By Tabitha Evans Moore
Editor & Publisher
LYNCHBURG, Tenn. — Main Street is officially full — at least as far as the Metro Lynchburg Moore County Highway Department is concerned.
In a technical road review dated July 7 and addressed to the Metro Planning Commission, Road Superintendent Shannon Cauble’s office declared that the Highway 50 / Main Street corridor that extends from Woodard’s Market to the Bill Dance Bridge near the Jack Daniel’s Visitor’s Center cannot legally absorb the traffic from two pending proposals — including the proposed 42-unit Gateway townhome project — and announced that the department “must defer all additional developer-initiated access” along Main Street until the road itself is widened at developer expense.
According to Cauble, the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) maintains the section from Woodard’s Market to the Metro Moore County Emergency Operation Center as it’s officially part of Highway 50 and Metro Moore maintains from the EOC through its intersection with Majors Boulevard. For planning purposes, however, she and TDOT view the road as one traffic corridor.
“In most cases, TDOT officials defer to local communities to make decision about their roads, and follow the wishes of local departments and legislative bodies,” she explained.
In this case, those wishes revolve around not overloading one of Lynchburg’s main thoroughfares with excessive traffic that disrupts the neighborhood and unnecessarily affects public safety.
For Gateway at Lynchburg, LP, the review lands as a second, independent obstacle. The developer is already suing Metro Moore County — arguing that a zoning amendment blocking the project was never legally adopted in the first place. The suit remains pending. Even if Gateway wins in Chancery Court and its original zoning is restored, the Highway Department’s position means the project still could not connect to Main Street until the road is brought up to state standards — a cost Cauble says will not fall on taxpayers.
THE MATH BEHIND THE FREEZE
The review’s logic comes down to simple arithmetic.
Main Street currently sits at 22 feet wide. The review states that under TDOT road way design standard RD11-TS-2, any rural collector road carrying more than 2,000 vehicles per day must be at least 24 feet wide — two 12-foot travel lanes — with stabilized shoulders.
According to 2025 TDOT traffic data cited in the review, Main Street currently carries 1,514 vehicles per day. The county has already committed another 408 daily trips to the 80-unit tiny home project now under construction. That puts the corridor’s committed volume at 1,922 daily trips — just 78 trips shy of the 2,000-vehicle threshold.
The pending Gateway proposals would blow through that limit, according to Cauble. The townhome project is projected to add 283 daily trips. There’s also a proposed 15-unit Phase 2 at The Retreat At Whiskey Creek, which would add another 81. Together, the 364 new trips would push Main Street to 2,286 vehicles per day — 286 trips beyond what the review calls the corridor’s “legal structural capacity.”
At that volume, the review states, the existing 22-foot pavement width becomes “an active regulatory violation.”
Trip projections in the memo use Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) codes — Code 220 for the townhomes, Code 416 for the tiny homes. ITE codes are the national standard traffic engineers use to estimate how many daily trips a given land use generates. Cauble says no ITE code for tiny homes currently exists, so she estimated using the established codes for campgrounds and RV parks, which are likely conservative.
TAXPAYERS WILL NOT PAY FOR IT
The review sets out the conditions plainly: with potentially 100 plus more homes coming online, Main Street must be widened to 24 feet along two segments — from Highway 50 to South Elm Street, and from South Elm Street to Highway 55 — before the department will approve any new developer access.
And according to Cauble, the county and local taxpayers will not pay for it. The review states the Highway Department “will not expend public tax revenues to fund infrastructure expansions necessitated by private development,” listing everything from engineering and paving to legal fees, signage, erosion control and right-of-way acquisition as costs that belong to developers.
Each project also drew its own set of conditions:
For the townhome development, the review requires a Traffic Impact Study — certified by a licensed professional engineer and reviewed by the county’s engineering consultants at the developer’s expense — that includes a mitigation plan for U-turns. That requirement stems from TDOT’s decision to restrict the project’s entrance to right-in, right-out turns only, meaning drivers headed the other direction on Main Street would have to make U-turns somewhere along the corridor potentially causing safety issues and headaches for those already living along Main Street.
For the Whiskey Creek development’s proposed expansion, the department wants an operational business plan before it will calculate accurate traffic numbers, and may also require a certified Traffic Impact Study — again at the developer’s expense.
WHY THIS ROAD, IN PARTICULAR
The review closes by explaining why the department considers Main Street too important to overload. The corridor is the primary deployment route for the county’s Emergency Operations Center, Sheriff’s Department, County Jail and ambulance service. It carries heavy freight for the local electric utility and the Jack Daniel’s distribution facility. It is also home to the community ballpark and close to 100 local residences.
Adding 2,286 daily vehicles to an unwidened 22-foot road — combined with unmitigated U-turn traffic — “presents an immediate, severe threat to public safety, emergency response times, and infrastructure integrity,” the review concludes. The administrative deferral, it states, “is final until all developer-funded mitigations are fully executed.”
WHERE THE GATEWAY LAWSUIT STANDS
The Highway Department’s review adds a new dimension to a legal dispute between Gateway and Metro Moore County that has so far played out over zoning definitions and public notice requirements.
Gateway sued in November 2025, arguing that a zoning amendment the moved apartments from residential to commercial was never legally adopted because required public notice and agenda procedures were not followed. In December 2025, the developer asked the court to rule immediately in its favor — without a trial — arguing the ordinance is void as a matter of law. A judge declined to do so. The county maintains the amendment was lawfully adopted. In June 2026, Gateway also filed a sweeping public records request seeking communications from Metro officials about the project, and has frequently insinuated in public meetings that Metro officials are pushing back against the project because the don’t like the “low-income” residents for which it’s is intended.
Metro Planning countered the accusation in May of this year by explaining their concerns revolve solely around the density issue and its related trickle down on Metro infrastructure.
“It’s a density issue that’s been the problem the whole time,” Planning Commission member Scott Fruehauf explained to Gateway in May.
The road review reframes the stakes of that lawsuit. A courtroom victory for Gateway would restore the zoning under which its project was permitted — but it would not widen Main Street. Under the Highway Department’s deferral, no new access will be approved on the corridor until the road meets the 24-foot state standard, no matter what a judge decides about the ordinance.
WHAT HAPPENS NEXT
The review was addressed to the Planning Commission on July 7, which met the same day it was issued. Planning officials nor Cauble mentioned the document or its contents during the July meeting and Gateway did not appear on the agenda for that meeting. Whether the commission, the Metro Council or the developers themselves will challenge the deferral — or begin negotiating who pays for the widening — remains to be seen.•
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