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"Serve the Traffic"

TDOT answers only to one authority: the automobile

In a softly lit ballroom in UT's University Center last Thursday, students, faculty, and other interested members of the public milled around looking at drawings and photo-illustrations of the bridge that the Tennessee Department of Transportation plans to build from the university's main campus to its agricultural school. One set of architectural sketches was stamped "Caution! Preliminary plans. Subject to change."

But that was the only indication anywhere that the widely and wildly unpopular four-lane bridge was not a done deal. Despite months of protests from students and faculty, along with alternative proposals for a two-lane bridge for pedestrians and cyclists, it was clear TDOT plans to proceed as scheduled. Three days before the public hearing, the News-Sentinel quoted TDOT planning and development director Bill Moore saying, "To operate efficiently, you've got to have four lanes. This meeting will be strictly to address the design."

In fact, getting answers to anything at the public hearing was an almost surreal experience. But it did eventually yield one insight: The agency that spends billions of dollars to lay asphalt from one end of Tennessee to the other does so at the behest of no individual or group. TDOT is ruled by the automobile.

The room was rife with UT administrators, who tended to cluster in groups and started looking for exits whenever approached by anyone not in a suit and tie. John Peters, provost of the Knoxville campus, offered that the bridge design was really up to TDOT. "I don't know that that's a university decision," he said. Pleading ignorance to more specific questions, he helpfully pointed out Eli Fly, UT's vice president for business and finance, and said, "Ask him."

First question to Eli Fly: Every local constituency and some state legislators have gone on record asking for a reconsideration of the project. How much more would it take for the administration to do that? "Well, that's a hypothetical question," Fly says, attempting a collegial smile that keeps disappearing at the corners of his mouth. "I can't answer that."

Okay. Well, who says it has to be four lanes? "I think that's a TDOT decision."

But they say this is what the university requested. Who's in charge? "Well, I'm not going to get into that kind of circular argument." Fly then launches into the familiar explanation that the bridge is needed for the safety of people going back and forth between the two campuses. When it's pointed out that most of the people who actually have to do that seem to favor a two-lane bridge, Fly shrugs. "I wouldn't want to debate them on that."

At least the TDOT representatives, all of them identified with state-issued name badges, seem willing to talk. Kelly Henshaw, a member of the department's design division, listens intently as he's asked a simple question: Who makes the call on how big the bridge is? Without hesitating, he responds—"The traffic."

Henshaw says TDOT projections show traffic volume mushrooming on campus in 10 or 20 years, based on anticipated growth in the student population and other factors. When it's suggested to him that the university might seek—as other universities around the country have done for years—to limit on-campus traffic rather than submit to its inevitable growth, Henshaw shakes his head. "The traffic warrants what it's going to be."

He also opines that UT doesn't really control the streets, since they technically belong to the city of Knoxville. And what if both UT and the city asked for a two-lane bridge? Henshaw shakes his head again. "For the city to say or UT to say, 'We're going to force this down to two lanes,' you can't just do that because you want it or the students want it. It wouldn't meet the needs of the traffic. Therefore, TDOT would say, 'No, you need a four-lane bridge to serve the traffic.'"

Further conversation proceeds along the same line, with Henshaw invoking the same phrase again and again. "We have to design based on our traffic," he says finally. "Traffic dictates just about everything we do."

The traffic could not be reached for comment.

—Jesse Fox Mayshark

With its billion-dollar budget and Nashville bureaucracy, TDOT often appears to be singlemindedly building freeways for cars—not people. And Knoxville's neighborhoods have to live with the results.

by Joe Tarr

It's not hard to see why Cheryl St. Germain decided to build a house in the Westwood neighborhood four years ago. Perched up on a hill under a tall canopy of trees, the neighborhood is something of an anomaly among the cookie-cutter developments of West Knoxville.

First developed in the 1920s, the brick and wood frame houses—some with slate and tile roofs—seem so natural, it's as though they sprouted up with the trees and shrubs.

"I love the trees, the closeness of everything, the diversity of the housing styles," St. Germain says. "It's a great little neighborhood."

Despite all its assets, the neighborhood does have one drawback: a 24-hour, seven-day-a-week hum and groan that emanates from Interstates 40 and 75 just down the hill. New residents eventually learn to live with the noise.

