The Tennessee Department of Transportation will be holding public workshops on Corridor K next Monday and Tuesday, March 28 and 29. These workshops are important because TDOT will be recommending that the option of spot improvements to existing U.S. 64 should be dropped from consideration. We need your voices to help convince them to keep this option in the mix. Please attend one or both of the meetings and make your opinions known.
The times and places for the meetings are:
Monday, March 28, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Copper Basin High School, Gymnasium
300 Cougar Drive, Copperhill, TN
Tuesday, March 29, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Polk County High School, Cafeteria
7200 Highway 411 N, Benton, TN
TDOT will also be accepting written comments through April 30, 2011, so even if you can’t make one of the meetings, your voice can still be heard. Comments can be submitted on the project website at http://www.tdot.state.tn.us/corridork/contactform.htm or by mail or email to
Mr. Chester Sutherland
Project Management Division
TDOT Region 2
P.O. Box 22368
Chattanooga, TN 37422
Chester.Sutherland@tn.gov
In your comments, please include some or all of the following talking points:
- As local residents and taxpayers, we strongly support retaining an alternative in the EIS that keeps the highway largely in the existing location, but want to see it improved for recreation use and ease of travel.
○ We support connecting the east and west part of the county with a good road that is safe
○ If you eliminate all the alternatives besides a “no action” and big-build by-passes, you don’t really consider a wide range of options in your alternatives
- Thank you TDOT for “spot improvements” you made last year. They have greatly improved the safety of the existing road and have addressed much of the “safety issue” in the gorge itself.
○ TDOT has taken measures during the rock slide to address known accident hotspots in the gorge and the only known remaining hotspots are outside the gorge.
- We would like to see a serious effort to have an alternative that is creative in design, which helps preserve the very resources and values valuable to the county and region and that we care about; one that can serve as a draw for tourists while staying in the existing footprint.
○ TDOT and the agencies can produce a model road design that will keep our recreation and tourism industry in the county. If you build a by-pass, many people will not know, see, stop and use Polk County as their rafting, eating and staying destination. You will be killing the goose that lays the golden egg.
- An existing alternate route needs to be modestly improved to accommodate times of construction delays.
○ Under phased construction with construction delays in the “off season” if needed, and an alternate route we could serve locals that have to commute.
○ Through traffic has alternate routes in times of delays north or south of Highway 64. Interstate 40 to the north and US 76 (an Appalachian Highway) and other routes to the south offer options.
○ TDOT should consider developing a plan for phased construction and minimally improved alternate routes rather than conclude it can’t be done. Construction costs should include the cost for mitigating traffic disruption during the construction phase, per the plan.
○ Many road closures during construction can be avoided by creative use of temporary traffic signals and one-lane traffic operations such as the one currently in place for the reconstruction of the Brush Creek Bridge east of the gorge.
- The same modestly improved alternate route can accommodate rock slides, or other disruptions beyond construction.
○ “Locals” used back roads to get around rock slides last year. Modest improvements on those routes could offer a much more cost effective “back-up” if needed for local transportation and supply a better collector road for locals than they currently have in with current Polk county budgets.
- There will be huge impacts to the forest, streams and local residents with any of the “big-build” or by-pass alternatives.
○ You will be cutting through the mountains, exposing acid rocks, destroying big swaths of the National Forest, opening new areas for rock slides, impacting imperiled plants and animals, taking people’s homes, and destroying the very jewel of the county that draws people here to live and play.
- Where are the economic benefits to the County? With a Big-Build route that shoots people through the county at high speed, they will likely not get to see the river, the White Water Center and the unspoiled beauty of the forest which attracts them back to spend money on rafting, lodging and food. The State Department of Tourism has just profiled Highway 64 as one of their “backroads” trails encouraging visitors to drive Hwy 64 through the gorge and visit sites along the way.
- If you say that ADHS money can’t be used for spot improvements, what is the basis for that statement? Even if it’s true, shouldn’t the answer be to work to change the restriction rather than throw up your hands and build a more expensive project?
- Who will (and can afford to) maintain two roads? If you build a new “Big-Build” road, what happens to the existing Highway 64? This is a vital road for recreation and local use in the area and if Federal Highway funds go to the new section, who can afford to keep up or repair a rock slide on the old highway; a broke state, broke county, or even a broke federal government?
○ Given that our federal, state and local governments are broke, how can we be talking about a huge construction project when we can improve the existing road and save a lot of money?
○ The existing 64 supports Polk County’s strongest economic driver – the regional tourism and recreation industry. If it is “abandoned” as a state highway – and has no funding to maintain, no improved access to facilities, no funding for response to major flooding or rock slide incidents, are we slighting the most important industry, with much growth potential for Polk County?
○ Can the taxpayers really afford a massive, expensive project to both construct and maintain? Movements are underway in some parts of the country to abandon high standard roads that require massive maintenance funding in favor of smaller roads that are more economical to maintain.
○ Current cost estimates for bypass development are incomplete if they do not reflect the costs of environmental mitigation and related costs. Is TDOT trying to downplay the cost in order to get favorable review of this option?
- Where is the money? Does ARC already have funds for the project “in the bank” or will they need to get more money through the Appalachian Development Highway System? Other sources? Does the state have or will it likely have the 20%? If there is a serious effort to reduce the state’s 20% match, how is it being justified, given that all other segments of the ADHS have been constructed within this limitation? How can increased federal funding for Corridor K and perhaps a few other remaining segments of the ADHS be considered not to be an earmark?