Last week we learned that TDOT wasn't going to let the bids for the intersections improvements till January 2014. That's not very good news for the folks who will be injured or possibly killed at the intersection between now and then.

What's the costs? Conservatively speaking, we average about one crash at this intersection per week. If TDOT doesn't let the contract till January, that's about twenty more weeks or more.

At the current pace, that means we could see around twenty to twenty-five more crashes at the intersection before construction could start. It could mean  twenty to twenty-five more injured citizens or more. If property loss was, I don't know, ten thousand dollars per crash, that might ad up to a quarter million dollars or so. If you add in the medical costs of those who might be injured, well who knows.

Bottom line is, the improvements are long, long overdue and have been delayed several times already. The funding is in place, the engineering and preliminaries have been done. This intersection should be at the top of the states priority list now. It would have to rank as one of the most dangerous intersections in Loudon county.