The Knoxville Regional Transportation Planning Organization (TPO) has embarked upon another annual traffic count update for the Knoxville region.
This area encompasses 11 counties: Anderson, Blount, Cocke, Grainger, Hamblen, Jefferson, Knox, Loudon, Roane, Sevier, and Union. The TPO compiles annual traffic counts from Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) and a private contractor. While TDOT records counts from all 11 counties, the private contractor only counts in Blount, Knox, and Loudon counties.
This year there are some notable updates. TDOT added several new traffic count stations, and many are very close to count stations operated by the private contractor. This will free up resources for the contractor to place stations in new and previously discontinued locations. Many of the discontinued locations were abandoned in 2009 when the City of Knoxville decided to terminate its traffic count program.
With this change, TPO came up with a system to display the replaced and discontinued traffic count stations on TPO's traffic count page and KGIS Maps. There are now semi-transparent red X’s to show where the stations once were. Just like the active count stations, you can click on a discontinued station to view a chart of historical traffic count data. Files of all the count stations within the 11 county region are available for download.