Access matters: Boring Road resident respondents say Kingston Pike connection should remain
Reactions were mixed regarding the closure of part of Boring Road, when residents were asked to respond to a flyer distributed in their newspaper box.
While some want the road at Kingston Pike to remain open, others are relieved it is closed.
Against the closure:
• Darrell Douglas: “My wife and I are residents of Baldwin Park. It’s my understanding that there were no public hearings about closing this section of Boring Road prior to the decision to close it.
“In my opinion, it would be greatly beneficial to keep access open at the Boring/Kingston Pike intersection, with both entry and exit as “right turn only,” he said. “As the number of homes along Boring Road increase, traffic will get worse with Smith Road as its only exit.
“Also, where Boring Road intersects with Smith Road, a four-way stop sign should be placed, giving traffic from all side streets at that intersection a safer way to get on to Smith or Boring Road. With the school bus and faculty traffic, plus Stonemeade residents, traffic on Boring will increase significantly.
(Editor’s note: A four-way stop is planned for the intersection of Boring Road and Smith Road).
• Mike and Wendy Stafford of Baldwin Park: “We appreciate that the Farragut Press is interested in receiving public comments regarding the relatively sudden decision to close Boring Road. Unfortunately, the Town of Farragut Board of Mayor and Aldermen seemed much less interested in public input before making that decision.
“We have lived on Burney Circle in the Baldwin Park subdivision for more than 12 years,” they stated in an email. “One of the unexpected benefits of living here has been the surrounding horse pastures and woods, where we regularly enjoy seeing deer, turkeys, foxes, abundant birdlife and, unfortunately, the occasional coyote. We knew that development would eventually come to the area, and we have generally supported the Town’s planning decisions.
“The Board made what we believe were good
zoning decisions by denying large apartment developments and instead approving the Villages of Farragut and a new residential subdivision off Boring Road,” the Staffords stated. “While construction of the new elementary school has been very difficult for us at times — with constant construction noise (sometimes before 5 a.m.), heavy equipment traffic and road disruptions — we recognize that a new school serves the community far better than another large apartment complex.
“What concerns us is the sudden decision to permanently close Boring Road. The decision was not well-communicated and appears to have been made, at least in part, to avoid the expense of widening the narrow, one-lane road to improve traffic safety,” they stated. “We have not heard whether a traffic study was conducted to support this decision.
“Most residents already know that traffic on Kingston Pike during school mornings is extremely congested,” the Staffords stated. “The new elementary school will exponentially add to that challenge.
“It is one thing for parents to experience delays while dropping off and picking up their children,” they stated. “It is quite another for long-time residents to find themselves effectively trapped in their neighborhoods during peak traffic periods because alternative routes have been eliminated.
“We encourage the Town to conduct and publicly share a comprehensive traffic study to justify the closure or identify better alternatives,” the Staffords stated. “We also recommend evaluating the intersection of Boring Road and Smith Road for a three-way or four-way stop. The intersection already presents safety concerns, as traffic traveling north on Smith Road from Kingston Pike is often difficult to see when exiting Boring Road.
“We appreciate the opportunity to share our concerns and hope the Town will carefully consider the long-term impact this decision will have on area residents.”
• Paul Johnson, Burney Circle: “Yes, the current closure of Boring Road is having an impact on me.
“I have lived in Baldwin Park for over 12 years and on about half the trips I make from my house had been on Boring Road to Kingston Pike,” he stated in an email. “The other half of my trips were on Boring Road to Smith Road. Both ends of Boring Road are dangerous.
“I am the district coordinator for the AARP Driver Safety Program, and our Smart Driver Course stresses that older drivers should avoid making left hand turns,” Johnson stated. “Sure, I primarily made left turns off of Boring Road onto Kingston Pike. Sometimes I had to wait for some time, but if it wasn’t safe to turn left I would turn right into the shopping center and swing around and wait for the traffic light.
