by Joe Sullivan
Knoxville area transportation planners are making a start toward addressing alternatives to a proliferation of cars driving ever greater distances and spawning ever more congestion on the ground and pollution in the air.
A Regional Transportation Alternatives Committee (RTAC) chaired by former state senator Bud Gilbert has commissioned an 18-month study of transportation alternatives in key corridors throughout the metropolitan area and extending to the Smokies. The study will be conducted by a consulting firm that's due to be selected from among five finalists shortly after the first of the year. About $700,000 in funding for the study has been assembled from grants by the Tennessee Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, and the National Park Service.
Among its focal points: The potentials for rail and bus links for commuters, visitors to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and its environs as well as from the airport to downtown Knoxville and Oak Ridge.
What's most noteworthy about the initiative is its break with the myopic local mind-set that for every traffic problem the solution is more roads. "Up to now, in my 15 years here, there hasn't been a look at alternative modes in these corridors," says Jeff Welch, director of the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which is coordinating the study along with RTAC.
Both Gilbert and Welch caution against expectations of any dramatic breakthroughs in the near term. Dispersion of destinations works against achievement of the densities needed to make passenger rail service feasible between any pairs of points. And even if the densities were sufficient, getting Norfolk Southern to allow use of its lines through the western suburbs and to Alcoa would mean overcoming a community-be-damned attitude on the railroad's part. But Gilbert stresses that near-term solutions aren't what the study is all about.
"It's about addressing what we need 20 years from now, about preventing the national park that's one of our primary magnets from getting to the point that people can't get there anymore," Gilbert says.
In anticipating what may needed to support the Knoxville area's future growth, it's instructive to look at what larger cities like Nashville are doing to cope with their transportation problems in the here and now.
In sharp contrast with the Knoxville Area Chamber Partnership's primary emphasis on building a $550 million beltway around Knox County, the Greater Nashvlle Chamber of Commerce has taken the lead in pushing for a commuter rail system there. Its recent report Beating Gridlock proclaims that, "To maintain our position as a desirable place to live and do business, we need a regional transportation system that offers people a comfortable, convenient alternative to driving cars." Thanks to an earlier consulting study similar to the one that's now being set in motion here, work is already underway on the first prong of a five-prong, 137-mile commuter rail system that will fan out in all directions from the center of the city at a total cost of $266 million.
"While it's not a panacea, the system will result in traffic mitigation, environmental advantages and all kinds of development clustered around the stations," says Lewis Lavine, the Nashville chamber's vice chairman of transportation.
At the same time, sentiment is welling up throughout the Nashville region against the unbridled outward reach of subdivisions and commercial strips that have come to be vilified as sprawl. Last week's regional planning "summit" sponsored by Vanderbilt University became at times a pep rally for opposition to what most of the 350 participants seemed to perceive as the worst manifestation of sprawl on the horizon: namely, a proposed $1.2 billion ring road orbiting the city that seems certain to spur rampant development on its outskirts.
Just as Nashville could be harbinger of what the future has in store for Knoxville, the worst fear of many Nashvillians is becoming another Atlanta. There, beltways that were intended to divert traffic from the interstates through the city have become the most gridlocked of all roadways in the region. Because of air pollution levels in excess of Environmental Protection Agenda standards, the EPA acted last year to cut off federal money for highway construction throughout the 10-county region. But even as the number of ozone alert days rose to a new high this year, traffic-generating development continued unabated.
In an effort to curtail it, the state legislature last spring created a Georgia Regional Transportation Authority with sweeping powers. According to a recent article in the New York Times, "The agency will have the power to build (or veto) roads and transit systems. In theory, it should build and operate a rail line through any of several counties that have opposed mass transit. It can also have an effective veto over large subdivisions, office parks and malls by refusing permits to tie into the road system."
With a population of 3.2 million, metropolitan Atlanta dwarfs the Knoxville area both in sheer size and scope of its growth pains. Yet there are similar indications of sprawl at work that, if left unchecked, could produce big headaches here. For example, the average miles per day driven by Knoxvillians increased from 30.7 in 1996 to 34.2 in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration. While that still trails Nashville's 35.7 mile average and Atlanta 37.3 miles, Knoxville's rate of growth was fastest.
At the same time, record ozone levels here last summer exceeded EPA standards adopted in 1997 that are now being challenged in court. The prospect of an EPA crackdown here is not beyond the realm.
All the more reason why transportation alternatives need to be addressed. But these, in turn, need to be part of a much broader strategy for encouraging transportation-efficient patterns of development.
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