State Route 126 takes center stage in House race

Tag : Roadway Facility


INDIAN SPRINGS — A political blamestorm has been raining overState Route 126 during this election season.
Partisan division over the deadly, narrow two-lane highway —also known in these parts as Memorial Boulevard — gainedstrength as Tennessee’s 2nd House District race unfolded.
And the end result of the debate over the highway still won’tbe known for years.
The spat began last spring when GOP challenger Tony Shipley ofColonial Heights accused Kingsport Democratic incumbent state Rep.Nathan Vaughn of having a “lack of legislativeattention” to move the highway’s upgrading forward.
One of Shipley’s backers, GOP Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey ofBlountville, chimed in later by saying Vaughn “has not shownthe needed leadership” in pushing the project towardcompletion.
But Vaughn has fired the blame back at Ramsey since the road hastraversed Ramsey’s 2nd Senatorial District well before Vaughnwas first elected to go to Nashville in 2002.
“Our state senator, Ron Ramsey, has served that community for18 years and nothing has been done on that road. And now hecriticizes me,” Vaughn said of Ramsey at one of the debateswith Shipley.
Indeed, the call for improving the 8.8-mile corridor connectingKingsport to Interstate 81 has been discussed since 1992 when theTennessee Department of Transportation completed an advanceplanning report on the highway.
That report, said Kingsport Transportation Planning Manager BillAlbright, suggested widening the highway to five lanes from CenterStreet to Interstate 81 at a cost of about $35 million.
“It didn’t gain enough attention, and it might not havebeen a priority for the Tennessee Department of Transportation. ...Priorities are established by the attention a road project willget. ... (Former TDOT Commissioner Bruce) Saltsman sent a letterindicating they just couldn’t help us at that time,”Albright said of why the project didn’t move forward then.
After the turn of the century, Albright said city officialsrefocused their attention on the potential for extending AirportParkway northward, but there was opposition to the idea.
That led to a transportation study of the east Kingsport area.
“It was concluded by one general agreement that somethingneeds to be done about Memorial Boulevard,” said Albright.
City officials and the Kingsport Area Metropolitan PlanningOrganization again asked for, and TDOT agreed, to develop anotheradvance planning report on Memorial Boulevard in 2003, after Vaughnbegan his service on Capitol Hill in Nashville and was appointed tothe House Transportation Committee.
In the fall of 2003, Memorial Boulevard was chosen asTennessee’s first Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) project.CSS is described by TDOT as “an approach that involves allstakeholders in developing a transportation facility that fits itsphysical setting.”
As a part of the CSS process, a Community Resource Team (CRT)composed of local residents, activists, business owners, localofficials and Vaughn was assembled. Over 21 months, TDOT said theCRT team gathered 13 times and conducted three public meetings inthe Kingsport area.
But copies of e-mails and CRT minutes indicate team membersquibbled over project details, such as the road’s trafficvolume and proposed design elements. There was also a perceptionamong certain CRT members that Vaughn was overly influenced bymembers of Citizens For Responsible Roads (CFRR), a group that hadopposed the Airport Parkway northward extension. CFRR gave a $300in-kind contribution to Vaughn’s 2002 campaign but is nolonger active.
In June 2005, Vaughn signed a minority objection to one proposedMemorial Boulevard design segment. A record also indicates heinitially declined to sign CRT’s official request to improvethe roadway.
TDOT accepted CRT’s request in October 2005.
“What ended up was the 4-3-2 concept — four lanesinitially (through the city), three lanes through Indian Springs,and then going to two lanes with improved geometry,” Albrightsaid of the request.
In a campaign direct mail piece recently sent to 2nd House Districthomes, Vaughn took credit for an initial round of TDOT improvementsto the roadway — including center line rumble strips,guardrails and reflectors.
Albright, however, suggested those improvements were really theresult of CRT’s discussions.
“You really can’t give one particular person credit forit,” Albright said of those improvements. “A bunch ofpeople on the (CRT) committee, including the CFRR folks, said thatwe need some short-term quick fixes out there right now.”
Albright did give Vaughn credit for a second round of MemorialBoulevard improvements done earlier this year by TDOT near theroadway’s Carolina Pottery intersection. TDOT, said Albright,has $100,000 “optional safety funds” accounts for doingsuch improvements.
“He got the funding. He did get that done,” Albrightsaid of Vaughn.
Shipley insists he would be more active in seeking funding for theentire project.
“Last year fortunately we had no fatalities on the road sinceTDOT did the rumble strips on the road and additional things tomake it safer,” Shipley said at one debate with Vaughn.“I appreciate what TDOT did ... (but) it needs to beaddressed aggressively.”
Those second round improvements were announced last April inconjunction with a town hall-style meeting hosted by Vaughn toupdate Indian Springs residents about the roadway’s progress.At that meeting, residents reaffirmed their support for fixing thehighway.
But Ed Cole, TDOT’s chief of environment and planning,acknowledged at the meeting that it would be at least five yearsbefore construction can begin. TDOT also ballparked theproject’s estimated cost at more than $90 million.
The environmental study phase of the project is being done now.
More than a dozen fatalities have happened on Memorial Boulevardsince 1999 either in vehicle collisions, loss of control oroff-road incidents.
For more about the Memorial Boulevard project go towww.tdot.state.tn.us/sr126.