“The intersection at Smith and Boring is extremely dangerous to turn left,” he stated. “Traffic is hidden by the slope of Smith Road and quite a bit of the traffic exceeds the 40-mph speed limit. I believe the Town is going to eventually put a four-way stop at this intersection; but in the meantime, we take a risk every time we turn left.
“Since the road construction has closed a portion of Boring Road, I have been driving through the new Stonemeade subdivision and past the farragutpress office for those trips I formerly used on Boring Road to Kingston Pike,” Johnson stated. “Several stretches of Village Commons Boulevard in The Villages of Farragut has parking where cars could back into the street.
“I walk through this area frequently and observe cars not stopping at stop signs in this area. Using this route
has added 3-10ths of a mile of additional travel, each direction,” he stated.
“The Town, since I have lived here, has stated that whoever developed this property formerly owned by Doug Horne would be responsible to widen Boring Road,” Johnson stated. “Then, the Knox County School Board purchased it and is only widening a short distance of Boring Road. Now Mayor [Ron] Williams wants to close Boring Road at Kingston Pike.
“One of my primary concerns is emergency service response time,” he stated. “If someone in Baldwin Park has a health issue, how much more time will the response be with Boring Road closed? How much more will the response time be increased for those homes on the current narrow portion of Boring Road that will be at the dead end?
“Is the closure a means for the Town not to spend money widening the road (From what I recall, Boring Road has been at the bottom of the list of substandard roads to be widened.)?
“I want to stress that the Town of Farragut has historically been responsive to the concerns of its citizens, but so far there has been no public discussion of closing Boring Road. It seems the decision has already been made,” Johnson stated. “My final comment regards the road closure signs during the construction.
“Why are there no signs on westbound Kingston Pike warning that Boring Road is closed?” Johnson asked. “On Thursday morning, I took my grandchildren for a walk along the greenway to see the Boring Road construction. We noticed a small business van approach the Boring Road and Boring Lane intersection, only to discover that they could not proceed,” he stated. “A short time later we noticed the same vehicle at a home across from Baldwin Park subdivision. Today we had a representative of a company come to our home and he explained that he attempted to come up old Boring Road only to discover he had to turn around. I’m sure there have been many more who have had to turn around.”
• Unnamed resident: “My wife and I live in Barrington Park off Boring Road. We’re very disappointed to learn that the Town of Farragut is planning to block the Boring Road/Kingston Pike access.
“This will be especially inconvenient to our neighborhood, as well as to the new neighborhood under construction next to us (32 homes), as traffic builds with the opening of the elementary school,” he stated in an email. “ It would certainly be helpful if we could at least exit Boring Road onto Kingston Pike by turning right and also enter Boring Road off Kingston Pike by turning right.
“This seems like a reasonable compromise instead of blocking the road completely,” he said.
• Baldwin Park resident Don Schreyer: “I attended the Town meeting for the approval of the Stonemeade subdivision on March 31.
“During the meeting the mayor mentioned that Boring Road will be terminated at about 134 Boring Road into a turnaround. No entrance or exit to Kingston Pike,” Schreyer stated in an email.
“This solution is not acceptable. No citizen input was sought to make this decision.
“The residents who live on Boring Road, and the residents who live on roads that connect to Boring Road, Baldwin Park subdivision and Boring Lane, need to be asked for input,” Schreyer stated. “No decision on the future of Boring Road should be made without their input. Note: Mayor Williams is term-limited; his term is up in August of this year.
“Boring Road needs to be brought up to current standards, he stated. “The best solution would be right-in and right-out at Kingston Pike as a new traffic light would not be allowed on Kingston Pike.
“The new school for 1,400 students will have 66 classrooms, thus 66 teachers, cafeteria staff, maintenance staff and administration staff, likely over 100 folks who, I understand, would use the Boring Road entrance to the school staff parking lot,” Schreyer stated. “Most of these people will arrive before school starts and depart after school is out. Note: school starts at 7:45 and ends at 2:45.
“It is reported that 12 buses will support the school,” he stated. “They will enter from Boring Road via Smith to drop off students, and at the end of the school day pick up and move students to their homes again using Boring Road via Smith.
