The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[rookzie]

I wonder if the residents of Velocity and Pine St Flats hear the ghosts of trains at night?

 

Those same words from my own mouth.  I was thinking especially since there used to be a roundhouse there, where they serviced and turned the locomotives (on a turntable).  That was a rather busy roundhouse, given the fact that the structure had formed nearly a full circle, most roundhouses weren't even halfway round (less than 180 degrees), but they needed one that big off Kayne Ave (just north of Gleaves St.) for all the activity then, especially during WWII.  The roundhouse was gone by the time I had been born in 1951, but strangely enough, while I had been mulling around that site, sometime during 1995 or so, I still could find vestiges of the rails that had led to the turntable, which had long been removed and the turntable pit had been merely filled in.

 

I'm sure workers died over there during the annals of the past, since no best practices of occupational safety had been in place during those times.  Anyway, here's an aerial that pre-dated a few of those ghosts.  I'm sure a number of the youngest of those workers probably are still alive.

 

Kayne Ave. Yard and Roundhouse - circa 1940

 

That rectangular (four-square"), hipped-roof building in the lower-mid right of the photo, south of the Cummins Station building (former Keith-Simmons) and just north of what is now the Mercy Lounge at Cannery Row, was the Kayne Ave dispatch tower, that remained in use at least until 1993.  When the CSX moved all dispatch ops to Jacksonville, that tower was razed.  Needless to say, you can see the site of Marshall-Bruce Printing Co. (left-center), the current location of Urban Outfitters and Two Old Hippies, southwest corner of 11th and Pine.

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[Vrtigo]

I wonder if the residents of Velocity and Pine St Flats hear the ghosts of trains at night?

 

If by "ghosts", you mean "holy-crap-make-you-dive-for-the-ditch" loud train horns, then I bet you're right. Several times as I've walked to my car on the old train shed property, I've been jolted wide awake by the noises from those trains. I can't imagine what it's like to try to sleep immediately adjacent to these tracks...

[MLBrumby]

I think I now know the origin of the name of Kayne Prime Steakhouse. So roundhouse was demolished in 1951?

Edited April 17, 2015 by MLBrumby

[rookzie]

If by "ghosts", you mean "holy-crap-make-you-dive-for-the-ditch" loud train horns, then I bet you're right. Several times as I've walked to my car on the old train shed property, I've been jolted wide awake by the noises from those trains. I can't imagine what it's like to try to sleep immediately adjacent to these tracks...

 

Oh, that's still music to me. (you think?)  That's one thing I do miss when I used to run those things along older urban industrial areas, in OH and VA.  From the cab, the blaring of that horn, would reverb right off those old structures and back to your ears.  I admit, though, I never had to live so close to such horn noise, and when I used to do the run from Norfolk to Petersburg, Va, after midnights, I never understood how those track-side residents could take it.  The rumble of all those diesel engines in locomotive units lashed up as a group of 3 or 4 (up to six), would make one's heart bounce right out of the chest, especially at full throttle, let alone with that loud-ass horn, being required by Federal regulations to be sounded at approach to all crossings, at start-up, and when meeting other trains.

 

With most locomotive horns now consisting of 5 chimes (an array of little and big horns in a cluster), some horns sound discordant and just shrill, while others, especially some of the older ones, indeed are loud but actually have that "melodic" and "brassy" sound, while yet others are "haunting" and have that "unresolved" sound.  As an interesting bit of history, a Marine Corps Band conductor who had been a successor to John Philip Sousa, is credited for creating aural specifications (beginning in the 1950s) for such air horns on passenger trains and older freight locos, so this "trumpet" technology and practice of air-horn "attention commanding" is what makes it so distinctive, beyond being startling, of course, at such short range.

 

If you want to get "shook" up, you just stand about 10 feet away from the mainline of a Metra commuter at the Aurora, IL "speedway" (name given to a multi-track straight section of town where trains stop for boarding or zoom by at close to 80 MPH), or even the MCS westbound at McGavock Pike.  I expect in time that the Gulchers will want to apply for a quiet-zone in that area, a common practice to mitigate the effects of train-horn noise in some urban and suburban areas with grade crossings.  Mt. Juliet has one or two quiet zones along E. Division Street, where the MCS cuts past crossings a 59 MPH, without sounding its horn.  The city of Mt Juliet has had to fund those FRA exceptions, approved only after taking some appropriate measures to mitigate the associated risks (providing flashers with extending activation distances, full roadway crossing arms, roadway lane barriers, etc.).

