KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Knoxville is ready to show South Knoxville drivers, walkers and business owners what a safer Chapman Highway could look like, and it wants their reaction before the design goes any further.
City transportation engineers, the city’s Vision Zero team and staff from the consulting firm Kimley-Horn will host a drop-in open house at Graystone Presbyterian Church, 139 Woodlawn Pike, running from 4 to 7 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 5. There is no formal presentation, so people can come by at any point in the three-hour window.
The session centers on early concept drawings backed by a Safe Streets and Roads for All grant from the federal government worth $17.8 million. The work covers the stretch of Chapman Highway from Blount Avenue down to Woodlawn Pike, one of the busiest pieces of road in the south end of the city.
The draft plan would change the character of that corridor. Instead of a fast four-lane highway, the concept calls for an urban boulevard, with broad shared-use paths set apart from traffic for people on foot and on bikes, plus planted medians down the middle.
The road carries outsized weight for this part of town. Chapman Highway, also signed as US-441, is the primary south Knoxville arterial, tying downtown to the SoKno neighborhoods and running on south toward Sevier County.
Organizers want to hear from people who use the road every day, whether they commute on it, shop along it or try to cross it, and to collect their ideas while the plans are still preliminary. More project details are posted on the city’s Safe Streets page at knoxvilletn.gov/433/Safe-Streets.
Section: More Knoxville TN crime news
Filed under: Knoxville TN Traffic News