“The additional traffic load on Boring Road will be significant,” Schreyer stated. “With a right-in right-out at Kingston Pike, the teachers and staff would have an alternative way to reach or exit the school,” he stated. “Emergency vehicles would also have an alternate path to service the school as well.
“I support the connection of Boring Road to Kingston Pike via right-in, right-out,” Schreyer stated. “The Town has the funds to bring the road up to standards. If they desire, they could seek funds from the county and/or the school board as the addition of the school to this location is causing the problem.
“In past years when Doug Horne desired to sell the land the new school occupies, the Town wanted Doug to pay for the upgrade of Boring Road,” he stated. “The new landowner is Knox County Schools and the Town needs to require them to upgrade the road to current standards."
• Brittany Moore: “Personally, I don’t want it to close. I think we have plenty of roads that come out on Kingston Pike that are small feeder roads like Boring Road is.
“If you think of the road between [Concord First] Baptist Church and the condos there,” she said. “It’s a small feeder road, as well, and the amount of people who come out on that road, rarely do I see wrecks.
“There’s rarely [wrecks] on our [Boring] Road,” Moore said. “I go in and out of there 15 times a day, probably … the time to go around, they say, to [Village Commons Boulevard] and come down through the new neighborhood [Stonemeade] and come across from Kingsgate at that red light is just not a time saver. It’s not a traffic saver.
“It is routing people through a neighborhood versus an established road that’s been here,” she said. “I think it directly affects the few of us whose families have been here for hundreds of years.
“It truly affects us daily,” Moore said. “Personally, I think they should leave it alone.
“During all the school conversations, I know people were thinking about school traffic, school traffic, school traffic,” she said, adding the back way was only intended for buses, not for teachers or other staff.
“They were very clear, when they went through that, that their intention was not to have students enter and exit anywhere off of Boring Road other than buses in the bus loop,” Moore said. “I think the Town of Farragut needs to respect that. I think that’s the reason people voted the way they did vote and wanted the school the way it was.
“I think there’s plenty of traffic on other roads that feed off Kingston Pike,” she said. “With the newly proposed red light at Jamestowne and proposed red light from Village Green and Concord First Baptist, where they aligned those roads, that would give enough time for Boring Road to be just like any other feeder road and provide breaks in between the traffic. Right now, there’s a speed issue there.
And, “for the people who are [living on Boring Road], it is a safety concern to close that road off because of the way that the police are not in West Knoxville, if there’s an issue. The fire station is off of [North] Campbell Station [Road]. It’s a hassle and unneeded.
“We have talked to [Farragut Municipal Planning Commissioner] Louise Povlin and other people about some measures to slow people down … speed humps to help curb the through traffic,” Moore said. “And, the Town has reached out to Ingle’s to possibly get a cut-through next to the dentist’s office to come out at the old Ingle’s red light [In separate interview, Mayor Ron Williams said the Town did reach out to the Ingles’ owners and that suggestion was declined],” she said. “I feel like they should push that. I think they should try hard to get that.
“I think it’s very unfortunate that they think cutting through a neighborhood … is a consolation prize for closing this [road] off,” Moore said. “It’s unsafe for the neighbors; it’s more traffic because you’re entering into the school traffic at certain times.
“And, if I have to pick up my kids at Farragut High School and Farragut Middle School, I’m now going to be contending with the new Farragut Elementary School traffic,” she said. “So, I don’t think it helps us any with traffic flow.
“They haven’t talked to us about it,” said Moore, who serves on the Town’s Visual Resources Review Board. “They haven’t told us that it would come up in a meeting.”
While she serves on the VRRB, “I hear a lot of it, but I did not know that they were now planning to do this because the last time I talked to the mayor directly about it, it was one option. It was not ‘the’ option.
“I think there’s some people trying to push this that, if they do close it off, it’s a convenient drop-off for kids, and I thought that’s what we were trying to eliminate,” Moore said.