 

As far as the gulch is concerned, it probably would not qualify as a quiet zone, because such status cannot be applied to railroad areas where no grade crossings exist, and where railroad horn signals must be used to comply with train movement operating rules (such as starting off from a stop, and reversing after a stop).  In cases of emergency, the horn always can be sounded, such as when some "entitled-feeling" Escalade has its nose or it's butt stuck too close to the track.

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Edited April 19, 2015 by rookzie

[rookzie]

I think I now know the origin of the name of Kayne Prime Steakhouse. So roundhouse was demolished in 1951?

Actually I might be wrong about that roundhouse.  The source of the photo says around 1940, whereas a more authoritative (and separate) reference states that it was around 1918 that that roundhouse had been purposely dismantled, due to a then-new replacement one built at Radnor.  I even question that however, due to some of the masonry construction designs shown in that pic, particularly given that such aerial photos had yet to have become readily obtainable from that vantage.  Also, with close examination of the passenger-car type railcars spotted on the tracks just south of the terminal train shed, the construction of those cars is of a heavyweight design, probably a riveted steel body, a common standard made prevalent during the early mid-1920s, to replace a predominantly wooden-body design.  Wooden construction had been used in most of the equipment in the nation's deadliest passenger-train collision, still to this day (a head-on of two passenger trains), which occurred the morning of July 9, 1918, at Dutchman's (Deutchman's) Curve in Nashville's present Belle Meade area (at Richland Creek in the vicinity of the current shopping center).  Coaches (as opposed to sleepers or "Pullmans") had been the most profitable because they carried by far the largest number paying passengers per car.  Wooden coaches were the most deadly, since railroad signaling and operating practices in those days lead to frequent accidents due to human error.  Those cars in the photo at the shed are probably a mix of baggage and express-carrying cars, U.S. Railway Post Office cars (collectively called head-end revenue cars), and passenger cars, all of similar steel construction.  Therefore, the photo most likely was taken sometime between 1920 and 1924, around the time the the Demonbreun Street viaduct was built, since it is absent from this aerialphoto, and would pass immediately the north end of Cummins and the south end of the train shed.

 

Nashville had 4 of those curious-looking structures ─ three during my lifetime.  All roundhouses historically were built to service steam locos, but those remaining into the late 1940s usually had been converted to maintain diesel.

 

TC (Tennessee Central RR) - a smallish structure built as a quarter-round building.  It had been located of what remained of the the TC yard off 1st Ave. / Hermitage Ave. and burned to the ground during the first half of 1970.

 

NC&St.L (Nashville Chattanooga & St. Louis) - in a huge wedge of a complex bordered by Charlotte, Centennial Park, and the former TCRY belt-line (where that lonely track currently runs to nowhere at about Charlotte and near 31st Ave.)  Nearly full-circle roundhouse, torn down after I cam along (around 1953).  This yard also had an array of buildings referred as the "erecting shop", where steam locos were serviced and rebuilt from ground up, including boiler-making.  The foundation concrete slabs of some of these structures remain were parking now can be found

https://www.google.com/maps/@36.152873,-86.81826,3a,75y,149.17h,72.85t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1szT3GOVtXQhgKYK7pjjO4sA!2e0

At least one of the erecting shop buildings remained intact but empty as recently as 1992 (and probably a bit later).

 

L&N at Kayne Ave Yard. Actually Kayne had been 11th Ave before renaming and it had been realigned to join 12th Ave. at that slant, until recent years when it got converted into the currently (supposedly) more manageable intersection during the last 10 or so years.

 

L&N at Radnor Yard - built as a half-circle, this structure still extant; remains operational, including the turntable, as an engine-house.  A section of this house, at the south end of the original roundhouse contains track pits, just like the smaller ones found at truck-stop repair houses, and allows mechanics to work underneath to change out traction motors and wheelsets of modern locomotives. Located west of Trousdale Ave. halfway between Allied Drive and Elysian Fields

https://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&ll=36.0935983,-86.7515241&spn Ave=0.0032825,0.0054163&cid=9025136483994557088&q=Nashville,+TN&output=classic&dg=ntvb

 

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Edited April 20, 2015 by rookzie

[grilled_cheese]

How often does the train go by?

 

So often you don't even notice it.

[rookzie]

How often does the train go by?

 

So often you don't even notice it.

 

That does happen to be a common perception among many residents nationwide who constantly live or possibly work near tracks of regularly passing horn-sounding trains during the day or night.  One can become a bit callous to it in a relatively short span of time.

