The whole length of Bonny Oaks Drive, from Highway 58 to Silverdale Road, is in line to get a Riverwalk-style shared-use path, plus sidewalks, curbs and gutters and five lanes for traffic.
Someday.
The Tennessee Department of Transportation doesn’t have the money for the project now and doesn’t know when it will be funded.
But engineers have been working right along on the design for the massive rebuild and are ready to share their ideas with the public this week.
HEARING
The meeting will be 5-7 p.m. Thursday at the TDOT Region II headquarters on Cromwell Road.
Parts of the road already are five lanes, but plans call for adding shared-use paths in those areas and making the entire stretch five lanes. The work will affect home and business properties between Bonnyshire Road and Silverdale Road.
It’s a long-sought solution to traffic bottlenecks and frequent wrecks on a heavily traveled thoroughfare lined in most areas by drop-offs and ditches.
In August 2014, Chattanooga Councilman Russell Gilbert pressed Mayor Andy Berke to press TDOT for more attention to the road that serves the Volkswagen plant and its suppliers as well as the Amazon fulfillment center and Hamilton County Schools’ central office.
“It’s not going to get better,” Gilbert said at the time. “It’s only going to get worse.”
State estimates a couple years before that put the cost of the widening at nearly $50 million, according to newspaper archives.
Money available for transportation projects in Tennessee and nationally isn’t keeping up with demand. Gov. Bill Haslam has been trying to make a case for raising the state’s gas tax, which hasn’t gone up since 1989, but said last week 2016 probably won’t be the year.
TDOT already is taking smaller steps to make traffic move more safely and efficiently. Work is ongoing to widen access lanes at Enterprise South industrial park and carve a new road from Highway 58 to the back of the VW supplier park that eventually will link to Interstate 75.