Will Byrd is sick and tired of all the resurfacing on Franklin Road. “It seems like they’re constantly paving or tearing up the road,” the Brentwood resident says. “I feel like I do most of my commuting on grated concrete.”

Brentwood has chosen to use some of its allotted state funds to widen three consecutive intersections on Franklin Road—Murray Lane, Concord Road and Moores Lane—because growth in the prosperous region south of Nashville is outpacing the current infrastructure. But in the real world of urban planning, it’s common knowledge that adding capacity to roads is a lousy solution: widened Brentwood roads will just fill up with widened Brentwood vehicles. In other words, if you build it, they will come. And that’s a big part of the problem, according to Knoxville Mayor Victor Ashe, who has broken ranks with most of his Republican colleagues to become an outspoken critic of TDOT and the “build more roads” mentality. “TDOT is the largest promoter of urban sprawl in the entire state,” he says. “And they’re absolutely tone-deaf when it comes to community concerns.”

Ashe’s city has reason to be concerned, and the controversy there puts to shame the incessant repaving on Franklin Road. TDOT is finalizing its construction plans for the I-475 Beltway, designed to connect I-75 north of Knoxville with I-40/I-75 on the city’s west side. Two weeks ago, when TDOT Commissioner Bruce Saltsman traveled east to announce that he had selected one of three proposed routes for the beltway—the 38-mile “orange route”—Saltsman found himself facing a hostile crowd. Chief among them was H.E. Bittle, a Knoxville legislator and beltway opponent who at one point angrily interrupted the Commish, shouting that Saltsman was breaking an earlier promise by building the orange route. (As the confrontation-filled press conference ended, Saltsman reportedly turned to an associate and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”)

But why are many of Knoxville’s orange-loving citizens seeing red over this project? One reason that should hit close to home for Middle Tennesseans is urban sprawl. The Citizens Against the Beltway group in Knoxville contends that the road will do little to ease traffic congestion while doing everything to promote commercial development in formerly rural areas. “The seven (or more) interchanges will breed more gas stations, convenience stores, fast food chains and subdivisions,” they say on their Web site (www.nobeltway.com). “Just what we need to beautify our area!”

Furthermore, the group says, by TDOT’s own estimate, I-475 will reduce congestion on I-75 and I-40 by less than 10 percent over the next 25 years. “To me, that’s where the first weakness is. Why are you building the road?” group member Mark Ritchey recently told The Knoxville News-Sentinel. “All we want is to take a fair look at this project as an investment.”

Finally, beltway opponents cite TDOT’s failure to follow required processes in any meaningful way as grounds to put the project on hold. They contend that TDOT’s federally mandated environmental impact statement (EIS) draft fails to comply with federal regulations by ignoring the induced growth phenomenon (more roads equal more growth). And they note that the EIS pays short shrift to likely noise, air and water pollution, which is a problem for a document that is supposed to be environmentally focused. Furthermore, “TDOT has yet to do any economic impact studies,” Mayor Ashe says.

TDOT spokesperson Luanne Grandinetti defends the department’s actions. “We feel like we’ve done the correct process as required by federal law,” she says. “We are not required to do an economic study.”

But Hendersonville attorney Joe McCaleb, who has been retained by the anti-beltway coalition and several other groups around the state that are fighting TDOT projects, disagrees. “An economic analysis or cost/benefit analysis is required under federal law as part of an EIS,” he says. He explains that no lawsuits have yet been filed in the beltway case because TDOT hasn’t finalized and formally submitted the statements yet. But “if the environmental impact statement has flaws, I suspect there will be some lawsuits filed,” he says.

The debate about the I-475 Beltway—which sounds alarmingly similar to the controversies surrounding the state Route 840 project in Middle Tennessee—and the general disputes about many road construction and widening projects TDOT has undertaken, expose larger questions about the role of the transportation department in Tennessee. TDOT’s usual justification for road building or widening is that current roads are overcrowded. But as is frequently noted by urban planners, increasing capacity actually induces more growth, nullifying or minimizing the gains from new lanes.

