Chattanooga's big transportation projects to cause delays in 2016

One lane is closed as work begins to rebuild Highway 27 in the downtown area between the north end of the Olgiati Bridge and the junction with Interstate 24.
One lane is closed as work begins to rebuild Highway 27 in the downtown area between the north end of the Olgiati Bridge and the junction with Interstate 24.

Investing in infrastructure

Roads* Work starts on $126 million upgrade of Highway 27 from the Tennessee River to I-24, scheduled for completion in 2020* Widening of Apison Pike, $46.5 million* Add $40 million exit and entrance ramp on I-75 into Hamilton Place Mall.* Widening of East Brainerd Road, $35 millionWater* Work should resumed of the stalled replacement lock at the Chickamauga Dam, projected to cost $858 million to finish in four to five yearsIntermodal* Work starts on $24 million inland port near Chatsworth, Georgia to be finished by 2018Air* West Star Aviation plans to invest $22.5 million into an air maintenance facility scheduled to open by the end of 2016 at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport

Happy New Year, and expect delays - especially if you're headed downtown or down river.

Because 2016 is going to be a year of growing pains in the Scenic City.

The next year will bring major new investments in all types of local projects as Chattanooga's transportation infrastructure catches up with the growth in residents and commerce.

For starters, there's U.S. Highway 27, the biggest, best and fastest route through downtown. And the route that skirts the western edge of the city and that many commuters utilize travelling between homes in Signal Mountain, Hixson, Soddy-Daisy and other far-flung places on a daily basis.

Highway 27 also feeds directly into Interstate 24, which carries volumes of local and transit traffic through the city daily.

For those who drive Highway 27 every day - and who just got over the widening of the road north of the Olgiati Bridge - this will be a year of grumbling and headaches, as the Tennessee Department of Transportation gets into a $126 million, nearly four-year widening project.

TDOT will be widening and straightening the 2.3-mile stretch of Highway 27 cutting along downtown, and widening the Olgiati Bridge, over the course of the project, which will see its first big progress made this year.

Major Chattanooga arteries also will be widened in 2016, including widening projects on Apison Pike and East Brainerd Road, and the addition of a new I-75 entrance and exit ramp into Hamilton Place Mall.

Also, $1 million in work to add lanes to Gunbarrel Road will wrap up this year, and $2 million in Wilcox Tunnel improvements are also slated to come to a close.

In total, significant road additions and expansion projects representing more than $200 million will be started, continued or wrap us this year. And it's all being done in an effort to move goods and people faster, more efficiently around and through the city.

"The average Chattanoogan spent 28 hours in the car in the last year, just sitting and burning fuel," says TDOT Commissioner John Schroer.

Schroer and Gov. Bill Haslam toured the state last year, trying to round up support for tax increases to address infrastructure needs.

"I would make the argument that infrastructure is the most basic [responsibility of government], because it's the thing nobody can build for themselves," says Haslam.

And Bridgett Massengill, project manager at long-term planning group Thrive 2055, says Chattanooga needs to, in the process of upgrading its roads, also look at upgrading its other transportation infrastructure in anticipation of future growth.

"The region is facing economic growth," she says. "Freight volume is increasing, because we're out of the recession, or we're coming out of the recession. People depend on goods being delivered to their door, but how do they ultimately arrive that day?"

Chattanooga has "to be very innovative, and we have to be very open-minded in order to figure out how to grow," she said.

In regards to river travel, work will resume this year to build the new Chickamauga Dam lock in Chattanooga, a project that's estimated to cost a total $858 million and take another five years to complete. Work on the lock - critical for Tennessee River travel - stalled for three years, but in 2015, Rep. Chuck Fleischmann, R-Tenn., and Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., secured money for the project.

When the long-term transportation omnibus funding bill passed in December, it secured even more continued funding this year for the project.

On the rails, the Georgia Ports Authority will get underway this year building a new, $24 million inland port in nearby Murray County, Georgia, which will handle freight moving between here and the coast, largely Savannah, Georgia.

The inland port - dubbed the Appalachian Regional Port - and others like it are part of a broader strategy to alleviate heavy interstate congestion and always-rising tractor-trailer traffic on the nation's roadways.

According to the American Trucking Associations, a national trucking trade organization, freight demand in the U.S. is expected to rise every year for the next decade, at an annual rate of 3.4 percent through 2021. And with a limited road system and an ever-increasing shortage of truck drivers (which will result in truck driver pay increases in 2016), intermodal transportation - in which freight arrives by sea, travels over land by rail and then is delivered to the last stop by truck - is projected to grow, long term, at just over 5 percent through the next five years.

Intermodal revenue hit an estimated $19.7 billion mark last year, and is expected to hit $39.6 billion by 2026.

The Appalachian Regional Port is expected to be complete by 2018, and is being built on 42 acres of pasture land.

Meanwhile, at the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport - which recorded a record year for passenger boardings in 2015 - West Star Aviation is building a general aviation maintenance hangar for air maintenance, repair and overhaul of corporate jets.

Upcoming Events