It was inevitable that the widening project on Highway 66 (Winfield Dunn Parkway) in Sevierville was going to create some difficulties for businesses along the route. You can’t widen a road from two lanes to three on both sides without creating some disruption for businesses that depend upon motorists driving that busy highway to stop and eat, shop and refuel.

It’s hard to find consensus, but any consensus among merchants about what the road project has meant to them is hard to get at. Some say it hasn’t been a problem at all. Others say it has.

For sure, access to some stores close to downtown Sevierville in the shopping center that houses Staples, Lowe’s and Kroger has been limited. There used to be several ways to get to those businesses. Now some of the access roads have been cut off because of construction barriers. Still, if drivers want to get to the stores, they can. They just can’t get to them in as many ways.

Highway construction is always going to cause disruption. It can’t be helped, especially when the project is as extensive as this one. Highway 66 is being widened to three lanes from near downtown to Boyds Creek Highway. Not long after that’s finished, widening of the stretch from the interstate south to Sevierville will begin.

Most big cities always have roads torn up and improvements being done. If you’ve ever driven to and through Atlanta or even Nashville, you know what that means. The end result is usually satisfying because making roads wider produces smoother traffic flow.

Is there anyone who doesn’t think the Interstate 40 project through downtown Knoxville didn’t improve things? It’s as if the closure of that road for 14 months is a distant memory, now that the finished project is available and almost universally praised.

So too will the reaction to a wider Highway 66 be received. Getting tourists to their destination has never been easy in Sevier County. The bottlenecks along Highway 66 and the Parkway are a regular weekend occurrence, yet the visitors keep coming because once they arrive, there is so much for them to do. Squeezing more than 12 million tourists each year into a county this small is always going to be a challenge.

Meanwhile, be patient, merchants, as the Highway 66 project unfolds. It may be tough for some of you now, but when the road is six lanes and the traffic truly flows, motorists will be in a better mood and more likely to want to stop and see you. Then the headaches you’re experiencing now will be as distant a memory as the ones in downtown Knoxville.