Cookeville Continuing To Work On Bicycle And Pedestrian Plan Projects

Cookeville is slowly working its way through the city’s 20-year bicycle and pedestrian plan.

Planning Director Jon Ward said that the plan serves as a guide on how to develop infrastructure and prioritize projects as they occur in the city. He said that in their active pursuit of funding for projects in the plan, so far they’ve been awarded three multi-modal grants from TDOT.

“To install sidewalks along East Spring Street from the east triangle to Old Kentucky Road,” Ward said. “We’ve got another grant that was approved to install sidewalks on North Willow Avenue and West 12th Street. And another grant was just awarded to us this January to do a second phase of the East Spring Street project.”

Ward said that they are also looking at more pedestrian facilities and bike facilities. He said that they’ve just recently installed a bike facility on Cedar Avenue, which better connects Tech’s campus to downtown Cookeville.

Ward said that the plan is also followed through the city’s zoning codes. He said that sidewalks are now required when building new developments on new streets.

“The only thing that’s exempt is single-family and two-family developments so if you build a house on an existing street and there’s not a sidewalk we currently don’t require you to install one,” Ward said. “Everything else essentially requires it now. There are some stipulations in the zoning code that allow you to pay a fee in lieu of installing one or getting it waived. And some of the criteria to make that determination is to see if it’s included in our ped/bike plan.”

Ward said that if it is, then that’s a reason it would not obtain any type of waiver.