By Gabriel Rasmus Segovia
The East -West Corridor being debated by our Clarksville City Council is a hotly contested plan. The immediate families who stand to lose multi-generational farms are among the most vocal opponents, along with other property and home owners in the path of the proposed road from Gate 1 to Wilma Rudolph.
I recently attended a public hearing held at the Kleeman Center on this proposed road. At this meeting, I was able to ask several key planners on this project some specific questions. After reflecting on the answers I was given, I made a decision about what I would recommend the best course of action should be.
Let me start by saying that the first question I always ask is, “How much is this going to cost?” When I spoke to the person who should know the answer, he told me that the figure given to the public at that meeting ($30 million) was a three year old estimate. I asked another person there, and he told me that you can add about 3% per year for inflation, but even then that figure was a rough estimate.
What I also gathered at this public hearing was the real reason that this proposed road is being fast-tracked is because there is a request to develop a large piece of property in its path.
All these factors taken together lead me to the conclusion that the best way to decide the potential for this road is to place a moritorium on issuing building permits for the “corridor” until after a new mayor and Council is in place. That will occur on January 1st, 2011.
I say this because I do not believe committing AT LEAST 30 million dollars at this point in time is sensible given the already tremendous amount of spending our city government has already incurred with the recent marina project. Aftterall, there is only so much money we can spend, and I am not convinced that the East-West Corridor is the best use of our limited resources.
Also, I am not convinced that spending tens of millions of dollars on this road will actually have the “bang for the buck” for the price tag that it comes with.
The goal is to get traffic to and from Fort Campbell Blvd. and Wilma Rudolph faster, but I am not sure that this road is the answer. Afterall, it actually is not very far from the 101st Division Parkway to Gate 1, so I am not sold on the notion that this new road will actually have the impact that the proponents say it will.
Also a problem with this proposal is Trenton Road. For those of you who travel this road on a regular basis, you know first hand how difficult and frustrating it can be to get stuck in traffic and/or an accident on this road.
I believe expanding Trenton Road is a much higher priority than constructing yet another road to the mall. The bottlenecks on Trenton Road are already bad enough, and instead of duplicating an East-West road, I believe it is a smarter use of our tax dollars to expand Trenton Road, especially considering it leads directly to the interstate.
If we place a hold on building along this proposed corridor then the next City Council and Mayor will have the opportunity to weigh it against other important road and capital projects.
