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City of Knoxville outlines Vision Zero goals, SS4A projects and priority crash corridors
Summary
The city’s Vision Zero coordinator described the Vision Zero action plan, priority locations and federal SS4A grants funding safety projects on Magnolia Avenue, Broadway and Chapman Highway; staff reported 36 fatalities in 2023 and roughly 32 in 2024.
Cody Gentry, Vision Zero coordinator for the City of Knoxville, briefed the TPO technical committee on March 11 about the city’s Vision Zero initiative, priority locations and federally funded projects intended to reduce fatal and serious injury crashes.
Gentry described Vision Zero as a systems‑based strategy that treats traffic deaths as preventable and prioritizes safety as the primary metric for transportation projects. He summarized the Vision Zero Action Plan (adopted June 2023), the steering‑committee process and a data‑driven high injury network; the plan identified that roughly 5% of non‑interstate roadway mileage accounts for 63% of life‑altering crashes in the city.
Gentry said the city aims for zero deaths on city‑controlled roads by 2040 and highlighted several projects funded through the Federal Safe Streets and Roads for All (SS4A) program. The 2023 SS4A award provided $10 million (approximately $8 million federal, $2 million local match) for planning and construction items including Magnolia Avenue intersection and pedestrian improvements and a Broadway Streetscape project that builds a missing greenway link and multimodal crossings near Fulton High School. A later, larger SS4A award totals just over $22 million and will fund a Chapman Highway corridor project (from Blount to Fort Dickerson) to build a separated shared‑use path, a landscaped median to limit turning conflicts, and other access‑management improvements.
Gentry provided safety context: the city recorded 36 traffic fatalities in 2023 (26 on state routes, 10 on city streets) and preliminary 2024 data showed a slight decline to about 32 fatalities. He stressed a mix of near‑term, low‑cost countermeasures and longer‑term capital projects to reduce crash severity and highlighted priority corridors including Chapman Highway, Kingston Pike, Clinton Highway, Middlebrook Pike and Western Avenue. Committee members asked about presentation materials; staff agreed to share them after the meeting.
