WIDEN I-24 BEFORE ‘CHOICE LANES’
Almost exactly 11 months after Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) officials announced the widening of Interstate 24 around Moccasin Bend would start in 2024, state officials said the same corridor is being considered for a privately built and operated toll lane.
Up to now, we’ve been fairly neutral on what Gov. Bill Lee calls “choice lanes,” wanting to know more details about how they might work before offering praise or criticism. Certainly we’ve appreciated the state’s “pay as you go” approach to date, where roads are built as they are paid for. That helps keep the state out of debt and is similar to the way responsible people operate their homes.
The “choice lanes” (giving drivers the choice whether to use slower interstate lanes or pay a toll to presumably escape clogged sections of roadways) were part of a $15 billion, 10-year roads plan in the governor’s Transportation Modernization Act passed by the legislature earlier this year.
In January, TDOT officials said the widening of
I-24 around Moccasin Bend was in the preliminary engineering phase and would be the first of three projects that would add lanes on I-24 between the intersection with I-59 in Georgia and the I-24 junction with U.S. Highway 27 near downtown Chattanooga.
Officials at the time said the project around the river “presents unique design challenges because of the geographical location [between the railroad tracks hugging Lookout Mountain and the Tennessee River].”
They said the project likely would be undertaken with the construction manager/general contractor alternative, and the second phase of the project from the Tennessee state line to Brown’s Ferry Road likely would use the design-build alternative delivery method.
When I-24 was built in the 1960s, construction crews shaved off the end of Moccasin Bend for dirt to provide part of the road bed on the other side. They also used part of an existing island, known as Ross’s Towhead.
When the stretch between U.S. 41 in Lookout Valley to 23rd Street in Chattanooga was completed on Dec. 16, 1966, its cost of about $15 million ($104 million in 2022) made it one of the most expensive highway projects, per mile, at the time.
On Monday, TDOT Deputy Commissioner and Chief Engineer Will Reid said the “choice lanes” would not move the roadway further into the river but would likely “go up” so “you would likely have an elevated structure … which is very typical, that you see across the country.”
No apparent mention was made Monday of how or if the “choice lanes” would affect the widening of I-24 around Moccasin Bend.
The widening anticipated to start in 2024 has not been in the state bidding pipeline in 2023. It also is not mentioned among transportation projects in Region 2 (which includes Hamilton County), so it may not have advanced out of the engineering phase.
What worries us is whether the state is planning a sort of bait-and-switch with the local “choice lanes.” In other words, instead of widening the stretch as anticipated, it would instead build the toll lane(s), enabling only those who choose to pay to be able to bypass what has for several decades become, at times, a miles-long backup between I-59 and Highway 27. And when that stretch is clogged, so is the Highway 41 alternative along the side of Lookout Mountain above the interstate because of two-lane tunnels in St. Elmo and Lookout Valley.
If the state is still planning to widen the interstate at some point, it may believe the “choice lanes” could offer a respite while the challenge of construction of more lanes is tackled.
Even if the lanes are to eventually become a local reality, they aren’t first on the list of proposed projects announced Monday. The first is likely to come on a stretch of already crowded I-24 between Murfreesboro and Nashville.
We feel, instead, any local “choice lanes” should follow the widening of I-24 in Chattanooga. And if the widening takes care of the long backups, no such lanes may be needed.
Adding only “choice lanes” would in the long run be the most cynical decision, one that would continue to hold hostage residents of the growing southwest corner of the county on a daily basis and users who travel the stretch less frequently.
Though such lanes may help pay for some transportation projects in the state, they should never pit what’s good for the toll operators against what’s good for Tennesseans as a whole.