This week is National Work Zone Awareness Week. Knox County EPW is proud to be participating. Every day we have crews working in the road putting their lives at risk. We all have a responsibility to slow down in work zones and to make sure they get home to their families at the end of the day. Join us in wearing orange on Wednesday to show support of work zone safety.
It’s that time of year again; the start of paving season. The No. 1 question we answer over the next couple of weeks is: will my road be repaved? There’s a lot of factors we must look at when we decide which roads to pave each year.
Every few years, we contract with an outside company to drive every road in Knox County and grade it on a scale of 1-100. Companies that do this have special equipment that scan the entire road and find every pothole, crack and pebble.
Another factor is road usage. There are three main types of roads that the county maintains: arterial, collector and local. Arterial roads are the busiest of the three; these are the highways and have fewer lights and intersections. Local roads serve a specific community, they are essentially the neighborhood roads. Collector roads connect local roads to arterial roads; they will have several intersections and will see a good amount of traffic.
Our constants are the weather and the budget. Crews can only pave when the weather allows, and we will pave as many roads as we can within the budget limits.
We received a shipment of seven new compactors for the Halls and John Sevier Convenience Centers last week. Crews are only able to replace one a day, and will be replacing them on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday (weather permitting) over the next three weeks.
Here’s a look at one of the new compactors and the prep work to install:
New compactor
Prepping for compactor installationRylie McClurg is the communications and outreach coordinator for Knox County Engineering and Public Works