Memo to any of you folks over in Knox County or anywhere else in the area who would like to help save Townsend (the "peaceful side of the Smokies") and push back against wealthy land speculators (including Lamar Alexander) who want taxpayers to fund a tourist thruway to their new Blackberry Farm developments...

Come out to the TDOT hearing on the Pellissippi Parkway extension, tomorrow Tuesday Feb. 19, from 5-7pm at Heritage High School. We hope to be there live-blogging it.

More info here, here, here, and some talking points here.

A short post on this because I didn't take notes.

Awhile back MPC did a study, with lots of input from a local task force (on which my spouse served) on improvements to the Chapman Highway corridor. These dealt with both strictly transportation issues, but also with land use issues. That study is available here. It was approved by MPC, City Council, and County Commission.

As the MPC website states, "Upon completion of MPC's study, the Tennessee Department of Transportation contracted with Palmer Engineering to conduct a transportation planning study that would make recommendations on short-term improvements to ehance the safety and operations of Chapman Highway."

The results of that second study were presented Monday night and tonight in two meetings in south Knoxville. Since this was a TDOT study, it addressed transportation issues only.

All ideas are for short-term improvements to Chapman Highway, basically "low hanging fruit," although Jeff Welch of the regional TPO stressed that as of yet no funding was available for any of them.

They included things like reducing the # of curb cuts, adding a turn lane to the section just south of Stone Road, improving road alignments with Chapman Highway (especially where there was a "jog" at the CH intersection), and adding to the existing street grid to make more "frontage" routes along the highway.

In general I was pretty impressed by what I saw.

I doubt this is available on the web anywhere because we were looking at info on some pretty large maps, but if you are interested, Rene Davis at MPC is the local contact for the Chapman Highway study and should be able to direct you to more info. I also hope there are others out there who attended and who might add to my brief synopsis.