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Advocates and opponents of the proposed Pellissippi Parkway extension are marshaling their forces for a Tennessee Department of Transportation public information meeting on the project to be held Tuesday at Heritage High School. The meeting will be held from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) spokesman Travis Brickey previously said that local officials have been invited to speak at the next meeting about questions concerning local land use, infrastructure and school expansion plans.

The proposed Pellissippi Parkway extension would tie Old Knoxville Highway to East Lamar Alexander Parkway. The most recent extension of the Pellissippi Parkway to Old Knoxville Highway was completed in August of 2006.

TDOT will also begin asking for public opinion on what route, if any, the proposed Pellissippi Parkway extension should follow. TDOT is drafting an environmental impact statement (EIS) that will discuss possible alternatives for the project.

Those alternatives would include not building the extension, making changes to how traffic is managed, mass transit, upgrading other roadways in the northeastern part of Blount County, or building a new four-lane roadway at a new location. It could take up to three years to complete the EIS.

The Blount Partnership is promoting the meeting.

“Certainly, we’ve been on the record supporting the Pellissippi Parkway completion for many years,” said Fred Forster, Blount Partnership CEO. “We know this road is crucial to the long-term economic health and travel safety of our community. We believe open dialogue is important when such a major project comes to our community.”

Opponents of the extension will be represented as well.

“We’ll be there,” said Nina Gregg, board member of Citizens Against the Pellissippi Parkway Extension (CAPPE). “We’ve attended very other public meeting that TDOT has held. We’ll continue to be involved.”

The intent of the extension is to meet the growing transportation needs of the community by easing traffic congestion within the main arteries including, U.S. 129, 411, 321 and SR 33 and reducing the crash incidents, Forster said.

“Our existing roads need some relief,” he said. “Gridlock is here and drivers are increasingly finding themselves involved in accidents as the roads become more congested.”

Gregg said that the talking points used by the Blount Partnership are not backed by data.

“Many of their points we have heard before,” she said. “There still isn’t any objective data to support their assertions. That’s why we insisted upon an EIS, which is not completed. It is premature to take a position when we don’t know what the impacts (of the extension) will be.”

The extension could be helpful for tourist traffic associated with Townsend and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, said Herb Handly, executive vice president of the Smoky Mountain Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“Tourists are incredibly important to the economic health of our community,” he said. “Blount County is the seventh largest tourist market in the state. Visitors inject a lot of money into our economy and we want them to return. It’s to our advantage to maintain safe roads for residents and visitors.”

Bryan Daniels, executive vice president of the Economic Development Board, said the expansion would supports the community’s growth management goals by keeping development within the cities’ urban growth boundaries and that it would be a recruiting tool for the emerging Pellissippi Centre research and development park.

“Firms always look at transportation infrastructure for site selection,” Daniels said.
“The parkway is crucial because it will link the R&D park to the airport, the Innovation Valley that includes Oak Ridge and the recreational opportunities in and around the Smoky Mountains. It’s a huge plus for recruiting business.”

The Raven Society citizens group, however, sees things a bit differently.

“This new interstate highway would significantly accelerate new residential and commercial growth in eastern Blount County,” said Raven Society Secretary Doug Gamble said. “The new growth will occur in an area of open spaces and working farms, much of which inevitably will be turned into subdivisions. One of the county’s last remaining natural and rural areas will become suburban sprawl, and Blount County will be one more large step toward becoming a suburb of Knoxville and a bedroom community for Oak Ridge.”

The Raven Society also believes that the growth will increase county costs for public services such as schools, roads, courts, law enforcement and emergency services.
“Advocates of the (extension), will get most of the commercial tax revenues from it, but Blount County will have to educate the children who will live near the extension,” Gamble wrote in a Raven Society analysis released this month. “Residential development in Louisville and Maryville is already adding substantially to the county’s public service obligations, according to (Blount County) Mayor (Jerry) Cunningham’s address to the Blount County Commission in January 2008. He noted that the City of Louisville and the Maryville Regional Planning Commission recently approved 471 subdivision lots in areas outside of Maryville’s urban growth boundary that the County is required to service with infrastructure. Children in those areas will go to county schools.”

Information from the Raven Society indicates the group does not believe that the extension will solve Blount County’s traffic problems: “Alternative uses of transportation funds, however, can help, and will prevent the loss of open space and farms and the addition hundreds of new children into Blount County’s schools. For example: the major traffic congestion in Maryville is east to west, on East Broadway and U.S. 411 North (Sevierville Road) and U.S. 411 South (West Broadway). Because the (extension) is a north-south route, it cannot help this problem. One solution is to upgrade State Route 33 from the end of the Pellissippi Parkway west into Maryville, add a center turn lane, and reconfigure the Wildwood Road/Lincoln/Broadway intersection. Upgrading and straightening Peppermint, Hitch, and Helton Roads will improve traffic moving north-south from the end of the Pellissippi Parkway.

“Road improvements within the Cities of Maryville and Alcoa suggested by the Hunter Interests study will facilitate traffic flow within the cities and offer better options than building the (extension). To date neither city has moved to implement them.”