JACKSON Tenn (August 12, 2015) – Gov. Bill Haslam and Department of Transportation (TDOT) Commissioner John Schroer visited Jackson on Wednesday to sit down with local officials and discuss the region’s transportation and infrastructure needs.
In an hour-long roundtable conversation at the Jackson Chamber, Haslam and Schroer discussed state roads and highways, safety issues around roads and bridges, and the impact infrastructure has on economic development efforts.
According to Schroer, Tennessee’s transportation system includes 95,000 miles of roads, 1,100 miles of interstates, 19,000 bridges, 28 transit systems in 95 counties, 79 general aviation airports, 949 miles of waterways and more than 3,000 miles of railroads.
“The quality of Tennessee’s transportation and infrastructure system always ranks at or near the top when compared to the rest of the country,” Haslam said. “We have no transportation debt, and we do a great job maintaining our roads, but we know we have challenges on the horizon.
Haslam said we know we can’t depend on the federal government to be the funding partner that it once was. We also know that as our infrastructure ages, maintenance becomes more important and more expensive. And we know that maintaining our roads is only part of the equation.
Right now we have a multi-billion dollar backlog of highway projects across this state that address key access, safety and economic development issues, and that’s only going to grow.”
According to a 2015 Comptroller’s report on transportation funding revenues are not expected to be sufficient to maintain current infrastructure, said Schroer
“TDOT is responsible for taking care of the assets we already have, for implementing current projects in the most cost-effective way, and for planning for the state’s infrastructure needs of the future,” Schroer said. “We look to communities to help prioritize projects to make sure we’re addressing evolving traffic patterns, population growth, safety issues, things that impact our infrastructure.”
Funded primarily by state and federal gas taxes, TDOT gets no money from the General Fund. Funding uncertainty from the Federal Highway Trust Fund forced TDOT to delay $400 million in highway projects in 2015.
TDOT officials discussed the cost and status of several projects in the region:
- Completing the widening of 8.3 miles of I-40 from US 412 to US 70 (including the replacement of the interchanges at North Highland Street and the US 45 Bypass) will cost an estimated $128.1 million.
- Improvements on the US 45 Bypass at Casey Jones Lane and Carriage House Drive are estimated to cost $3 million.
- The construction of the Lexington Bypass in Henderson County will provide relief to the central business district of Lexington. This project will construct a two-lane road on property acquired for a future four-lane widening. The cost for the two-lane improvements is estimated at $41 million.
- Improvements to a 13.2 mile section of US 79 in Carroll County will complete the corridor from Paris to Milan providing access to I-40. The cost for the four-lane improvement project is estimated at $51 million.
Haslam will continue his tour around the state with 12 more stops along the way.