More than 160,000 motorists and trucks zip by every day, grinding their gears, kicking up dust, and coughing out exhaust. Each year the traffic gets heavier, the noise a little louder, and the fumes a bit thicker.

And soon, the thruway will edge even closer to Westwood. The Tennessee Department of Transportation is preparing to widen the expressway to eight lanes, and reconfigure the exit and entrance ramps, moving Papermill Road to the other side of the highway from the neighborhood.

Westwood isn't the only neighborhood butting heads with TDOT over road designs and construction projects—Fourth and Gill, Forest Heights, students and faculty at the University of Tennessee, and South Knoxville residents have all had problems with what might be the state's most powerful agency.

In its mission to build convenient, fast, safe, durable roads, the department has paved through many neighborhoods over the years, sometimes splitting them in half, sometimes destroying them altogether. TDOT's roads have had a profound impact on communities, shaping development patterns and leading to sprawl.

TDOT officials say they're trying to be more conscientious about how they design roads and where they put them. But with an annual budget approaching $1.4 billion and at least $620 million of road work for the Knoxville region in the works, the Department of Transportation is a bureaucratic Goliath that more or less goes where it wants to. That needs to change, critics say.

"In the past, neighborhood concerns were just disregarded. If it was your neighborhood, you'd have to sacrifice in order to move traffic. This happened throughout the country," says Finbarr Saunders, a Westwood resident. "The point now should be that as you improve roads, do no further harm.

"This mess right here is a lot bigger than our neighborhood," he says, pointing down the hill to cars and trucks whizzing by.

The yellowed newspaper clipping shows the intersection of Broadway and Central on a drab December day in 1956. A delivery truck turns onto Central, while several cars wait for the light to change. The caption underneath the photo reads: "An end to this? Cars are backed up in two lanes for a block on North Broadway at Central Street...Planners believe the proposed expressways will eliminate much of this congestion, principally by removing through trucks from the city streets."

Cars are indeed lined up in two lanes on both streets back a block, but by today's standards, it's not much of traffic jam. Not to people who now routinely sit for an hour or more on I-40 while rescue crews clean up an accident, or get trapped on Kingston Pike during UT football game traffic or at the peak of the Christmas shopping season. Or to anyone who has to drive to West Knoxville during rush-hour.

"The expressways...will mean safer driving, quicker and cheaper driving, as well as the popping of an economic blister for Knoxville," reads the News-Sentinel article accompanying the picture. It's easy to laugh at the naiveté of such declarations now, but back in the '50s, officials in Knoxville and cities around the country felt an imperative to construct large expressways to accommodate the multiplying number of cars, to encourage economic growth and keep residents and businesses from moving to more convenient locations.

Spearheaded by President Eisenhower, the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 envisioned a network of superhighways linking the country's cities. Originally slated to cost $27 billion and take 14 years to construct, the cost mushroomed well beyond that and wouldn't be completed until the early '90s.

The first expressway in Knoxville was built by the city in the mid-'50s. Called the Magnolia Expressway, it connected Gay Street and Magnolia Avenue in the east and emptied out on Unaka Street west of downtown. A few years later, the federal government began connecting the Magnolia Expressway with Interstates 40 and 75, which wouldn't be completed until the early '70s. A decade later, TDOT was expanding I-40 to six lanes. Bypasses like Interstate 640, the James White Parkway and the South Knoxville Connector were built to better move traffic in and around the city.

Yet, TDOT always seems to have more roads to build or expand, whether residents want them or not. And the reasons for each new project are the same reasons that were given for the old projects: it'll ease congestion and make the roads safer.

"Part of the problem is they've got so much money, and this gives them tremendous power to proceed as if they've got some enormous mandate," says UT philosophy professor John Nolt, who fought against the South Knoxville Connector and who is currently fighting to limit a proposed UT bridge to two lanes. "They throw their weight around more than any other state agency that I know of."

Getting a handle on what the Tennessee Department of Transportation is planning for Knoxville is no easy task. No one at TDOT's Knox regional office knows all of the projects that are being planned for this area, says Louanne Grandinetti, TDOT spokeswoman. The planning is done in Nashville, while local TDOT staff oversee construction. "Not any of [the Knoxville staff] will be able to give you a global view on that," Grandinetti says.

The Metropolitan Planning Organization—a regional planning group composed of county and municipal leaders which tries to coordinate and plan road construction and transportation needs—has a better handle on it than TDOT's own Knoxville employees.

