Planning by Tennessee Department of Transportation started in 2017 for making miscellaneous improvements to State Route 8 (Signal Mountain Boulevard). On Tuesday evening, the lunchroom at Signal Mountain Middle/High School was filled with a large crowd of people for a public meeting to give an update on the project. The timeline for the improvement project began in 2017 when it was funded and engineering was completed by Arcadis Engineering. The surveys were done in 2018, preliminary plans were completed in 2020 and rights-of-way plans were made in 2022.

A public meeting was held this week and TDOT is now ready to start the acquisition of rights-of-way. The actual construction phase is targeted to begin in 2026. In 2019 some slope repairs, slope stabilization and building a retaining wall was done in an area after the road washed away. There was additional slope stabilization during the next two years but now TDOT is ready to start procuring rights-of way along the entire length of the road from the bottom to the top of the mountain.

Acquiring the 33 right-of-way tracts that are needed is expected to take a couple of years. Most of that property will be used for building drainage ditches. After construction begins, the work is expected to take two to two and a half-years to be finished.

What TDOT is trying to accomplish with this work, is to improve safety, improve reliability of the road, to improve drainage and to prevent future road failures. The area of the project includes 3.05 miles, beginning at the bottom of the mountain just before Suck Creek Road and ending just below Palisades Drive at the top. Signal Mountain Boulevard has three lanes in some areas along the road and two lanes in others. The lanes are 11 feet wide and the shoulders are two feet wide. The footprint of the road will remain the same after the construction is finished.

Work that will be done includes building some new drainage ditches and enlarging or reshaping others. There are places that the depth cannot be changed because of rock that is too close to the surface, but said TDOT Project Development Manager Robert Rodgers, where they cannot be made bigger, the shape of the ditches and drains can be squared off which will allow them to carry more water. Holding more water and keeping it in the ditches should help prevent it from running over or under the roadway, which degrades the integrity of the road.

Some drainage pipes that currently run under the road will remain and some will be replaced if needed or will increase in size. And drains will be put where natural water flows have been identified and where the water continues to seek those natural run-off paths.

The stormwater runoff cannot be redirected, said Mr. Rodgers, it must be emptied where it is currently directed, and that is onto property owned by TDOT. He said they cannot redirect it onto someone else’s property. Where there is a danger of rock slides, the slopes will be “scaled and trimmed,” then covered with “slope drapes,” a metal mesh to contain any future rock slides.

Eight new retaining walls are in the design, including at the intersection of Palisades, which will be reconfigured to change the drain pattern. And safety improvements will include adding some guardrails and increasing the sight lines at places along the curving road. Some of the stormwater runoff is just naturally occurring because of the steep terrain but in places it has gotten worse over time.

Some of the increase in runoff problems have been attributed to the increased growth in areas above where the water runs downhill. Building that took place in the 1970’s was not as regulated concerning stormwater management as it is today, and in some cases, the problems occur downhill from neighborhoods that were built 50 years ago. Mr. Rodgers said that now there are more stringent requirements to control water, such as building a retention pond.

The cities and counties each have their own set of rules relating to stormwater and developers have to meet the standards in effect now. Those requirements could help keep water off the mountain roads in the future, but people today cannot be expected to take care of what builders did in the past. “You can’t un-ring a bell,” he said.

There are three ways that the public will be able to make comments or ask questions to TDOT about this project - by email at TDOT.Comments@tn.gov, by getting and retuning a comment card from the public meeting or by contacting Curt Duncan of the Region 2 Design office at (423)634-5796 or by email at Curtis.duncan@tn.gov.

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