• Baldwin Park resident Caroline Lemond: “I’ve lived here for 10 years, and that section of the road they’re closing permanently, I use all the time.
“When I’m coming anywhere east from Kingston Pike, that’s by far the quickest way to get home,” she said. “If you don’t turn in there, you have to go through about three or four traffic lights and turn on Smith Road.
“The road has always been substandard, narrow and dangerous because you have to kind of drive off the road when another car is coming,” Lemond said. “We’ve always wanted it to be improved, but what’s happening right now that it is closed, is that everybody’s coming through the Village Commons [Boulevard], where the Villages [of Farragut] are and through that new subdivision, Stonemeade, which hasn’t been developed yet, so people keep doing that instead of going all the way down to Smith Road,” she said. “That’s going to create a lot of traffic in the Villages, which is probably not good for the seniors who live there. That’s already happening.
“Our preference is that [Boring Road] be left open – and improved,” Lemond said. “It has to be improved because the way it is now, it’s terrible. There are not any safe shoulders.
“We have heard some people propose a right turn off Kingston Pike and a right turn off Boring Road onto Kingston Pike, and that would be acceptable,” she said. “I don’t know how [the closing] is going to impact people going to the [new] school. Supposedly, the parents are supposed to come up Village Commons [Boulevard].
“The buses are going to go up behind our house,” Lemond said. “…It would be nice if it were left open.”
• Mary Miller (whose father Jack Ferrell, 96, lives in Baldwin Park): “We have been going all the way around to get into the neighborhood.”
She understood the closure was because the road was being widened.
“But, that’s way out of the way to get to this neighborhood,” she said, adding she is opposed to the closure.
“How long have people been using that [Boring Road access]? How many accidents have there been there?” Miller asked. “I don’t know of any in all the years my dad has lived here.
“There might be near misses because people get impatient, but we don’t sit there forever, especially if it’s high traffic, we just turn right, go into Ingle’s and go to the light,” she added.
• Pam Sherwood: “With the new houses coming in and the new school, it’s so important to have Boring Road, particularly because of fire and police.
“If the firemen need to get in or the police or medical, closing that [could affect] one life even, if something happened and they couldn’t get to us,” she said. “I think it’s so important to keep it open. With the school, I think it would be very important to have that opened.
“I have heard they don’t want to widen it all the way down [Boring Road] because of costs, but Farragut is one of the most desired areas in Tennessee to live because of the schools, the safety and the people here,” Sherwood said. “I think it would be great if they [improved all of Boring Road] because you have to keep up the community.
“But most of all, for the safety aspect of it because if one person couldn’t get what they needed, as far as medical, it would be terrible, devastating,” she said.
• Baldwin Park resident K. Johnson: “I want to voice my concern regarding the [Farragut Board of Mayor and Alderman’s] scheduling a complete Boring Road closure of the Kingston Pike access.
“According to the Board’s plan, Boring Road will be terminated at 134 Boring Road into a turnaround with no entrance or exit to Kingston Pike,” Johnson stated in an email. “Rather than dead-ending Boring Road, I advocate the connection of Boring Road to Kingston Pike be right-in, right-out access to promote public safety, emergency response and road connectivity.
“Keeping Boring Road open offers an additional way in and out of this area so emergency first responders are able to efficiently get to this area in the event of any type of incident,” Johnson stated. “Let’s be mindful that emergency vehicles need to have road access to get in and out to do their jobs. Keeping Boring Road open provides an alternate path for fire and rescue vehicles to service the area.
“The new Farragut Area Elementary School, located between Boring Road and Village Commons Boulevard, is the largest elementary school ever built by Knox County Schools with a capacity of 1,400 students,” Johnson stated. “A school of this size is projected to require about 90 employees. The larger proportion of students will be car riders not bus riders.
“Once the new Stonemeade subdivision is built out, 75-plus households will be situated along the Boring Road corridor,” Johnson stated. “A major expansion of the Villages of Farragut, including villas, is now underway to accommodate more senior residents there.