Altogether, there are some 88 road construction projects being built or planned in the Knoxville region, according to MPO data. More than $620 million is being made available for these projects from a variety of state and federal sources. (Not all of the money is at the moment guaranteed, and if all of the projects are eventually built they will total more than $620 million.

Westwood borders the first phase of the I-40 expansion project, which will widen the interstate from six to eight lanes from Wesley to Papermill and reconfigure the exit ramps along with Papermill Road. Scheduled to begin this year, the $30 million project should finish in August 2002. Wesley to Winston Road will be widened starting in 2002 for $28 million.

Also in the works is a widening of I-40 to six lanes between I-275 and Cherry Street, and reconfiguring of the I-40-James White Parkway interchange—a project that could cost $131 to $172 million.

The project list goes on and on, and in almost each case there are neighborhoods and residents who worry about what will happen to their community:

South Knoxville Boulevard is slated to be expanded another 3.5 miles to Chapman Highway. Total cost is expected to top $40 million.

Alcoa Highway will be reconstructed to six lanes from Montlake Road to Hunt Road for more than $150 million.

There's also the infamous $10 million four-lane bridge connecting UTK's main and agriculture campuses, widely unpopular among students and professors.

Then there are projects like the Greater Knoxville Beltway—which would connect Interstates 40 and 75 through a northwest bypass—that are still in the initial planning stages and have not yet been budgeted for.

This winter, when the state began knocking trees over along I-40 and Papermill Drive, Westwood residents rallied fast.

The trees were a major noise and sight buffer between the neighborhood and the expressway just down the hill. The residents tied yellow ribbons around trees they hoped would be saved, and phoned the media. TDOT agreed to leave a stand of trees alongside the neighborhood, though some may have to be cut later.

Lead by Finbarr Saunders and Joni Caldwell, Westwood residents have a number of concerns about the project.

One of their main worries is that noise barriers be built to absorb the noise of the traffic and trucks, which roll by non-stop, 24 hours a day. "Go out in the yard and try to have a conversation," Caldwell says. "One of the residents told me, 'I have not been able to sleep since they took those trees down.'"

In a 1985 environmental study of the project, noise barriers were called for all along the I-40 expansion project. They were later removed because the cost was thought to be prohibitive, says TDOT's Mike Rasmussen, who deals with environmental concerns. To determine whether barriers are needed, the department decides how many homes will be affected by a road project, then it calculates the cost of building the barriers. It divides the cost by the number of homes. If the cost averages out $25,000 or less per home, the barriers can be built, he says. (If more than 40 homes are affected, the allocation per home jumps to $27,500. The residents and TDOT disagree over how many homes are actually affected by the noise. TDOT has said the number is only eight; residents say it's more than 40.)

"In a lot of cases it costs $40,000 to $50,000 a house to build the noise walls and that's just not feasible," Rasmussen says.

With Westwood, the department says noise barriers may not do much good, because the neighborhood is on a hill, and noise travels up. But faced with continual pressure from the neighborhood group and the city, TDOT has agreed to do another noise study.

"We haven't felt much softening [on the issue]," says Caldwell. "They quit telling us no but they've told us our terrain makes our situation difficult.

"I think they feel if they start a precedent, everybody will want them."

There are quite a few neighborhoods that would like noise barriers, or that have other gripes against the department.

A.L. Reed, who lives on Verton Drive in Powell, remembers when Interstate 75 was built back in the early '70s. "When the Interstate was first built, we were told the maximum amount of tractor trailer traffic would be 4,000 to 6,000 in a 24-hour period. It's gone way past that, blown that out," says Reed, who has lived in his home since 1965.

Residents now count 11 tractor trailers a minute, or 600 an hour, he says. "They all admit we do have a problem, but they say the cost doesn't justify them putting up noise barriers," Reed says.

Again, there's a dispute on the number of homes that are affected—TDOT says six; the neighborhood thinks 43.

Many people just don't seem to trust TDOT's motives or information. Susan Reichart, a UT biology professor who owns a farm in Powell, will likely lose her property when the Greater Knoxville Beltway is built sometime in the next decade. Reichart says TDOT told residents they were putting the project aside for now, but then she received a letter from the department saying they're doing archeological work in the area.

