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Tennessee vs. Washington

So I spent the last few days in Tennessee, and during that time, I spent quite a bit of time on the roads. I can't speak for most of the roads, only the freeway between Nashville and Knoxville (I40) and the roads between Seveirville and Knoxville. For the most part the roads are in considerably better condition than the roads in Seattle.

There were a few stretches of road where there was some construction work going on, with the inevitable delays, but even there the roads weren't a massive collection of ever shifting potholes. It also looked like the construction work was actually taking place, unlike the dozens of so-called road construction sites I drive through every day on my way to work, where I almost never actually see any construction work taking place.

Overall, I would give the roads that I saw in Tennessee a B+ or better, and the roads that I've seen in King County Washington a D- or worse. There isn't a single road that I travel on in King County that isn't either falling apart or being torn apart by a construction crew at some point. At times the roads in King County remind me of a joke I was once told about road repairs in Palm Bay, Florida. The joke was that road repair wasn't so much "repair" as it was moving the potholes so the drivers couldn't memorize where they were. That certainly applies to the work they've done on Ranier Avenue South in Seattle.

There are a few things I didn't really like about Tennessee's highways. There are lots of stretches where there ought to be guard rails but aren't. That, and some roads and intersections seem oddly designed. The Maynardville Pike in Fountain City is one that comes to mind. Andersonville Pike intersects with it, where it's a divided highway. There's no stop sign, no stop light or anything. Just a road that intersects the divided highway. About 100 feet of that is a segment of Andersonville Pike that runs between the divided halves of Maynardville pike. That seemed very odd to me, especially with no traffic signs or signals there.

Stop lights in Knoxville are pretty obnoxious too. Quite a few of them are "photo-enforced". That's relatively new around Seattle, but it looks as though it's been the case for quite a while. The odd thing is they do everything they can to get your attention when the light is red, including having a bright (and I do mean bright) ring of white light that flashes (ok, strobes is closer to it) around the red light for the entire time the light is red.

I suppose there's no excuse for missing the red light when it flashes at you like that, but I found it obnoxious and more than a little disturbing. My kids video games used to come with warnings that prolonged exposure could cause seizures in some people who play them. I imagine these traffic lights could eventually cause the same sort of reaction in a driver that's waiting for the green.

Other than those quirks, I found the roads in Tennessee to be of much better quality and far better maintained than the roads in Washington. I couldn't really tell you why that is, but I have some thoughts on the matter.

First of all, the denser population centers in Washington have more traffic than the denser population centers in Tennessee, at least it seems that way to me from my limited observations. Secondly, Tennessee isn't trying to socially engineer people out of their cars and into expensive and inconvenient mass transit systems by neglecting the roads and funneling the money into Sound Transit. Third, the construction teams working on the roads actually appear to work, rain or shine.

I can't say the same for the construction teams working on SR 18, I 90, I 405 or I 90. They've had construction going  on each of those highways for the entire time I've lived in the state of Washington. I've actually only seen construction taking place on rare occasions.

Maybe that's why I enjoyed my experience on Tennessee's roads...

Cross posted to NW Bloggers.