“All these will undoubtedly contribute to more traffic in the vicinity,” Johnson added. “Rather than installing a cul-de-sac and completely closing off Boring Road access to Kingston Pike, please consider widening Boring Road with right in/right out access to Kingston Pike. This would allow traffic to be dispersed across a wider road network, improving emergency access and enhancing connectivity for years to come.”
In support of road closure:
• Frances Cottrell: “Our viewpoint on Boring Road's closure is that the effects are mostly positive. School traffic will not be flooding our road, and we will have a quieter neighborhood.
“However, we will miss driving down that road to see the wild turkeys and flowers,” Cottrell said. “But we welcome this change. It won't really mess up our daily life at all.”
• Barbara and Jeffrey Crist of Baldwin Park: “We’re in favor of closing Boring Road to through traffic, however, we really don’t want the buses coming down Boring Road from Smith Road.
“I’m very much in favor of the buses going up Boring Road from Kingston Pike and then turning around and heading back out the same way,” the Crists stated in an email.
• Janet Cable: "I support the closure of Boring Road. It would control additional traffic from school and keep it safer for walkers and greenway users.
“There are alternatives that allow access from Boring to Kingston Pike on Smith Road and through Stonemeade and the Villages of Farragut,” Cable stated in her email.
• Baldwin Park resident George Cooper: “The Town should facilitate a public discussion and solicit community input regarding the planned closure of Boring Road at Kingston Pike.
“For many reasons including the Town's founding vision of having open discourse with residents and the value of soliciting differing perspectives and ideas in decision-making,” he added.
“My opinion is to close it with a turnaround after the last driveway before Kingston Pike,” Cooper said. “I have specific reasoning for this but in no way claiming this is the right choice without learning all other perspectives. What better way for me as well as the Town to learn others' perspectives than in a community open forum!”
• Benna Hughes, a Boring family member who lives with her father Ben Boring: “I have two feelings. When I first heard about [the closure, I was absolutely against it because it’s our part of the roadway our family drives on and the part our family uses all the time, and I was hoping that now the road was getting widened — it’s very narrow — that it would be opened.
“We absolutely don’t want the rest of the road widened if it would not be closed off. Everybody would be coming onto Boring Road to avoid Kingston Pike,” she said.
“This has been a beautiful country road forever, and [widening the road] is going to destroy it,” Hughes said. “I would rather it be closed. People are already speeding on the road. [Widening] is going to make it worse.”
“I understand there is going to be a cul-de-sac [at Boring Road],” she said, adding she feared the cul-de-sac would become a hangout for teenagers.
“I hope the Town could prevent that,” Hughes added.
She also asked if there could be speed bumps on Boring Road.
• A Baldwin Park resident, who asked that he not be identified, said: “There’s not been much information distributed, in my opinion. I talked to several people and they all have different thoughts about what’s supposed to happen or what the plan is.
“I haven’t seen anything from the Town; I haven’t seen anything from the homeowners’ association,” he said. “I see the construction going on. It looks like they’re going to build an improved road, at least on part of Boring Road, so it’s a little confusing to me what exactly is going on.
“I personally am in favor of closing the road or some part of it so there is no through traffic,” the resident said. “I am very pleased with how quiet the neighborhood has been with the lack of cut-through traffic — people coming from Kingston Pike, trying to get onto Smith Road and avoiding the intersection down in front of [the farragutpress office].
“It is amazing to me how much traffic has been reduced, and the quiet is nice” he said. “The inconvenience is I could not go east on Kingston Pike — or west, if they are going to close it.
“I think you’ll find a lot of people in Baldwin Park want to keep everything the way it is,” the resident said. “Well, that’s going to be almost impossible to accomplish.
• Craig Colvin: “We welcome the change. Close it down. That’s fine with us.
“It makes it easier to walk [along the road],” he said. “It cuts down on traffic flow, and they go down to Smith Road and have access.
“It’s OK if you’re going west the old way on Boring Road [onto Kingston Pike], but if you are trying to cross the traffic and go east, it’s next to impossible.”
