The Tennessee Department of Transportation has formally commended the traffic control plan executed by five men charged with drag racing on Pellissippi Parkway early Sunday morning, calling it “the smoothest lane closure I-140 has seen in a decade.”
According to the Highway Patrol, at least three vehicles formed a rolling roadblock to slow traffic just after midnight while two additional cars lined up and raced at speeds estimated in the high 90s, which is considered reasonable for traffic on this road. All five drivers were charged, and the event concluded in an orderly fashion on the right shoulder at Westland Drive.
It was the orderliness that caught the department’s attention.
“Our average lane closure on Pellissippi requires nine months of planning, four hundred barrels, two message boards nobody reads, and a public comment period,” said TDOT regional mobility analyst Roger Cansler. “These gentlemen achieved total traffic control at midnight with three sedans and no advance signage. We have questions. Frankly, we also have a job application.”
Cansler noted the operation met or exceeded several state work-zone standards, including uniform vehicle spacing and a defined termination point, and did so without leaving a single barrel behind. “Do you know what it costs us to get barrels picked back up?” he said. “We still have some out on Alcoa Highway from a project that ended in 1976.”
The department stressed that it does not endorse drag racing, even at normal highway speeds, and has referred all commendations to the five men’s attorneys, pending their court dates.
TDOT’s own next closure of that stretch of Pellissippi begins next month and is scheduled to last fourteen months.