B

Editor’s Note: This is the third in a series on the City Council’s planning efforts.

During its recent work session, Morristown City Council discussed options regarding improving traffic to and from Frank Lorino Park.

“We do have a problem with access to our park. We know that when games let out, things back up on Pope Road and folks have trouble getting in and out,” City Administrator Tony Cox said.

Jason Elliott, principal engineer at LDA Engineering in Morristown helmed the PowerPoint presentation visible on two screens to councilmembers, city staff and visitors.

“I’m here to present to you results from a study we recently completed,” Elliott said. “The main purpose of the study is to identify and quantify ways, as Tony mentioned, to reduce traffic congestion on Pope Road and Lorino Park Road during peak times of park usage, so we tried to think out of the box and present a variety of options. We came up with six total. They’re very different from each other.”

The options fall into two groups, one on the south side of the park, connecting to Thompson Creek Road and the other on the north side, connecting to either Snyder Road or Carroll Road.

Option A is the simplest, Elliott explained, “It’s really just a relocation of the existing driveway that goes into the main parking lot. That existing driveway is at an angle to Lorino Park Drive.”

Snyder Road houses the Hamblen County Board of Education alternative school, along with a purchased building across the road that will be used as additional space for the school.

The HCBOE bus depot is also located on the road.

“The new driveway provides a better connection to Snyder Road, with a three-way stop. If you’re coming out of the main parking lot, you turn left to go onto Lorino Park Road, go straight to stay on Snyder Road. Those who want to travel east on Morris Blvd. would benefit most,” Elliott said.

The relocated driveway is adjacent to Challenger Field, but would not require any changes to the field. The estimated project cost is $185,000.

“One variation on this is that you could not remove the existing driveway, possibly straighten it to a 90 degree, then you would have two points of access to the main parking lot,” Elliott said. “We were looking at this as possibly a supplement to one of the other options which are full new road connections,”

Cox added, “This really only improves access to the parking lot; it does not have the impact we are going to see on some of the other options that give access to the park itself.”

Elliott concurred: “This option does not alleviate congestion at Pope Road,” he said.

Options B-F are new roadway connections between the park and existing road.

The typical design of the roadway options on the south side of the park would be considered a boulevard with a raised median, similar to the existing Durham Landing that leads to the city’s Public Works and Morristown Landing facilities.

The design includes 12-foot travel lanes separated by an 8-foot grassed median. Three of the four designs include a 10-foot greenway on one side of the roadway that would connect to a proposed greenway along Thompson Creek Road. The total width of each roadway is about 35’, curb to curb.

The shortest proposed roadway (Option B) at 800’ connects the north end of Thompson Creek Road to the parking lot at the Lorino baseball field. It would run alongside the site of the new Morristown Fire Department Station No. 3 and Lorino Disc Golf hole No. 6. The estimated project cost is $940,000.

“It provides two ways of ingress and egress to the park other than Pope Road,” Elliott said.

When exiting the park, vehicles would turn right on Thompson Creek to access East Morris Blvd at the new traffic signal to be installed soon and turn left to access the new access road to Crockett Trace Shopping Center and 25E.

During the design phase, the roadway was assumed to be located fully on city-owned property; however, discussion during the work session indicated the roadway would be problematic for the new fire station.

Assistant City Administrator Andrew Ellard said the fire station project, with regard to property, had already been slimmed down to avoid encroachment onto the disc golf course.

Adding a roadway onto the property would impact the size of the 2.1-acre area that will house the new training facility and thus possibly impact the city’s future ISO rating.

“In my view to make this make this a realistic alternative, it would actually need to shift over to private property,” Ellard said. “We can’t do the road on city property entirely.”

Morristown Fire Chief Clark Taylor concurred with Ellard’s assessment.

“For the training facility, outside of any structures we’ve got to have two open acres,” he said.

“So that should not have even been proposed,” Councilmember Tommy Pedigo said.

“There is some significant pain – we could obtain significant right-of-way from the adjacent property owners, if they were willing,” Cox said.

Elliott added that Option B would not necessarily alleviate traffic to and from the entire park.

“If they want to get to the soccer fields from that connection, they would have to travel through the baseball field and then all the way down to the main parking lot to get to the soccer fields,” he said. “When discussing traffic circuits and diversion of traffic, ‘C’ is far superior.”

Option C would connect Thompson Creek Road to the Lorino soccer fields, running parallel to the west edge of Lorino Disc Golf hole No. 18 at a length of 1,900’.

The estimated project cost is $2.39 million. The project would upgrade the existing 90-degree bend on Thompson Creek Road to a three-way stop.

“To build this one, you would need to acquire a small easement at the end of the roadway on the Thompson property,” Elliott said, adding that the cost of the design takes into consideration grading, tree clearing and creek crossings.

Each of the roadway options presented at the work session included design engineering, construction engineering, and permits – everything that would go into getting the road built, with the exception of purchasing property.

Option D – the longest and most costly of all the options – is 3,800’ and runs across private property to access the Lorino soccer fields. The connection on Thompson Creek Road would be located south of the new Crockett Trace access road, in the area behind Walmart, Elliott said. The budget for the project is $4.7 million and does not include any potential required improvements to that area of Thompson Creek Road.

“It would probably require total acquisition of the (private) property,” Elliott said. “Towards the end of the road, it crosses right over the fairway of disc golf hole No. 15, so that hole would have to be relocated or reconfigured somehow.”

Option E (700’) connects Carroll Road to the smaller Lorino parking lot at the skate park, with an estimated budget of $813,000. Option F (600’) connects Carroll Road to the Lorino soccer fields, with an estimated budget of $716,000, to include reconstruction of the intersection at Rock Church Road.

It runs west of the BMX area. The concession building located next to the softball fields would have to be relocated for Option F.

Regarding access to East Morris Boulevard for both Options E and F, there is no traffic signal at the intersection.

“So the benefit to left-turning vehicles is going to be less for either of these options,” Elliott said. “It’s more of a better option for vehicles turning right to stay east bound on Morris. It does however divert some traffic away from Pope Road. Another thing to consider is that Carroll Road is 100 percent residential, so there may be some resistance to this additional traffic diverted onto a residential street, but we wanted to at least present these as available options.”