"It's all hush-hush as to what route they're going to take but I think they know very well what route they're going to take," she says. "I think the way things work around here, once they've made their decision, that's it."

Failing to listen is a familiar complaint against TDOT. Nolt fought against the South Knoxville Connector, and is fighting now to get the UT bridged reduced from four to two lanes.

"TDOT was in both cases just egregiously arrogant in not taking seriously the concerns of most people who were affected by the projects," he says. "They asked for input and then proceeded to ignore the input, or made token gestures.

"[In South Knoxville] there were old established neighborhoods, and people were pushed out, and there really wasn't any justification. There still isn't any justification for that enormous connector."

Originally proposed around 1970, the connector was envisioned as a way of linking visitors to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. At the time, Chapman Highway was the main route to the Smokies, but since then Route 66 off of Interstate 40 and the Pellissippi Parkway have both been developed. The remainder of the road—from Moody Avenue to either John Sevier or Chapman Highway (near the Ye Olde Steakhouse) has been delayed because several sinkholes were discovered in the undeveloped land the road is to cut through.

John and Elizabeth Farr—part of South Knoxvillians Advocating Reasonable Development, or SKARD—border the forest and swamp land the road would cut through. One of their neighbor's homes would probably be taken for the project. They've been fighting to stop the connector, saying there's no need for it, fearing it will lead to sprawl and wanting to preserve the undeveloped land that the road would cut through. They also don't believe there needs to be another major corridor to the Great Smoky Mountains, which they believe are over-developed.

"We went to Nashville and talked with [TDOT director Bruce] Saltsman himself, and my impression is they're just a bunch of powerful people who were used to pushing themselves around," says Elizabeth Farr. "As far as the need for the road, they wouldn't listen to anything we said."

However, her husband doesn't blame TDOT. "The road probably was not their idea. There are political and economic pressures wanting to build up the real estate value in South Knoxville. I've never really blamed TDOT for dreaming up the road. They're not the most responsive organizations, but I don't blame them for it."

Mayor Victor Ashe had asked the state to scale down the project from what was originally constructed. "What they built there was ridiculous. They built an interstate-like road and basically destroyed a neighborhood. It needlessly condemned twice as much property as was needed. But to be honest, there are people near there who think it's wonderful. Basically, they have their own private interstate."

Ashe favored a "Middlebrook Pike-type" road, that would have had connecting streets. And he asked TDOT to consider such a project for the rest of the connector.

However, Bill Moore, TDOT's chief planner, says the remainder of the connector will be like what has already been built. "The purpose is to get people from point A to point B. If you've got traffic lights, you're back on Chapman Highway again," he says. "That's the safest road way we know how to design."

The state is not yet sure what route it will take to get from Moody to Chapman, Moore says. A few options will be drawn up and presented at a public hearing this fall, he says.

In one instance, at least, the state does seem to be listening to residents.

Larry Fitzpatrick didn't like the way TDOT had designed the I-40 expansion project through Fourth and Gill. The state's plans called for an elevated highway. Fitzpatrick, who has an engineering degree, and a handful of neighbors got together and designed their own set of plans.

In their proposal, the new I-40 runs 12 to 15 feet below ground-level, which would help abate the noise. Since 1993, TDOT and the Fourth and Gill Neighborhood Association have been going back and forth, arguing over details and figures. The neighborhood's idea would be slightly more expensive. Moore says the department is still evaluating the neighborhood's proposal and isn't sure if it will work or not. But the state is at least considered the proposal.

The main impetuses behind the alternate Fourth and Gill plan are noise and ugliness.

"It's a continual noise. You tend to get used to it, but you never really get used it. You also tend to get angry at it," Fitzpatrick says. "Also, you can be upstairs in a house and stare out the window while you're brushing your teeth and see cars go by."

Lack of local planners is one of the criticisms of the department. "In most cases, they don't get close to the situation. They do all this from Nashville. They don't really have a representative here that knows the territory," Fitzpatrick says. "We've been doing what a local person on the ground would do. It's their responsibility to design the road, not ours.

"They know what they're doing. They can design nice roads. But they don't connect with the neighborhoods."

"To have the planning done locally can only help the process," agrees the MPO's executive director Jeff Welch.

However, Moore disagrees. "Almost all government and city agencies have been asked to keep their cost to a minimum. We just don't have staff and money to build up in Knoxville and Nashville and Memphis and Chattanooga."

