In all, the 32 new projects will mean mobility improvements for dozens of Georgia communities, according to the GDOT.

With these awards, Georgia DOT has started 242 new construction projects valued at nearly $756 million in Fiscal Year 2012 with two months still remaining.

GDOT Commissioner Keith Golden says that many of the projects awarded are expensive, large-scale improvements to major interstatehighways and other major arteries. Other projects are smaller jobs on less-traveled city streets and county roads.

However, each project, “regardless of its size or cost, represents an important enhancement to the safety, growth or maintenance of Georgia’s transportation network,” Golden says.

The largest single project of the 32 announced today is for the construction of a new Interstate I-75 interchange at Union Grove Road south of Calhoun in Gordon County. The $16.8-million job will be done by Sunbelt Structures, Inc., of Tucker, and should be finished in September, 2014.

Also awarded was a contract for the replacement of the closed Broad Avenue Bridge in Albany. PCL Civil Constructors Inc., of Tampa, FL, will replace the Flint River span for $11.9 million; the new bridge to open in July, 2015.

Other projects include the following:Widening two miles of State Route 347 near Interstate Highway 985 and Lake Lanier in Hall County; $11.6 million; C.W. Matthews Contracting Co., Inc., of Marietta; $3.7 million for widening and bridge joints repair on seven miles of Buford Highway/SR 13 from Spring Street in Fulton County to the Dekalb County line; also C.W. Matthews; and, The replacement of the decorative canopy fencing on the 17th Street Bridge above Interstates 75/85 (the Downtown Connector) in Atlanta; $1.4 million; Massana Construction, Inc., of Tyrone, Ga.