Alternate solutions to the Robinson Road traffic problem were put on display at Oak Ridge North’s Town Hall meeting Nov. 5, giving residents a chance to choose three preferences.
The top five solutions voted on by residents were presented at the City Council meeting Nov. 9. Residents were allowed to place three voting stickers on three different plans or all on the same plan.
City Manager Vicky Rudy said the voting took place to get a better understanding of what the community wants and what alternative solutions to Robinson Road are probable for the city.
“The meeting was to get an idea of where the community is coming from,” Rudy said. “Most chose the options of either doing nothing or two of the realignment options. The solutions would call for the realignment of the road without going through houses and having not as big an impact for businesses in the area.”
Relieving traffic on Robinson Road has been an ongoing issue, with the homes of residents being a key concern in the aspect of widening and realignment. Although Robinson Road was a project that was a part of the May 2015 county bond election that did not pass, the City Council is still trying to come up with ways to ease mobility on the congested road.
The option with the most individual votes at the town hall meeting was to realign Robinson Road with the railroad tracks and make it a four-lane road starting at Blueberry Hill Drive. The option with the second highest amount of votes was to do nothing at all.
Brian Barnhart, owner of Woodlands Elite Cheer Company off of Robinson Road, said he voted for the realignment options and said doing something is necessary to ease the traffic that hurts business.
“I think two of the realignment options seem to work for the residents and traffic on Robinson Road,” Barnhart said. “Realignment is necessary; it just allows traffic to flow. Mobility is horrible for my clients right now, and I’m really hopeful they can get it fixed soon.”
Barnhart presented a petition with 1,000 signatures on it to Montgomery County Commissioners Court on Nov. 24, calling for something to be done about the high traffic on Robinson Road.
“We have got to find a way to make it better,” he said. “The whole area would be better with mobility.”
Rudy said the city will put forward engineering studies that will be completed for all of the top considerations that were voted on to see what effects each solution would have on the city and how mobility would be affected for residents.
“We’ll be looking at what the impact of doing nothing will have on residents and the town,” she said. “For example, we’ve already done a traffic count on Ridgewood Drive, which is a road that goes through Oak Ridge and avoids Robinson Road, and there’s up to 2,000 cars a day on that road. Those cars make their way down a very residential street and neighborhood. So the different options are not just about Robinson Road but how the rest of the community will be impacted beyond that.”
Rudy said other solutions that were voted on—such as a Main Street alternative and adding stoplights at the railroad crossing—will also be looked into, but the realignment options are being looked at the most.
With Robinson Road possibly having a chance to be funded as a project of the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone, Rudy said she is hopeful to work with the county on the Robinson Road issue in the future.
“There is hope out there that we find a project our community can live with and [that] the county can also be involved,” she said. “We’re a small city with a bigger problem.”