Much of the planning work is contracted out to local engineering firms, Moore says, and TDOT's own planners spend a good deal of time at the project's location.

Another criticism of the department's planning process is that there's no continuity. When a project moves from one stage to another—say from concept phase to preliminary design phase—it is typically passed on to different TDOT employees, Welch says. For anyone affected by the project, this can lead to hand-wringing when it comes to getting information.

The state is slowly phasing in a new approach to road building, however. It will soon assign managers who will oversee projects from start to finish. And Welch sees more of a willingness to listen to the public.

"There's a couple of projects where they've engaged the public early on. They started talking with people about the Alcoa Highway project 12 to 13 years ago," Welch says. "It's a new way of doing business and TDOT is a big ship turning a little bit."

The length of the process also causes problems. In a best-case scenario, it will take about seven years to get a road project from the drawing boards to concrete. But often, the process can drag on for decades, as officials wait on funding or deal with unforeseen problems.

"Government's going to outlast anyone. It's difficult to maintain your stamina over a long-term project," Welch says.

"The unfortunate thing is people come and go at TDOT. These projects were planned by people years and years ago," Grandinetti says. "They've been going on so long, that the people who planned them, they're gone."

Asked if TDOT shouldn't be rethinking projects that have dragged on for so long, Grandinetti says, "You don't continually reassess yourself. We're not going to say, 'Were not going to do the Fourth and Gill project,' or 'We're not going to do Papermill Road.' If you second guess yourself on everything—we have 1,500 projects—we would never accomplish anything."

So who, ultimately, decides where the new roads will go?

That depends on who you talk to. Grandinetti says it's the legislators and governor. Welch and Moore say its a complicated planning process that assesses where they're needed. And some TDOT engineers say the traffic decides.

The official planning timeline goes something like this:

First, the MPO develops an on-going transportation plan—updated every three years—with input from the public and TDOT to decide which road projects are needed most. The report looks 25 years into the future. When funding becomes available for a specific project, an advance planning report is done, followed by an environmental assessment—each one taking eight to 12 months. These reports look at various options and how they might affect the community. This is followed by public hearings, after which a final location for the road is decided.

Then engineering design studies and ground surveys are done, which takes about a year. More public hearings are held on the design, and then plans are made to obtain right-of-ways—which takes about six to nine months.

Construction itself typically lasts two to four years.

If people want to be proactive about road construction and head off any ill-thought-out roads, they need to get involved in the early stages—when MPO is holding public hearings for its transportation plans.

"It's not glamorous, you think it's not going to affect you, but it does. People choose to stay away. It works both ways—the state DOT has to engage people and the public has to attend these meetings," Welch says.

But you'd be hard-pressed to find a more active group of citizens than those living in Westwood. Caldwell has reams of documents and maps at her house, keeps neighbors informed with emails, newsletters, and phone calls, and is in touch almost daily with TDOT officials about the status of the project.

Some of Caldwell's neighbors were on the case 20 years before her. The results have so far been mixed.

Unlike a handful of other states and communities which are beginning to reject federal highway funds and are refusing to build new roads, TDOT keeps laying asphalt.

Moore says Tennesseans want more roads.

"There's more cars in Tennessee then there are people," he says. "We're trying to meet what the people of Tennessee want. What they're showing us from history is they're driving more and more. If you can make everyone live in downtown Knoxville in a high-rise, we wouldn't need roads. But they don't want to."

So whatever the consequences, it seems Tennessee will get more roads.

"This is just a huge machine rolling, rolling, rolling, stamping out roads. Somebody drew up some plans for this in 1989, and now they've just got money, so here they go," Caldwell says. "Trying to do such a massive amount of work, somebody's got to take action and quit talking about it. I understand they have a really tough job. But at the same time whoever was thinking back in 1989 when they planned this thing, wasn't thinking very well.

"We do sympathize with the humanity of TDOT. I wouldn't have their job for anything. Because they're just a big cog in the machine, and they can't do anything about it."

Across the river in South Knoxville, John Farr echoes Caldwell's concerns. "I understand that road-building is their living. They're working for politicians and the MPO. They think they interface with the people in these ways, I guess," Farr says. "My general feeling is, let's take care of the roads we've got. We can't keep building roads. The era of the big road building that started with Eisenhower is over."

March 23, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 12
© 2000 Metro Pulse