State transportation head gets frustrated in traffic, too

“I try to be patient,” TDOT Commissioner Gerald Nicely said. “These transportation projects take a while — longer than I would like in many cases. It’s a slow process.”

Nicely said work in Knoxville and Nashville is the most extensive in the state.

“I feel that what we’re doing more and more is trying to do our paving work at night and hoping that will alleviate the congestion,” he said.

Nicely said that Interstate 65 north of Nashville and Interstate 40 west of town are close to being finished.

“I think we’re fortunate we’re finally going to see some relief in Davidson County,” he said.

His predictions aren’t as fortunate for Knoxville.

“We’ve got a large job downtown starting,” he said. “Knoxville is going to have some pretty extensive congestion for the next several years.”

Nicely also said he wasn’t sure when the SmartWay and HELP programs would expand to the TriCities.

“It clearly is a very good program in congestion mitigation,” Nicely said. “But we don’t have a time frame yet. Long range that’s something we’re going to look at.”

SmartWay is Tennessee’s intelligent transportation system using cameras to monitor highways from Traffic Management Centers, sensors to gauge traffic flow and large electronic message boards to send urgent traffic notices to drivers.

Nashville and Knoxville have fully integrated SmartWay systems, and initial stages of the program are being deployed in Memphis and Chattanooga this year.

TDOT’s HELP trucks assist distressed motorists on the most heavily traveled highways in Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville, as well as northeast Tennessee during NASCAR races at Bristol Motor Speedway.

Nicely, who didn’t have any road-building experience when he became commissioner, said he enjoys seeing progress he’s helped guide.

“I guess my impression is Tennessee is a really diverse state from Upper East to Middle to West,” he said. “The solutions are different. … As a general rule, the smaller communities are really hungry for transportation projects because it means economic growth.”