Hearing, then, the complaints of slowed-down suburbanites and beleaguered businesses (all of whom have sprawled a little farther from town thanks to the temporarily traffic-free roads), TDOT responds with an innovative new approach: more lanes. Many TDOT observers criticize the department’s passive, demand-driven instinct. “TDOT is really the Department of Asphalt,” Ashe says. “The first thing they sacrifice at budget time is mass transit funds,” he adds, noting that many low-income workers depend on mass transit for their daily commute.

But TDOT defends its role in planning, which Grandinetti readily admits is minimal. “TDOT’s purpose is not to avoid sprawl or promote sprawl,” she says. “We don’t set the direction for this agency; that’s the job of the governor and the legislature.”

And therein lies the problem. In Tennessee, roads have traditionally been politically popular, although as more farms and country homes turn into sappily named subdivisions and strip malls, road-bearing legislators are increasingly falling into disfavor with displaced and disturbed constituents.

But the one constituency that always appreciates new road construction is—you guessed it—the road construction industry. In fact, builders show their appreciation to the tune of at least a few hundred thousand dollars each election cycle, prompting one political observer to comment that “the road builders lobby is now stronger than the farm bureau.” The Tennessee Highway Contractors Political Action Committee funneled $50,000 to candidates in 2001—a non-election year—while the Tennessee Road Builders Association took a more direct route, giving $ 5,000 directly to then state Senate Transportation Committee chair Tommy Haun.

Legislators’ influence over TDOT is almost as strong as lobbyists’ influence over legislators. Take the James White Parkway project in Knoxville, for example. When Ashe, the city council and local residents voiced persistent opposition to the road extension project, Saltsman agreed to table it. A couple of months later, a sheepish TDOT announced that it had reacted too hastily to the opposition. After receiving a supportive letter signed by six local legislators, the department decided to move ahead with the project. But there’s apparently nothing embarrassing about overruling citizens and their most local representatives in favor of six legislators, five of whom received donations from the Tennessee Highway Contractors PAC.

While regional planning commissions like the Greater Nashville Regional Council (GNRC) have sprung up in recent years to coordinate sustainable, cost-effective growth, they’re not getting much help from TDOT and often find themselves working at cross purposes with the department.

That wouldn’t at all surprise planning expert James Howard Kunstler, who’s been a guest speaker at the GNRC. “The excellent ideas of smart growth have met a furious opposition from those parts of our culture in charge of land development and building,” he recently said. “That’s because the dirty secret of our economy is that it is now almost entirely based on the creation of additional suburban sprawl and its furnishings and accessories.”

So, we have sprawling road construction. We have legislators (never mind Saltsman’s good friend Gov. Don Sundquist) who control a department that refuses to think or plan for itself and is regarded, even by a prominent contractor who frequently works with TDOT, as bureaucratic and stagnant in its managerial thinking. And we have lobbyists, donors and a revolving door-style system that keeps Tennessee hurtling along toward the status quo. As if all that weren’t enough, TDOT has a guaranteed source of funding: the gas tax, which is earmarked almost exclusively for road building and repair. It’s the reason TDOT finds itself with surplus funds during cash-strapped times.

But at least runaway road construction has become a hot political issue. Or has it? Neither gubernatorial candidate Phil Bredesen nor Van Hilleary is campaigning much on TDOT reform or growth management issues. But in response to a Scene inquiry, the Bredesen campaign says that TDOT should work with other agencies to curtail urban sprawl. “Improved long-term regional planning and better communication with local communities and landowners” are the keys to successful sprawl management, according to Bredesen. In addition, he vows that “every department, including TDOT, will be scrutinized for mismanagement, waste and possible improvements.”

The Hilleary campaign has no real criticisms of TDOT’s management. Hilleary spokesman Frank Cagle says that “local governments should be consulted on [state thoroughfare projects]” and that “the Sundquist administration probably has not been as good about that as possible.”

Only Ed Sanders—an independent candidate and former Republican—has had much to say about such issues. At a recent Tennessee Municipal League candidate forum, Sanders described taking his daughter to visit colleges. As they left the state on their trips to the universities of Virginia and North Carolina, respectively, Sanders said the road quality dropped significantly. But, he noted, they drove right past the University of Tennessee, the supposed flagship educational institution of a state ranked first in road quality and nearly last in education.

His comments drew spontaneous applause.