Historic Old North Knoxville - Late Breaking News

First Traffic Calming Meeting Held April 22

April 26, 2003


	This fire hydrant was damaged from a severe car wreck last April 18 at the corner of Armstrong and Glenwood.

On April 22, residents from Old North Knoxville (ONK) met with representatives of the East Tennessee Community Design Center (ETCDC, with David Watson, director and Curtis Catron, architect), KPD, Knoxville's Traffic Engineering Division (Bill Cole), and the Knoxville Fire Department (Asst. Fire Chief Roger Byrd) at the first scheduled meeting at Fulton High School, to discuss traffic calming options for ONK. This meeting was advertised to the entire neighborhood via fliers and was open to anyone living in the ONK area.

The main point of this first meeting was to provide information and establish some ground rules. Comments will then be compiled and forwarded on to the ETCDC, which is managing this project on behalf of Old North Knoxville. There will be a total of four meetings throughout 2003 before the plan goes before the Metropolitan Planning Commission, then City Council for approval. We as a neighborhood are tapping into ETCDC's 16 years of helping communities like Old North Knoxville become better places to live. This is a special opportunity none of us should pass up.

Curtis Catron of the ETCDC led the meeting. Free food was offered from the Steamboat for meeting attendees' consumption!

There was a preliminary meeting of the Old North Knoxville Traffic Calming Committee before Tuesday's meeting, and at this meeting, preliminary goals, issues, opportunities/constraints and options were outlined. Curtis had already summarized these, so he presented them to the group for clarification and enhancement. The final result is shown below.

Goals:

Improving safety for pedestrians, pets, and property in Old North Knoxville

Adding elements and enhancements that promote traffic calming

Reducing speeding, accidents, and abuse of our streets by those looking for a quick short cut from one part of town to another.

Issues:

Speeding

Pedestrian/pet safety: children walking and biking to school

Sidewalk repair/upgrade and crosswalks

Cut-through traffic- Glenwood, Oklahoma, Scott, Grainger, Kenyon, North 4th Avenue

Property safety

Pedestrian access to Broadway Shopping Center

Linkage to greenway and between the east and west parts of Old North Knoxville

Sidewalks repaired / upgraded

Parking on sidewalks and cars parked the "wrong way"

People traveling by wheelchairs in the road

Opportunities/Constraints:

Funding to carry out traffic calming
Neighborhood involvement (or lack of involvement)
Varying right-of-way widths
On-street parking and lack of it
Emergency service access
Good dialogue opportunities among neighborhood, city and emergency services
Adding alternative transportation ways (e.g., bike lanes and greenways)

Options:

Many of these can be found here. Here are some that were not totally dismissed as possibilities. No options were selected at this meeting.

Painted crosswalks
Raised crosswalks (14' wide humps that are 3" high)
Textured pavement
Roundabouts/traffic circles
Lane narrowing
Neckdowns
One-way streets
Stop signs
Gateway treatment (e.g., tree planting and medians)

Much discussion ensued over the use of stop signs to calm traffic. J.D. Hopkins (KPD) suggested that these are good because he can monitor cruising non-resident traffic and pull them over when they inevitably run a sign. However, Bill Cole (Knoxville's Traffic Engineering Division) vehemently disagreed with this concept. He said that overuse of stop signs is bad because it encourages people to run them. This leads to people ignoring "important" stop signs at major intersections which causes more accidents.

At the end of the discussion, people milled about and looked at maps and graphical representations of the traffic calming options.

There will be a second meeting on June 24 when a formal plan will start to be developed. It is important that as many people in ONK attend these meetings as possible. Residents will receive notification of the time and location of each meeting. Free food will be offered, as the meeting times will be 6:30 PM. Your help and ideas are needed and wanted. It is the only way we can make Old North Knoxville a better place for all of us to live.