Needs for roads is not obvious

Dear Editor:

Please add me to the growing list of readers doing some head scratching when The Daily Times, whose editor has drawn praise for his efforts in preserving the heritage and natural beauty of Blount County, advocates paving it over without bothering to list one good reason for doing so.

What better reasons should people need, other than the personal ones, for wanting to work their farms and enjoy their homes and lifestyle? If the editor no longer loves the scenic beauty of Blount County and/or wishes to preserve it, please at least have some tolerance for those that still do.

But maybe they aren't even completely personal reasons: possibly it's the fact that we're taxpayers as well, and we would like to see our tax dollars spent as wisely as possible.

I find it somewhat interesting that only recently did The Daily Times finally acknowledge what has been known for years: that this is not just an "extension." It is the first section of what would ultimately be a "loop" around Maryville. One wonders why The Daily Times did not bother to report that fact much sooner?

The initial reason given by our local government and The Daily Times for building this road was to ease traffic congestion. (The word from TDOT is that it won't ease traffic congestion.) Let's see, we have an airport, industrial parks and shopping centers on one side of town so, let's rip up farms and subdivisions in order to build a new road on the opposite side of town to ease traffic congestion. Most folks will quickly notice the fault in this logic, and rightly so. It doesn't require an engineering degree to see that the traffic demands of the county will continue to be greater in other areas, now and in the foreseeable future.

But don't let any inconvenient truth get in the way, because next we were told that we need this extension for safety. (The general public says we already have too many unsafe, substandard roads in the area and they really need to be improved first.) Nope, too much trouble to fix what we already have, better to build a new road, even when it will undoubtedly increase the amount of traffic on our already unsafe feeder roads.

Next the editor cites tourism as a need to build the extension. Does the editor honestly believe that tourism in our county would suffer if the extension isn't completed? Will tourists make a conscious decision to skip Blount County this year because there isn't an interstate loop running around Maryville? Why did they ever come here before? A distinct possibility is that maybe they wanted to get away from the development and traffic congestion that resulted from an interstate going around their own home town...

The editor states that "completion of the Pellissippi Parkway will not in itself necessarily increase the traffic or the development of the area." Perhaps the editor would list just one instance of any road built in any metropolitan area in Earth's recorded history where this was not so? The editor is welcome to join me for a morning commute on the Pellissippi Parkway and explain how the urban sprawl that we're seeing today in Knox County is not what we would see in the future for Blount County.

Blount County Mayor Cunningham is right when he says that we must be proactive. Unfortunately, he got off track on what to be proactive about. Being proactive does not entail executing a "ready, fire, aim" routine and publicly endorsing a project that hasn't even been studied thoroughly yet. As laid out in the Blount County Comprehensive Plan, one of the primary guidelines for the planning commission is to maintain the rural character of Blount County. Mayor Cunningham may choose to ignore this as he wishes, but the citizens (and voters) in Blount County shouldn't forget it.

Regardless of whether the Pellissippi Parkway Extension goes through or not, if the new school is built on Sevierville Road, there will be even more of our children out there riding on an inadequate road. The editor's lame excuse for not fixing Sevierville Road because then people would just speed on it was amazing, simply amazing, irrational and irresponsible. Our kids, and The Daily Times readers, deserve better.

I'm certainly no highway engineer, but aren't there some relatively simple things we could look into today that would give us a better traffic flow? Surely something as basic as timing and synchronizing the existing traffic signals might provide dramatic and effective improvements at a minimal cost.

Grow we must, but it should be smart growth, or at least as smart as we can make it. We've already had several workshops with many excellent detailed questions over valid community issues; traffic, growth, our direction and the environment. Unfortunately, the detailed answers from our officials have been, for the most part, nonexistent. That, in itself, should be telling us something very important.

We, as a community, really should work these things out together so that we can plan and act accordingly.

Mike Treese

105 Stonecrest Place

Maryville, TN 37804