‘Avoid Boyd’ starting in June; 8 to 10 weeks
Motorists usually traveling along Boyd Station Road in Farragut might need to find another route for about eight to 10 weeks starting in June.
As part of The Grove at Boyd Station subdivision development along Boyd Station Road, Rackley Engineering expects to be making improvements to that road, which include a roundabout.
“As soon as we get bids, and then we’ll have to come back to the Board (of Mayor and Aldermen to make sure everybody’s on board — June, I’d like to start,” Russ Rackley, owner of Rackley Engineering, said at the Farragut Municipal Planning Commission Staff/Developer meeting Tuesday, April 29, regarding the timetable for the road project.
Rackley said both lanes of Boyd Station would be closed during construction.
“I think, for cost and time advantages and being that the only intersection there is our development, which isn’t connected yet, we’ll hard close both ends of it and detour around Evans (Road),” he added. “I’ll have a traffic control plan and we’ll have to put warning signs on McFee Road and Virtue that says ‘Boyd Station closed.’”
“Do you have any idea how long that will take?” Community Development director Mark Shipley asked. Rackley estimated eight to 10 weeks but added, “I think it will go pretty quick.”
He said the roundabout is going to be “where the design connection for our subdivision is proposed.
“It’s approximately 3,500 feet” of road improvements,” starting at the McFee Road intersection with Boyd Station Road and ending at the “extent of our development property … plus from the western edge of our subdivision to the McFee Road intersection,” Rackley said.
“The Town is participating (in the improvements),” Shipley said. “Of course, the Board has already approved the financing for it. Basically, it’s a 3-foot widening of the Boyd Station Road.
“They are going to mill an inch-and-a-half overlay, 3 ½-inch binder and 1 ½-inch surface to Boyd Station Road itself,” he added. “One of the things the Board had asked the developer and the Town is to look” to add a roundabout.
“Boyd Station Road is a pretty long straightaway, “It just kind of invites faster car speeds.”
So to slow down motorists on that section of the road, Shipley said the Board supported including the roundabout.
Shipley added a proposed walking trail along Boyd Station Road would eventually tie into the Virtue trail with a 6-foot grass strip between the edge of the road and edge of the trail.
“The Town will have to put in the last section across the property between The Grove at Boyd Station and McFee Road, which is the Gibson property,” he said. “The roundabout itself is kind of asymmetrical.
“It’s all to the north,” Shipley added about the roundabout. “You know you have the railroad right-of-way to the south.
This roundabout, “unlike the two that are on McFee Road, should actually slow you down,” he said. “This is like the Virtue Road (roundabout), where you veer off and come back into the main road section.
“I think roundabouts have kind of evolved — in the Town at least,” he added.
“Is the roundabout a raised roundabout?” Planning Commissioner Ron Pinchok asked. “Is it raised off the road surface? Is there a curb?”
“Yes,” Rackley answered. “I’m not proposing any wall or anything like Virtue Road, but dimensionally, this is the same as the Virtue roundabout.”
“I like that; it’s good,” Pinchok said.
“It will meet (standards for) buses, fire trucks, everything” except 53-foot 18-wheelers, Rackley said.
“They will be over a curb or in the center landscaping if they try to navigate through it … there shouldn’t be an 18-wheeler down through there,” he added.
