Note: This release was sent from the Transportation Planning Organization. The Tennessee Department of Transportation's Environmental Bureau Chief Ed Cole recently spoke to members of the Knoxville Chamber about the proposed "Orange Route." You can read more about his visit here.
The Executive Board of the Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) will meet Wednesday, February 27, to consider a resolution requesting the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) to study the feasibility of constructing the Knoxville Regional Parkway or a longer bypass route as a toll facility.
The TPO Executive Board meets at 9 a.m. in the Small Assembly Room on the main floor of the City County Building in downtown Knoxville, and welcomes public input at all of its meetings. Members of the public who wish to address the TPO Executive Board are asked to sign up to speak when they arrive at the meeting.
The resolution to consider the Parkway or a longer Knoxville bypass as a toll facility, if approved, would be only an initial step in the process of one of these roads potentially being designated a toll road.
If approved, this resolution will be followed by additional study undertaken by TDOT of whether tolling is appropriate for the Parkway or the longer bypass route. After TDOT reports back to the TPO Executive Board with the results of that study, the Executive Board will decide whether to recommend one of these projects to the Tennessee General Assembly as a pilot toll road.
The Knoxville Regional Parkway, also known as the Orange Route or State Route 475, is a planned link between I-75 in Anderson County to I-40/I-75 in Loudon County, and is included in the TPO’s Long Range Transportation Plan. The longer bypass route would include the Parkway plus an eastern leg from I-75 north of Knoxville to I-40 east of Knoxville.
No definitive route has been selected for this eastern leg, and it has not been included in the Long Range Transportation Plan for the Knoxville region. The entire bypass route, including the Parkway and the eastern leg, was the subject of a conceptual tolling study completed by Wilbur Smith Associates for TDOT in 2007.
The results of that study are available at the TDOT website.
The Tennessee Tollway Act, approved by the Tennessee General Assembly in 2007, directed TDOT to study potential toll projects and to recommend two pilot toll projects by January of 2009. The Tollway Act prohibits the ownership of toll roads or bridges in Tennessee by private companies.
The voting members of the TPO Executive Board include the governor of the State of Tennessee; the mayors of Knox, Blount, Sevier and Loudon counties; the mayors of Knoxville, Farragut, Alcoa, Maryville and Lenoir City; the chair of the Knox County Commission; the vice mayor of Knoxville; and a representative of the East Tennessee Development District.
Ed Cole, Environmental Bureau Chief for the Tennessee Department of Transportation, recently suggested that the Knoxville Parkway could be the state’s first toll road. He also said that if the road were approved as a tollway it could be completed as much as a decade sooner than if the road was funded from Tennessee’s general fund.
The Knoxville Parkway – formerly known as the “Orange Route” – would connect I-40 near Watt Road with I-75 in northern Knox County. The Knoxville Chamber has been the project’s chief advocate.
Cole provided his update on the road during a presentation to the Knoxville Chamber. Organized by the organization’s Transportation Committee, the event was an opportunity to hear about the current status of the Knoxville Parkway project.
The General Assembly passed legislation authorizing toll roads during the 2007 legislative session. The law stipulates that the only one road and one bridge may be approved as a toll project per year, and that the Legislature would have to approve those projects. The projects must go through the stringent environmental and public approval process associated with highway construction. In addition, the toll project could not be a privately owned road.
The Knoxville Parkway is estimated to be a $600 million project and final approval for it is not expected until 2010. If it were financed traditionally, Cole did not expect completion until 2020 or 2022. If it were a toll road he said it might be finished by 2012 or 2014.
Cole said the need for this new highway construction financing mechanism is a result of lower levels of federal transportation funding and a softening of the state’s gas tax revenues.
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