Sneed Road Work Approved for Stephens Valley Impact

7 subdivisions to watch

By ZACH HARMUTH

The engineers for the sprawling Stephens Valley housing project in the northwest part of the county will begin their first round of roadwork soon.

At the monthly Williamson County Highway Commission meeting on Wednesday morning, Brandon Baxter, with engineering firm Ragan Smith, presented Rochford Realty’s plans for Phase I, Section I of the 20-year project.

The road improvements presented included road widening and turn lanes at the intersection of Sneed Road and Timberline Drive as well as road-widening and left- turn lane installation at the future Sneed Road entrance to the development, about a quarter-mile west of Timberline Drive.

The work will add east-and-westbound turn lanes on Sneed Road at Timberline, as well as modify existing turn lanes to through lanes. This is in addition to the work on Sneed Road where one of the entrances to the development will be located. That work will straddle the county line between Williamson and Davidson Counties, where Sneed Road crosses the boundary.

The Timberline-Sneed Road intersection work was already a recommended improvement, set out by the recently adopted Major Corridors Study Draft Report, which identified more than 100 improvement projects needed over the next ten to fifteen years to keep level of service acceptable on four major county corridors, Sneed among them.

“We thought we could find value in shortening the time spent on Sneed Road work by doing the Timberline improvements at the same time that we did work on the entrance along Sneed,” Baxter said.

The total estimated cost of the intersection improvements, according to the draft plan, is $431,600.

The commissioners approved of the plans.

Rochford, as part of the conditional approval of the project as it builds out, will do similar work to Sneed Road and its intersections with Temple Road, Old Natchez Trace, Vaughn Road and Hillsboro Road.  Originally the traffic study said that Sneed Road would need to be widened to four lanes in year 17 or 18 of 20- when the Stephens Valley project was projected to hit 792 units. Rochford opted instead to cap development at 791, and so Bob Murphy, of RPM Transportation and the county traffic consultant, indicated that widening Sneed Road would no longer be necessary.