If you’ve been to Waldron Road in LaVergne recently you know what confusion looks like.
TDOT and the city are expanding parts of the road from two to five lanes.
The $11 million project, between Murfreesboro Road and I-24, will eventually make Waldron more traffic friendly but for the next 15 months, many motorists and business will be seeing red, or in this case, orange.
One of several businesses in the labyrinth of orange is Wine and Spirits Unlimited, where the sign outside the store reads, “Worth the wait.”
Jeremy Sargent manages the store and told Messed Up the construction chaos is affecting the bottom line.
“I don’t understand why barrels are placed like they are and the work is much further down the road and this has been cordoned off for three weeks,” he said. “Why have a 50 foot bottle neck, instead of a 1,000 foot bottle neck all the way down the road.”
“What have you experienced?” I ask.
“We have seen a significant drop off. People don’t want to come here because of the barrels, the way they are situated, they get lost,” he replied.
BJ Doughty at TDOT explains it this way.
“We don’t want a business to go out of business because of project,” she said. “We realize there is pain associated with a road way project and we know it is unpleasant, but if there are things we can do to ease problems we will do that.”
When asked why the road was blocked off in front of the liquor store even though workers are 1,000 feet away, Doughty replied, “We are tearing up a bridge and if we don’t funnel traffic well beforehand people might drive into a hole. There is a method to the madness regarding traffic control in work zones. This is part of keeping the motoring public safe and our workers safe.”
TDOT says the project should be done by Thanksgiving 2011.
If you just landed in Santa Fe, in northwest Maury County, and you stood in the middle of State Route 7 you would swear the road was devastated by an earthquake, not a once in a lifetime flood.
According to the Tennessee Department of Transportation, flooding that occurred in early May collapsed a 1,500 foot of the roadway, and officials on the scene say the road appears to still be sinking.
The closure has forced traffic to detour onto a much older, narrower road that cuts through Santa Fe.
“It’s rare to see a landslide of this magnitude, and the ground remains extremely unstable,” TDOT Geotechnical Engineer Vanessa Bateman said in a press release sent to News 2. “Any subsequent wet weather could trigger more slides in this area and could further complicate repair efforts.”
The TDOT press release goes on to say, “Once the geotechnical studies and design are complete, TDOT will accept bids on the repair work and anticipates having a contract in place by early summer. The repair work is estimated to take five to six months to complete. During this time, traffic will continue to be detoured around the affected area.”
Maury County Sheriff Enoch George told News 2 he is still amazed at the level of destruction of a relatively new road that runs by the community he grew up in.
“Maury County, Tennessee is devastated. This is a new highway and it looks like an earthquake tore it up,” he said. “We have to reroute trucks from I-40 to I-65. We have an excess of 100 trucks a day use this southern detour for these two interstates.”
Sheriff George said the concern for safety is so great county commissioners voted to lower the speed limit from 50 miles-per-hour to 35 miles-per-hour.
Additionally, the sheriff said it’s already difficult for a handful of deputies to cover such a large county and the road closure and repairs will only complicate matters, especially in times of emergencies.
State engineer Jay Norris says his department takes pot holes seriously.
“We take a look at all pavements. We have an inventory of all pavements. We have a budget to take care of roads in Tennessee.”
Norris says the state has fixed 350 lane miles in the last two years, and it plans to fix 120 more this year. The problem is Hot Mix, which is poured at over 300 degrees, can only be put down when the weather warms up.
“A pot hole is a weak part of a pavement that forms because there is not enough compaction, or there is a base problem, or water seeps down and there’s a freeze thaw cycle, freeze thaw freeze thaw. It is cold. And the hot mix plants are shut down and won’t be open till Spring so we use a cold mix. It is like a band aid. We have to remedy it every few days. In the spring, you’ll see temporary lane closures and then you’ll begin to see barrels for mainline paving.”
Despite complaints, TDOT likes to point out that Tennessee routinely wins awards for the smoothest highways in the nation.
BJ Doughty, PIO, for TDOT supplies Messed UP with the following data:
1. TDOT was awarded the 2008 Smooth Pavement Award from the National Cooperative Highway Research Program. This agency basically does research on DOT’s across the nation. It looked at overall smoothness of all interstates in the nation.
2. The National Asphalt Paving Association has given smooth pavement awards to TDOT 6 years in row. Only one other state has done that. This award is project specific though, not the overall interstate system.
3. From a January 2009 press release: ” For the third straight year, Interstate 40 in Tennessee tops the list of best roads in the country according to the nation’s truck drivers. In addition, for the 10th consecutive year truckers rated Tennessee’s overall roadway system as third best in the nation (tied with Georgia) according to a recent survey published in Overdrive Magazine. Overdrive Magazine polls more than 300 truck drivers across the nation each year asking them to rate the nation’s roads and drivers, state by state. The survey includes opinions about the quality of the roads, the smoothness of the riding surface, road markings, construction detour availability and more.
If you would like to report pot holes using the web or your cell phone, check out SeeClickFix below, a web site that reports area problems to the agency responsible for fixing them. Read more
A viewer says the signs TDOT promised to post (“UNLAWFUL TO THROW OBJECTS FROM BRIDGE. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED”) are not working.
Andy,
The signs did not work! Attached are pictures of a pumpkin that was thrown off the Bridge Wednesday night. I was coming home from a business trip when about 9:30pm when I saw the remains of a pumpkin on the road. I turned around and took pictures and then the next morning took a couple of more. The one picture at night is a picture I took when I saw a car swerve into the other lane to avoid the pumpkin. Sorry the picture is not that clear, it was taken with a cell phone. The pumpkin landed in the same lane as the water balloon, except on the south side of the bridge.
We received an update from TDOT Spokesperson B.J. Doughty on the story we brought you yesterday about a bridge in Cannon County. We’ll keep you informed as progress is made to protect citizens from people throwing things off the bridge into traffic.
TDOT has made and will soon install signs that say:
“UNLAWFUL TO THROW OBJECTS FROM BRIDGE. VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED.”
This is just the first step.. discussions continue on other possible solutions.
by
If you’ve been to Waldron Road in LaVergne recently you know what confusion looks like.
“I don’t understand why barrels are placed like they are and the work is much further down the road and this has been cordoned off for three weeks,” he said. “Why have a 50 foot bottle neck, instead of a 1,000 foot bottle neck all the way down the road.”
Maury County Sheriff Enoch George told News 2 he is still amazed at the level of destruction of a relatively new road that runs by the community he grew up in.
