At a special-called meeting Oct. 10, the Oak Ridge North City Council approved a preliminary engineering study on one of the Robinson Road solutions recommended by the Robinson Road subcommittee. The subcommittee, composed of City Council members Alex Jones and Clint McClaren, gave four alternate traffic solutions to engineering firm RPS Klotz Associates earlier this summer to study and determine the effect each option would have on the city of Oak Ridge North. The traffic effects of these alternate options were presented to the subcommittee, City Council and Oak Ridge North residents at the special meeting. The council chose to move forward with Option 3. Option 3 would result in the creation of four lanes on Robinson Road from I-45 to Oak Ridge Park Drive. Jones said the subcommittee looked at several factors when considering the options and wanted a solution that would be long term, even if it is more expensive. "The subcommittee looked at several factors we were worried about,” Jones said. “Factors like the dollar today is cheaper than the dollar 10 years from now. If we do Option 3, we get more relief for a longer period of time than if we do any of the other options. That means we could find ourselves back in this boat sooner if we go with a less expensive option that doesn’t necessarily fix the problem.” Sriram Natarajan, a representative for RPS Klotz Associates, said Option 3 was the more expensive option—the project is estimated to cost roughly $5.2 million. However, when studying the alternate solutions, Option 3 was shown to have the least traffic delay time. “Option 3 is also going to be able to be constructed in phases, as well as reduce cut-through traffic,” Natarajan said. “The cons of the option are that there are design constraints, it’s more expensive, and there will be no dedicated turn lane.” Jones said even though funding for any major project on Robinson Road is not readily available today, having an engineering scope done on a possible solution could help in the future when the city is ready to act. "We really don’t have any funds to spend on anything right now, so the idea of doing this phase build was appealing to us so we wouldn’t have to do funding all at once,” Jones said. “But at same time, if federal funding options became available, its impossible to get funding for that unless we have the full project vetted, priced and ready to go. Our recommendation was to go ahead and price out full engineering costs for Option 3, both as a phase project and complete project, with the reality that right now we don’t have funding for it.” The City Council agreed to move forward with the study on Option 3, find out costs for the project and then reconvene with RPS Klotz Associates and the Robinson Road subcommittee to go over the results.