Sparta Moving Forward With Right Turn On Taft Church Rd

Sparta finalizing designs to add a right turn lane coming out of Walmart onto Highway 111.

City Administrator Brad Hennessee said the permit process with T-DOT should begin when the plans are complete.

“Preliminary drawings have been submitted to T-DOT,” Hennessee said. “They have come back and asked for some revisions to be made. Those have been passed along to our designer. They’re working on those. We hope to have those back by the end of next week.”

Hennessee said small changes were made to the original blueprint to comply with traffic control guidelines. Hennessee said the project should be a part of the summer paving cycle.

“We hope to have it lined up in time to include it in our paving,” Hennessee said. “At this point, we don’t see any problems with that.”

The right turn lane would be added to Taft Church Road going north. Once the turn lane is established, the city wants to reconfigure the traffic signals to better manage traffic turning onto Highway 111.

High traffic has been an issue at the intersection sited by Sparta officials for a few years.