 

But if one's outside his car, some 30 or 40 feet from an idling locomotive, then even the most "seasoned" and benumbed is subjected to be spooked by an unexpected blast or two of that horn at close range, especially with no apparent movement usually associated with and preceding it.  Even those hand-held air-can game-signal horns can shock the crap out of you, if you're right next to one that "goes off" without expecting it.  A railroad horn is just about 50 times louder, that's all.

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[Nathan_in_DC]

When I was living in Philadelphia, I lived right next to one of the busiest sections of passenger rail tracks in the country, the old Philadelphia-Lancaster-Harrisburg Main Line. Frequent service commuter trains every 15-30 minutes, and express and inter-city trains every hour blowing by at 100mph (even electric locomotives will make a heck of a racket when moving that speed), often sounding their horn as they went through the station next door if there were passengers present waiting on another train. I started tuning it out after just a very short period of time. After maybe 2 weeks of it, being woken up at night by a train was a rarity, even though they were going by constantly.

[volsfanwill]

I was listening to 3hl on 104.5 today after work and they were discussing traffic issues with so many events going on downtown tonight. They basically said we need some kind of train. A caller "from Williamson county" said he doesn't want the crime that comes with trains in his town. Then quoted the migration of crime with Marta in Atlanta.

Basically more of that "I don't want to be Atlanta" crap.

The guys on the show then said they live in Williamson and would love a train.

They then said they think a monorail would be great. That prompted me to tweet them about how expensive monorail is, they read my tweet on air.

Then they said the didn't care about cost,we need something.

Just thought I'd share.

Edited April 18, 2015 by volsfanwill

[Nathan_in_DC]

There is a certain sector that is pushing against expanding light rail in to Virginia Beach from Norfolk because they are irrationally fearful of people from Norfolk coming to create mayhem in their little town. Not that Virginia Beach is really any better than Norfolk to begin with, or that it's that hard for people with ill will to get there already.

 

This idea that a train from Nashville to Franklin is going to cause Franklin to experience some sort of crime wave is nothing less than fear mongering, and it frustrates the heck out of me.

[Neigeville2]

There is a certain sector that is pushing against expanding light rail in to Virginia Beach from Norfolk because they are irrationally fearful of people from Norfolk coming to create mayhem in their little town. Not that Virginia Beach is really any better than Norfolk to begin with, or that it's that hard for people with ill will to get there already.

 

This idea that a train from Nashville to Franklin is going to cause Franklin to experience some sort of crime wave is nothing less than fear mongering, and it frustrates the heck out of me.

 

Now if it was a bus I could see...

 

Seriously, it is amazing how there is this sector of the population that just lives to be scared of things.

[DoermanPhoto]

I can't seem to find information on this due to the bridge construction overriding all my searches, but what's happening with the lower i40 median construction south of the gulch?

[TNinVB]

There is a certain sector that is pushing against expanding light rail in to Virginia Beach from Norfolk because they are irrationally fearful of people from Norfolk coming to create mayhem in their little town. Not that Virginia Beach is really any better than Norfolk to begin with, or that it's that hard for people with ill will to get there already.

This idea that a train from Nashville to Franklin is going to cause Franklin to experience some sort of crime wave is nothing less than fear mongering, and it frustrates the heck out of me.

It's a shame the Tide doesn't extend to Virginia Beach. The last station is litteraly right on the border. When my son and I ride it to downtown Norfolk to go to MacArthur Center mall be have to jump in the car and drive a couple of miles to the station from my house near Town Center in Va. Beach. Seems a little ridiculous when the train tracks would run right in front of Town Center. Heck the tracks are still there but have been covered up where they cross Independence Blvd. The Tide is a really nice train system and we have never felt unsafe on there. It's a shame how people's fears and small minds can limit the population as a whole. Edited April 18, 2015 by bruceman73

[PruneTracy]

I can't seem to find information on this due to the bridge construction overriding all my searches, but what's happening with the lower i40 median construction south of the gulch?

 

It's a staging area for Fast Fix 8.

[UTgrad09]

How often does the train go by?

 

So often you don't even notice it.

 

I lived at the edge of a switching yard near downtown Knoxville -- less than 100 feet from the tracks. I definitely noticed the trains....but I enjoyed them. I got a bird's eye view of the action. The only time it was annoying was the occasional early morning trains that were at full throttle accelerating (outbound). They shook the building. Most of the others cruised through slowly.

