Metro Pulse/Guest Column/Be Safe

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Stay home

by George Dodds

The state of Tennessee—the longest, narrowest, most horizontally oriented state in the Union—has created an "attractive nuisance" through its building of a multi-lane, limited-access highway that is unsafe at any speed. This is an accomplishment of sorts that ought not to pass unnoticed. In response to the Tennessee Department of Transportation's (TDOT) feat, the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) is making motor vehicle safety a primary concern in one of the most hazardous zones of asphalt in the state, Route 40 between Papermill and Gallaher View Roads.

Through project "BE-SAFE," The KPD is ticketing motorists for driving in precisely the same manner they have always driven, only now it is apparently more illegal than before. Most want nothing more than to be safe, particularly from other drivers whose methods increase the risk of accidents. While the "BE-SAFE" program is logical and appropriate from a law enforcement perspective, could not the human hours and physical resources spent by the KPD on this project be spent elsewhere in the city, if only this seemingly endless road construction of our interstate highways system would simply stop?

The city and the county of Knox are addicted to the drug of highway construction; it is the crack cocaine of our state and local economy. At the end of the I-40 expansion, three, four, five years from now, after a mathematically predictable number of motor vehicle accidents resulting in an equally statistically foreseeable number of bodily injuries and deaths, what will we have? There will be fewer trees and less landscape, more car and multi-axle truck traffic with no less congestion. How do I know this? The first is a simple matter of fact as there will be more concrete and asphalt, less land and vegetation. The latter - that more highways produce more traffic - has been demonstrated in numerous traffic studies during the past two decades throughout the country.

Traffic is like gas—it expands to fill its container. Moreover, the most livable cities in the United States, during these same two decades, have been decreasing the presence of high-speed traffic through their cities, not increasing it. Yet Knoxville continues to press forward, the poster child for TDOT—an entity that has never seen a vista of rolling hills with pasture land and trees and not imagined it as a multi-lane vehicular delivery system.

I understand that road construction in Tennessee is largely a "work-fare" program in that the inordinate number of tiny counties that comprise our state obtain an immoderate proportion of TDOT revenue to employ their citizen-voters. While we in Knox County and Knoxville can't solve this state's larger internal pork barrel dilemma, we can, if nothing else, put an end to the inane destruction of our city, landscape, air quality, and the planned maiming and death of innocent motorists, simply so that three clogged lanes of traffic can, in three, four, or five years, become four, five, or six lanes of clogged traffic. This is an ignorant and potentially corrupt system that is as cynical in its motivation as it is immoral and unethical in both its means and its ends.

Imagine, for a moment, choosing not the road that is a proven fiscal failure—highway expansion—but rather investing a portion of the TDOT budget into helping create small business, educate our youth, or to further expand the opportunity of home ownership for those ineligible for traditional mortgages. It is all welfare; why not place the fare where it will produce a positive economic yield in the future rather than a negative taxpayer debt? After all, roads twice as wide need twice the maintenance, paid for with state funds—funds currently raised by sales taxes that are already inadequate to support current needs. If only Tennessee could learn to "just say no" to the crack cocaine of road construction.

In the meantime, between now and the end of the "improvements" to I-40, I recommend that to BE SAFE, the best option is to STAY HOME.

George Dodds is an assistant professor at the UT School of Architecture.