A stretch of Interstate 75 in Campbell County, around exit 160 for Jellico, will be paved next year.

“I-75 from mile marker 154.4 to 161.5 will be let to construction in December 2024 with construction during spring/summer of 2025,” said Tennessee Department of Transportation Region 1 Project Management Director Dexter Justis to the LaFollette Press in an email.

That includes both the northbound and southbound directions of that stretch of interstate, Justis said.

TDOT officials met with state Sen. Ken Yager and Campbell County Mayor Jack Lynch on Friday afternoon.

“Next summer, it will be paved, so at that point, we will have every section of interstate in Campbell County paved since 2017,” Justis said in the meeting.

There will be another project paved this summer: about eight miles, starting at the Caryville town limits, Justis said.

Lynch talked about Highway 63 becoming a four-lane.

“We’re certainly proud of that because it’s needed,” Lynch said. “It’s sorely needed, that four lanes of traffic are and the turning lane. A few things there, we’ve had people ask us about the radius of the turns. The turns seem to be too steep. We get numerous calls on that. Every commission meeting, we’re being questioned about, ‘Hey, they’re throwing gravels in the road every time they turn.’ So it was like, we need more pavement on the edge there — and that’s every turn in up through there. There’s probably five of them.”

TDOT Commissioner Butch Eley said TDOT has heard those concerns and is working on a plan to address them.

“As the contractor starts to leave,” Justis said, “we will come in with our own forces and do some paving out there to try to eliminate the rock issue. It’s designed in a way that it should work, but as people do what they shouldn’t and they take that curve a little faster than it’s designed for, they get their trailers or whatever off into that gravel, and they drag it out in the road. Just as you said, for motorcyclists, that’s dangerous.”

Lynch said U.S. 25W probably needed some repaving.

“25W runs from LaFollette to Jellico,” Lynch said. “It’s a state highway. We’ve been getting a lot of water across in the wintertime, freezing, so there’s a little room for improvement on 25, I’m told by some people. We paved part of it there a few years back and the other half, a few years later.”