County fears Woodbury four-lane in danger

The Warren County Commission has unanimously passed a resolution drafted by Commissioner Bill Zechman encouraging state and federal legislators to work toward guaranteeing funding for future work on the four-lane to Woodbury.

Phase one of the project, currently under way, is a 1.1-mile stretch from Angels Bridge to Spring Valley Road. That portion of the project is reportedly not in any jeopardy.

The rest of the Highway 70S project, which is slated to build a four-lane from McMinnville to Woodbury, will upgrade a dangerous, and deadly, 10-mile section of Nashville Highway between McMinnville and the Warren-Cannon County line.

Even though the project has been approved, it will be built in several phases. Some local officials feel recent cuts to federal highway funding by the Bush administration may jeopardize the construction of future phases ‘ a situation Zechman feels is unconscionable.

He has compiled some compelling statistics to support this, as a section of the resolution points out:

‘Whereas the 10-mile segment of U.S. 70S from McMinnville to the Warren-Cannon County Line has become the road to eternity for 14 fellow citizens whose lives were claimed in 12 vehicle crashes between January 1995 and mid-August 2007, while another 19 suffered disabling injuries and an additional 199 incurred less-acute injuries over that period, according to records at the Safety Planning Section, Project Planning division of the Tennessee Department of Transportation.’

‘We’re calling this the ‘road to eternity,’ Zechman said. ‘For that’s what it has become for too many people.’

The resolution asks state legislators, including state Sen. Jerry Cooper and state Reps. Charles Curtiss and Judd Matheny, U.S. Sens. Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander, and 4th District Congressman Lincoln Davis, to lend their support to this and future highway projects.

‘What we’re going to ask Alexander and Corker and Davis to do is instead of agreeing to cutbacks in funding,’ Zechman said, ‘we’re going to ask them to put it into reverse and insist on increases in federal funding. The bridge collapse in Minneapolis is just a spectacular, tragic example of what happens when you’re not spending money on infrastructure.’

Zechman says even though the first phase of the project is already under construction, and the other two phases have been approved and planned by TDOT, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee completion.

‘Let’s just say we’re promised a four-lane highway,’ Zechman said, ‘but if the money goes away, we don’t get it.’

County Executive John Pelham is also concerned about the news from Washington and how it might affect federal funding for road projects in Tennessee. Pelham says he has heard nothing to indicate the project is currently in danger, but that could conceivably change.

‘Once it’s started, obviously, you feel pretty good about it,’ Pelham said. ‘But until a project is completed, I guess nothing is an absolute.’

As a result, Pelham has been working diligently to keep the project at the forefront of state legislators’ efforts, which led to his attending a meeting earlier this year on roads and highway funding, but the invitation to this meeting gave him pause.

‘We were contacted by representatives at the development district in Cookeville where we have a regional planning organization, RPO they call it, for roads,’ Pelham said. ‘They said we needed to be prepared to come to a meeting to plead our case for the Woodbury four-lane project.

‘And I said, ‘Now wait a minute, it was my understanding this road is a done deal.’ And they said, ‘Well, no, not necessarily.’ And the reason is because of the shortfall in revenue, because the federal funding has cut the state funding back so significantly, they’re having to re-evaluate their road projects.’

Prior to the meeting, Pelham made his own study of this section of highway, which he admitted might not be entirely accurate, but pretty close, noting that from Spring Valley Road to Highway 281 at Eastside School in Cannon County, there are 12.4 miles of highway with a total of 289 entrances, either private drives, businesses or county roads, with most coming from blind spots. Pelham drove this route himself and noted there is only 2.3 miles of passing lane due to curves and hills, making this section of highway one of the most dangerous in the county.

Accident statistics bear this out. There has been a total of 678 accidents logged from 1995 to the end of 2006, averaging 56 crashes per year over this 10-mile section.

Pelham presented these sobering statistics at the RPO meeting, with effective results.

‘What we’re calling phase two, from Spring Valley Road on to Centertown, was voted the No. 1 priority road project in the Upper Cumberland in our RPO,’ Pelham said.