Center Hill RPO Ranks Road Projects To Be Considered For Funding

A Crossville connector tops the road priority list for the the Center Hill Rural Planning Organization.

The connector would run from Highway 70 to Highway 127 in Crossville. Region 2 Community Transportation Supervisor Andrea Noel said T-DOT asks for rankings each year to distribute limited funding.

“At the end of December we put them all back together and give them to our investment division,” Noel said. “They all get together and decide which projects are going to move to the top projects that can be funded. In January and March, they get turned over to the Governor and Legislature for voting.”

The second ranked project also in Cumberland County was State Route 28 from near Potato Farm Road to Hollow Lane. Noel said the organization should hear if funding was granted sometime this spring.

“The projects are given an overall rank, which includes a technical rank,” Noel said. “It also includes investment, the cost of each phase of that work, the funding source not all projects have the same funding source, (…) and scheduling restraints.”

Noel said TDOT also tries to distribute projects equally across the state. A total of eight projects were ranked. Five are in the construction phase while three are in preliminary engineering.

Interstate 40 from mile marker 285 to exit 338 was ranked third. Putnam County had a project rank fourth in the construction group, North Willow Avenue from West Broad Street to West 12th Street.

The UCDD contracted with the Tennessee Department of Transportation to establish two Rural Planning Organizations (RPOs) in the Upper Cumberland region. The Center Hill RPO includes Cannon, Cumberland, DeKalb, Putnam, Van Buren, Warren and White counties.