News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
Crossville Mayor James Mayberry said he likes the changes T-DOT has made redesigning the US-127 and State Route 68 intersection.
Mayberry said the new plan maintains the character of the Homestead triangle, a greenspace area important to the community.
“It’s keeping the historic overview, but still yet it’s modernized with the traffic that we have to deal with today, which is a great deal more traffic than it was in the 30’s or 40’s,” Mayberry said.
Mayberry said the project was first proposed some eight years ago and received backlash from the Homestead community. Mayberry said the old plan did not make sense considering the number of logging trucks that use the intersection.
“There’s a big plywood plant down there in Spring City, and they had the trucks turning to the right at that place, having to stop at a traffic light and then turn back to the left and go over to 68, stop and go right again,” Mayberry said. “It just didn’t make sense to me at all.”
The redesigned project begins on US-127 approximately 0.5 miles south of the intersection with SR-68 and extends to approximately 0.4 mile north of the intersection, just south of Byrd Creek. The project extends approximately 0.5 miles along SR-68 from near Burton Road to the intersection with US-127.
“It’s kind of fell off the radar, and discussion came back up just a while back and they redesigned it and they worked with the University of Tennessee and the input they received from residents,” Mayberry said.
This new design reduces the risk of potential crashes by lessening the skew of the intersection and decreasing the number of conflict points. It improves operations for current and future traffic demands, includes sidewalks for pedestrians accessing Homestead Elementary School as well as the Homesteads Tower Museum, and provides additional parking spaces for the museum.
