Residents fear traffic

Jodie Scott and Mike Driver, who live near the intersection of Harrison Lane and Harrison Road, were two speakers of roughly 10 residents from this area who came to Farragut Municipal Planning Commission’s Thursday, Jan. 20, meeting in Town Hall boardroom as Commissioners voted on the rezoning.

“If this is going to be rezoned to where it’s going to go out to Harrison Lane, opposite of Watt Road, there’s going to be a major speed issue,” said Scott, a resident along Amberly Court.

“…With that many more cars going in and out, I think it would be beneficial to look at the traffic before approving it to be rezoned,” she added.

“… I don’t know what you all plan on doing, but it is a major problem.”

Upon coming out of her subdivision onto Harrison Lane near Harrison Road, “It’s hard to see left” at the intersection,” Scott said. “We have to see through our neighbor’s yard if cars are coming before we get to the stop sign.

“…. You’re adding that many more cars going in and out on Harrison Lane. It is going to be a problem.”

Driver, a former Farragut High School sports coach and teacher who also lives in Amberly Meadows subdivisions, serves as its homeowners association president.

“What concerns us as a neighborhood … is about Harrison Lane … we’re going to have a lot of people exiting this development,” Driver said.

“People are going to come out on Harrison Lane — we’ve seen it attending church at Two Rivers; we’ve seen the traffic pick up there quite a bit. It’s a narrow stretch from Harrison Lane (north) to Harrison Road, out to Watt Road,” he added.

“The concern is, when we come out of our subdivision at Amberly Court and turn right, and we go up left toward Watt Road off of Harrison (Road), it’s very dangerous. We’ve got a lot of older folks in our subdivision, and I’ve had a couple of people say they’ve almost been hit.”

Nearby, “We’ve got a big apartment complex (also mixed-use) coming in behind Little Joe’s (Pizza),” Driver said about the complex along South Watt Road near its intersection with Kingston Pike, which is across from Harrison Lane’s north intersection with the Pike.

As a result, “It’s just going to pick up the traffic even more,” he added.

“We hope to be back whenever it gets to the next stage in the process.”

“We don’t want to see it become a cut-through either,” Vice Mayor/Commissioner Louise Povlin said about motorists using Harrison Road/Harrison Lane to get from North Watt Road to Kingston Pike heading west.

Familiar with this area’s traffic issues, including the above-mentioned mixed-use complex construction along South Watt Road resulting in the closure of one eastbound lane of Kingston Pike at the Watt Road intersection for the past several months, Commissioner Noah Myers said, “I suspect there’s a lot of cut-through traffic that going Harrison Road and Harrison Lane right now.”

With a sizeable portion of Harrison Lane in Loudon County, “I would love to have a conversation with the (Loudon) County Commissioner and talk about what their plans are,” Povlin said. “If there’s traffic calming they think might be effective on Harrison Lane.”

“We try to weigh (the concerns) of both the local, immediate community, such as yourselves, as well as the rest of the community,” Myers said. “It’s a challenge. We do try to look at the whole picture.”

He added the rezoning “is compatible with the Land Use Plan.”

Commissioners voted unanimously to approve the rezoning, which had been recommended by Town staff, as expressed by Mark Shipley, Community Development director.