Metro Pulse/Insights/Downtown Bridges

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by Joe Sullivan

Bounded as it is by a river, creek beds, and railroad tracks, downtown Knoxville is dependent on bridges and viaducts for its connections to the rest of the city. But several of these aging structures have deteriorated and now need to be replaced. And except for the intervention of Mayor Bill Haslam, a Tennessee Department of Transportation schedule for their reconstruction would have shut down or constricted prime connectors in three directions all at once.

The TDOT schedule issued last fall called for work on five bridge projects to begin on the following, albeit preliminary, timeline:

1. Gay Street Viaduct: Early 2004
2. Church Street Avenue Viaduct: September 2004
3. Summit Hill Drive Bridge: December 2004
4. Broadway Viaduct: May 2005
5. Henley Street Bridge: June 2005

Replacement of the Gay Street Viaduct over the Norfolk Southern railroad tracks is expected to take about a year and hence would be finished before work on the nearby Broadway Viaduct starts. With that exception though, the rule is that each of the projects is due to take on the order of two years. Thus, under the TDOT schedule, work on downtown's prime connectors to the east (Church Avenue and Summit Hill Drive), south (Henley Street) and north (Broadway) would all be undergoing replacement concurrently.

Faced with this spectre, Haslam has appealed to the Bredesen administration in Nashville for rescheduling. "I've had several conversations with [TDOT Commissioner] Gerald Nicely about the importance of not making an island of downtown, and he understands the need not to close all that down at once," the mayor relates. But he adds that, "How much can we push the timing on stuff their engineers are saying has to be done, I don't know."

Even if the projects can be done sequentially, the impact of the bridge replacements promises to be substantial. That's especially the case with the closing of the Henley Street Bridge, whose consequences are dreaded just as much by merchants along Chapman Highway as by those concerned about downtown traffic congestion.

A South Knoxville merchants association is being formed to try to prevail on TDOT to keep at least two lanes of the five-lane bridge open by phasing the reconstruction. "If the bridge is closed, we will all die over here as far as Moody Avenue," says one of the association's spearheads. Yet while TDOT has recently earned accolades for becoming more responsive to community concerns, TDOT spokesperson Kim Keeler says that, "Due to the nature of the construction, it will be necessary to close the bridge to traffic."

If the Henley Street Bridge is closed, much of the traffic to and from downtown figures to be rerouted over the Gay Street Bridge, which is due to reopen this month after having been shut down for more than two years for its own reconstruction. But the Gay Street Bridge has only two lanes and seems likely to become a major bottleneck. Another alternate route, especially for South Knoxvillians now using Henley Street to access the interstate, is the James White Parkway over the South Knoxville Bridge. But this routing leads motorists to what's widely acknowledged to be the most hazardous Interstate access point in Knoxville: namely, James White's truncated ramp onto westbound I-40.

Bridge safety permitting, a good case can be made for deferring the Henley Street project until work is completed on the Hall of Fame Drive extension that will provide much safer, albeit circuitous, access to I-40. That extension project, which is due to take about three years starting in early 2005, will provide a new connector between the downtown area and Broadway to the north.

Completion of this new connector should, if possible, also be a prerequisite to starting the replacement of the Broadway Viaduct over the Norfolk Southern tracks. While TDOT engineers are holding out the prospect that two lanes of the four-lane viaduct can be kept open during reconstruction, it, too, promises to become a bottleneck in the absence of a better alternative route between North Knoxville and downtown.

Completion of the Hall of Fame Drive connector is already a prerequisite to starting work on the most massive highway project facing the downtown area: namely, the widening (from four lanes to six) and re-engineering of I-40 from I-275 to Cherry Street. This controversial project, which could make disruptions from bridgework pale by comparison, is still in the design stage.

Until recently, this process had been fraught with discord between TDOT engineers and affected center city neighborhoods and business interests. But the change in state and city administrations has brought a new spirit of accommodation to the table, primarily due to the good offices of TDOT's new director of planning, Ed Cole, and the city's new director of economic development, Bill Lyons. "There's been a sea change on TDOT and the city's part," says civic activist Jim Ullrich who has been much involved in the discussions.

Hopefully, this change can carry over to the design of downtown's viaducts. The urban-design framework recommended by consultants Crandall Arambula calls for making them more pedestrian-friendly with wider sidewalks dotted with potted plants and bounded by attractive rails. But the city's outgoing director of engineering, Sam Parnell, says, "Crandall Arambula's recommendations came along well after agreements between TDOT and the city were already in place." So it will indeed take a sea change to incorporate them at this point.