Montgomery County hopes to eliminate roadway deaths by 2045
MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Tenn. (WKRN) — On Monday night, the Montgomery County Commission was presented with a safety plan that would work to eliminate deadly and serious injury crashes on county roads by 2045, and although an ambitious goal, it’s a plan the Montgomery County Highway Department has been working on for roughly a year now.
Montgomery County is the second-fastest growing county in the state, according to the most recent Census data. However, Montgomery County Highway Department officials explained that not all county roads were designed to handle so much traffic.
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“Right now, I don’t think a lot of people feel safe on several of our road systems, so I think there’s a lot of work we can do to improve that,” civil engineer Alexander Morris said.
Between 2018 and 2022, out of the 5,838 crashes the county saw, 48 lives were lost.
“You hate to hear about incidents that take place on our road systems where a life is lost. That’s always tragic, no matter where you are, and so anything that we can do on our side of things to help mitigate those issues, we want to do that,” Morris said.
From 90-degree blind spots to turns hard to navigate and even adding sidewalks, these issues are all part of the Montgomery County Highway Department’s Safety Action Plan, which Morris has been working on for the past year. The department is asking the county commission to approve the plan, making it an official county document so the department can apply for federal dollars under the Safer Streets for All program, or SS4.
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“There are definitely a lot of safety issues that would consume almost every dollar we could get,” Morris said.
The department has already applied local dollars to multiple projects. Currently, projects underway or in the works include various school zones, improvements along River Road and Highway 12, widening Charles Bell Road, and updates to the Sango area.
Montgomery County Highway Department Supervisor Jeff Bryant is also working on safety directly with new growth.
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“Making sure that builders are not building these houses like they would in a subdivision where you just pull right into a driveway and then you’ve got to back out onto a road that might be 45 miles per hour, and so we’re trying to catch situations like that. That can really count into safety as well,” Bryant said.
The county commission will officially vote on the Safety Action Plan next week. If passed, the Montgomery County Highway Department can move forward with applying for federal dollars.
Although there was already a public survey period, anyone interested in reporting problem areas along county roads can do so here.
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