(Story courtesy of WVLT)
Knoxville, TN Millions of dollars in federal funding is headed to Knoxville, aimed at improving a stretch of Chapman Highway.
The money is coming from the Biden administration’s Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program, a pool of more than $1 billion for grants to local governments who are improving roads.
Knoxville’s receiving $17.8 million in funding to improve one of the city’s most-used thoroughfares through its own project: SAFER Knoxville 2.0. Specifically, the three-phase project will focus on the stretch from Blount Avenue to Woodlawn Pike.
“We’re doing significant improvements at Augusta quarry which is a really popular place. We’re doing a lot of improvements to urban wilderness and connectivity, we want people to move around in ways other than cars if that’s something they’re interested in and that invitation rings a lot truer when they can do so safely,” Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon said.
According to state data, Chapman Highway saw 33 deadly or serious crashes from January of 2022 to July of 2024. Of those, seven were deadly (with eight total deaths) and 59 people were injured. Also, seven of those crashes, including four of the deadly ones, involved pedestrians.
That’s what the city is hoping to reduce. According to federal documentation on the funding, SAFER Knoxville 2.0 will focus on “high speeds, drivers failing to yield to people walking and biking and inconsistent pedestrian facilities.”
“By 2040 we want to have zero people die on the streets of Knoxville, every single person who dies on our streets or walking on our streets is an avoidable death, in my view, and we cannot rely on individuals to fix that,” Kincannon said.
So what will that look like? The same documents said the city is looking to build a sidewalk on the west side of Chapman Highway, install new pedestrian signals at intersections and throw in a median.
Not all the money for SAFER Knoxville 2.0 is coming from SS4A, however. The City of Knoxville is planning on contributing the rest, bringing the total cost of the project to $22,250,000.
Knoxville wasn’t the only group getting funding in East Tennessee, either. Fentress County, Dandridge and Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation are also on the list.
