News Talk 94.1/AM 1600 Where The Upper Cumberland Talks
The Putnam County Transportation Committee selected its top 10 projects based on results from a recent public survey Wednesday.
One of the committee’s top projects was widening and improving Hilham Road between the Cookeville city limits and the northern Putnam County border. According to statistics provided during the meeting, about 160 vehicle accidents have occurred on Hilham Road since 2013, with 56 causing injury.
“The bigger problem with Hilham Road is not so much widening [it] as it doesn’t have any shoulders,” County Executive Randy Porter said. “It doesn’t have any at all. You’re going from pavement to ditch. That’d be a huge, massive project. I don’t know how TDOT’s going to look at it.”
The committee also decided to merge three separate Baxter project ideas into one, all of which include improvements in the area of I-40 and Highway 56.
“When we were looking at the fairgrounds being done at the old racetrack property, I had TDOT check and they measured under the interstate,” Porter said. “It’s tight, but there is enough room to put a turning lane in there. So that might be something that might not be that expensive to do.”
The committee also included a project that would improve the intersection of East 10th Street and Highway 111. The option was the 12th-most requested project according to the public survey, but the committee believed it was worthy of looking into.
“I don’t have a problem with it staying in the top 10,” Cookeville Planning Director James Mills said, “but I think lots of people were confused when it said ‘Cookeville’ (in the survey), and that it meant widening East 10th Street because there were comments in the survey on that. I don’t know that people understood completely on that.”
Members of the committee clarified during their meeting that the proposed East 10th Street and 111 project would create an additional northbound right-turn lane and restrict right turns on red.
The committee will meet again August 29 at 2 p.m. once members have voted on which of the top 10 projects they feel are the most needed in the county.
