State and local officials are rolling out a mix of quick fixes and long-term projects to tame North Broadway, one of Knoxville’s busiest and most dangerous corridors. The push comes after a string of deadly wrecks in 2025 put the spotlight back on the arterial, with residents and grieving families pressing for visible changes now while engineers plan out years of work.
According to the Knoxville Police Department, 29 people were killed in traffic crashes inside city limits in 2025, a nearly 45 percent drop from 2024. Even so, officers flagged a troubling concentration of fatal crashes on North Broadway. The citywide decline and efforts to keep that momentum going in 2026 have already drawn attention. Police say motorcycles and pedestrians made up a sizable share of last year’s deaths, with failure to yield, intoxication, speeding and general inattentiveness showing up again and again in reports.
Planned Streetscape, Transit and Signal Fixes
City planners and Vision Zero staff have pulled together a package of changes for Broadway that aims to calm traffic and protect people on foot. On the list: a streetscape project with a wide, separated shared-use path and wider sidewalks between Cecil and Woodland avenues, upgraded crosswalks, and transit improvements meant to reduce conflict points between buses, drivers and pedestrians.
The city’s Vision Zero Action Plan identifies the Broadway–Woodland corridor for that shared-use path. A separate set of City of Knoxville materials on the Accelerated Bus Corridor describe how real-time bus tracking and coordinated traffic signals can give Knoxville Area Transit vehicles priority as they move through the corridor. Officials told WATE 6 On Your Side that an Accelerated Bus Corridor and updated signal timing, including transit signal priority, are in the toolkit for North Broadway…