Paul Barret Parkway

The Paul Barret Parkway connects I-40 at Arlington with Millington. The Millington area, like southeastern Shelby County (along the U.S. 78 corridor), is becoming a prime location for distribution centers and warehouses. Millington is also the site of Naval Support Activity Memphis, the future home of the Naval Bureau of Personnel. It supercedes Millington-Arlington Road (TN 205), a winding two-lane road.

The portion of Paul Barret Parkway between U.S. 51 and James K. Singleton Parkway (TN 204) is part of the National Highway System, according to this map.

Paul W. Barret, Sr., was a prominent local politician from northern Shelby County during the 1940s; the parkway passes near Barretville, from whence he came.

What are the interchanges like?

Paul Barret Parkway is much more conventional than the Nonconnah: all of the interchanges are traditional diamonds, except the following:

• TN 385 at U.S. 51: Half-diamond; there is no bridge for a possible future roadway west of U.S. 51.
• TN 385 at I-40: Cloverleaf with 1-lane collector-distributor road on I-40. The C/D roads are shared with the TN 205 exit, and are separated from I-40 with jersey barriers. Six of the eight ramps are in-place and open... the EB I-40 to SB TN 385 and WB TN 385 to EB I-40 ramps are not there (and nor is any roadway or even roadbed for the TN 385 mainline south of the cloverleafs); however, you can “loop around” from WB I-40 to EB I-40 and vice versa via unsigned, but not barriered, ramps.
• TN 385 at U.S. 70/79: Five-ramp partial cloverleaf. The south side of the interchange has two cloverleafs, from EB TN 385 to both directions of U.S. 70 and from WB U.S. 70 to EB U.S. 70, and a ramp from EB U.S. 70 to EB TN 385.

Trivia

• Paul Barret Parkway's speed limit was recently raised to 70 mph (112 km/h), due to a new state law allowing all rural freeways in Tennessee to have rural Interstate speed limits. (The new law also affects TN 840 near Nashville, the freeway sections of U.S. 51/future I-69 north of Dyersburg, and several other routes.)
• Control cities are Millington and Arlington.
• Eastbound TN 385 is also signed with “To I-40” trailblazer signs; there are no corresponding westbound “To U.S. 51” signs.
• The U.S. 70 exit doesn't show a U.S. 79 shield, even though U.S. 79 follows U.S. 70 from Memphis to Brownsville.
• TN 385 is exit 24 from I-40. The exit panels on the I-40 signs don't have spaces to accomodate letter suffixes for the eventual Collierville-Arlington Parkway.
• The old sections are still marked with secondary route signs (the “inverted triangle”); new sections use the primary route signs. In particular, this creates inconsistent markings at the TN 204 exit. Some of the signs have since been replaced, but others have not.
• The road is marked with Paul Barret Memorial Parkway signs at the I-40 and U.S. 51 interchanges. This seems to contradict Public Chapter 950, which names the entirety of TN 385 “Bill Morris Parkway.”
• The mileage markers on the north leg range from 8 to 23, starting from the east end of the highway. Observant readers will note that the south leg's markers range from 0 to 10, with at least 2 additional miles of road unmarked, and at least a 14 mile gap between the I-40 and Byhalia Road interchanges. I can't even figure out where they got the starting number from on the north leg. Somebody made a boo-boo.
• By way of illustrating: here are two photos of milepost 9 on TN 385. They are about a 25 minute drive from each other on existing roads. (The first one is WB on the south leg, near Bailey Station; the second is EB on the north leg at the end of the merge lane from U.S. 70).
• One possible explanation: some of the proposed Collierville-Arlington Parkway will be located in Fayette County. Since Tennessee highways normally have per-county mile markers, this may be why there are identically-posted sections.

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