Earth is piled in front of a home on East Brainerd Road in preparation for a road-widening project between Gray Road and Ooltewah-Ringgold Road on June 30, 2015. Construction on the next phase of the project is expected to begin by 2023-2024.Transportation officials have finally received the funding needed to continue the widening of East Brainerd Road all the way out to Ooltewah-Ringgold Road, though construction is not likely to begin for at least another five years.
Funding for the project comes thanks to Gov. Bill Haslam’s IMPROVE Act, which was signed into law in April 2017 and went into effect in July. The bill incrementally raises gas and diesel taxes by 6 cents and 10 cents, respectively, over the next three years to provide funding for 962 shelved transportation projects across the state.
One of those projects is the second phase of the East Brainerd Road expansion, which will widen a 1.5-mile section of the corridor – starting just east of Banks Road and continuing to Ooltewah-Ringgold Road – from two lanes to five.
The first phase of the widening project, which began in 2015, is expected to wrap up this June, said Jennifer Flynn, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation. Once the second phase is complete, the entire corridor will have been widened from Interstate 75 to Ooltewah-Ringgold Road.
“[The second phase is] still a few years off from it being built, but at least it’s on the list,” she said. “It wasn’t even on any kind of list before the IMPROVE Act came along. We knew that it was a need, but there were so many other greater needs that we had to prioritize.”