Knoxville gets $17.8M grant to improve safety along Chapman Highway

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (WATE) — For the second year in a row, the City of Knoxville has been awarded a Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation.

The City learned on Thursday that it had been selected for a $17.8 million grant to help improve the safety of around a quarter of a mile of Chapman Highway. Knoxville Mayor Indya Kincannon explained during a press conference that the improvements are the first of a three phase plan to improve safety along the roadway for those in South Knoxville.

The stretch of road can be a dangerous road. Earlier this year, a man was killed in a hit-and-run after he was struck by an SUV while walking across Chapman Highway.

The area that is being improved has seen more traffic due to business and residential development. The City announced this summer working to add new traffic lights and crosswalks at the intersection of Fort Avenue and Chapman Highway because of traffic issues outside of the newly-opened Kern’s Food Hall.

Kincannon explained that it will likely be a few years before the project is completed, but they are planning to place a separated greenway shared path, so that the area for people to walk or bike is separated from the road by a “healthy curb” and a grassy area. She also said there will be medians along parts of Chapman Highway that are similar to what has been installed on Magnolia Avenue to signal for drivers to slow down and that they are not on a highway.

“Everybody is a pedestrian at some point in their life and you know, even if you use your car a lot, you get out of your car and you want to be able to safely move around, to run your errands and get to school, get to work,” Kincannon said. “Making it safe is an issue of equity and making sure that it’s safe for everybody, whether you’re a car owner or not. it’s also just a quality of life issue because many people feel healthier when they’re able to walk places, and yet they don’t want be two feet from a car going 50 mph, and so having those curbs, having those medians, having those improved signals will enable people who want to walk do so more safely and those who have to walk also be able to do so safely.”

The project to improve Chapman Highway is just a part of Knoxville’s broader Vision Zero Strategy, which hopes to reduce the number of fatalities around Knoxville’s roadways to zero by 2040.

“Every single person who dies crossing our streets or while driving on our streets is an unnecessary, avoidable death, in my view, and we can’t rely on Individuals to fix that because people are going to make mistakes,” Kincannon explained. “Vision Zero, the strategies behind it assume that humans are fallible and that the way to make things safer and to avoid serious injury and death is through design.”

Along with the grant, the City of Knoxville is also required to make a 20% local match, bringing the total available for the project to around $22,250,000. In addition to the improvements, a portion of that money is also allocated for safety planning in other parts of the city.

The project title of the grant is “Safer Knoxville 2.0,” and Kincannon explained that is simply the title on the grant application, as the city also submitted a SS4A grant application last year titled “Safer Knoxville, Strategic Action towards Fatality Elimination on Roadways” for improvements along East Magnolia Avenue.

Knoxville’s Community Development Corporation also received a $1.7 million SS4A grant on Thursday to improve pedestrian access around the Western Heights and Beaumont neighborhoods.

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