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7.The Spring Hill Situation (840/396/I-65)
It isn’t Columbia Pike’s fault, though many of the congestion problems in Spring Hill lay along it or intersect with it.
The roads that take most vehicles to or from Spring Hill from I-65 are 840 and Saturn Parkway, bringing people to and from the north and east.
But as Spring Hill has grown, problem areas have arisen where these high-volume roads meet secondary streets – Columbia Pike/U.S. 31, Buckner Road, Kedron Road, Port Royal Road, and so on – that congestion gets the worst. Or where congestion on I-65 has pushed people to alternative north-south roads, especially Columbia Pike/U.S. 31. As a north-south route connected to 840 and Saturn Parkway and as a terminus for Goose Creek bypass, Mack Hatcher/431 and Columbia Avenue, it averages up to 21,013 vehicles per day at stretches – a 33 percent increase over the last ten years.
A Spring Hill traffic study projected that by 2030 Columbia Avenue between Saturn Parkway and 840 would move from a D rating to an F. Other streets the study projected to be below the lowest-acceptable grade of C were: I-65 north of Saturn Parkway, SR 6/US 31, Buckner Road at Main Street, Kedron Road and Port Royal Road
Traffic in the past measured decade has come close to quadrupling on 840 between I-65 and Columbia Pike/U.S. 31, from 8,339 in 2004 to 29,411 vehicles per average day. On 840 west of U.S. 31, data only dates back to 2012, but between then and 2014 traffic rose more than 400 percent, from 5,000 to 22,134 vehicles per average day.
I-65 between the Murfreesboro Road exit and the 840 exit, according to Franklin’s traffic study, is the worst stretch for traffic in Williamson County- an E rating for the 72,000 or so vehicles using it every day, and as traffic volume has increased by roughly 15,000 vehicles per day over the last measured decade by TDOT, so much of it feeds into the Goose Creek bypass (about 10,000 cars per day), 840 and Saturn Parkway farther south.
Meanwhile, Saturn Parkway, where traffic has steadily stayed in the mid-to-high 20,000s over the past measured decade, from 2004 to 2014, funnels traffic into and out of Spring Hill from the other end of town.
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