[rookzie]

There is a certain sector that is pushing against expanding light rail in to Virginia Beach from Norfolk because they are irrationally fearful of people from Norfolk coming to create mayhem in their little town. Not that Virginia Beach is really any better than Norfolk to begin with, or that it's that hard for people with ill will to get there already.

 

This idea that a train from Nashville to Franklin is going to cause Franklin to experience some sort of crime wave is nothing less than fear mongering, and it frustrates the heck out of me.

 

 

It's a shame the Tide doesn't extend to Virginia Beach. The last station is litteraly right on the border. When my son and I ride it to downtown Norfolk to go to MacArthur Center mall be have to jump in the car and drive a couple of miles to the station from my house near Town Center in Va. Beach. Seems a little ridiculous when the train tracks would run right in front of Town Center. Heck the tracks are still there but have been covered up where they cross Independence Blvd. The Tide is a really nice train system and we have never felt unsafe on there. It's a shame how people's fears and small minds can limit the population as a whole.

 

There always have been and will be a public conduit for piping the riff-raff in and out of a given district, namely the ol’ bona-fide bus.  As we all recall, even with the good intentions and virtues of the ill-fated AMP East-West connector, we always have had the reactionary extremists whom BNAbreaker loves to quote from the media as a couple of the most vocal opponents who refer to the undesirables as “those people”. (I always get a kick out of that now-catch-phrase).  “Those people” nearly always are those who have differences in biological traits (deemed by society to be socially significant) and/or those perceived as economically disadvantaged (with or without ethnic dissimilarities).  Virginia Beach, Franklin [TN], Brentwood (and parts of Metro Nashville) are no different in that respect, when it comes to wholesale perceptions, convictions, and sequestering to physical boundaries.  Speaking only of Va. Beach and parts of Metro Nashville, only as a comparison with similar parameters of transit accessibility limited to the use of the local city bus, as a rider I could frequently discern a change in mutual reception among riders and pedestrians, during the “understood” periods of commuting and reverse commuting along several routes which crossed the invisible "boundaries".  “Those people” who seemed to stand out from the crowd were those who were deemed riding the bus in the “wrong” direction between these areas and the urban core, based on a preconceived "legitimized" movement as workforce to certain types of employment, most often domestic or other menially service-oriented.

Back when I lived in the Norfolk, I had noticed this common phenomenon when riding the former Tidewater Regional Transit (TRT) and  the former PenTran (Peninsula Transit), the latter of which, back in the 1980s had been the bus-based transit commission serving primarily Hampton and Newport News (two districts of which comprise what is known as the “Virginia Peninsula").  For a short period in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, PenTran had a bus that connected to South Hampton Roads (Norfolk, Va. Beach (or simply "the Beach"), Chesapeake, and Portsmouth, Suffolk, and counties – also locally referred to as “the Southside") via the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel (combined I-64 / US-60).  During that decade, if you rode the bus the “wrong” way at a given time of day, you could sense the eyes and stares bearing upon you.

A more “acute” case of this was riding a TRT bus between Norfolk and Va. Beach.  If you weren’t wearing standard military uniform or the corporate garb of the restaurant, hotel, or retail industries, you often had eyes rolled at you, if you rode the bus the “wrong” way at the "wrong" time of day from to the Va. Beach oceanfront district or even to Chesapeake’s Great Bridge district.  I’m referring primarily to the areas of the Beach and Chesapeake which had been the “old money”, and having the lowest incurred intangible cost-expenditure ratios to personal income.  Since those days, TRT and PenTran have combined to form Hampton Roads Transit (HRT), and an express-bus service has been established to server the greater regional area (except the city of Suffolk, which ended its service agreement with HRT).  This compares to the Mid-Tenn RTA partnership with Grayline, although HRT maintains its own fleet of buses for all regional transport.

As Nathan_in_DC  and Brucehardwood Bruceman73 have noted, Norfolk went ahead and used a little-used existing straight-shot freight line and built it's first LRT segment ("The Tide") from just west of DT Norfolk (near Eastern Va. Med. Cntr.) to the eastern border between it and Va. Beach.  Since it opened in 2011, there has been talk within the Beach, which always has seemed to have had unilateral leadership.  There appears to be an unspoken clash between the deemed self-righteous "natives" of the Beach and the more transient potential users of LRT, who are comprise a very high percentage of the military enlisted forces and who frequently have chosen to rent or to buy in the Beach for commuting to the bases, a primary one of which is located on a far side of Norfolk opposite its border with the city of Va. Beach.

 

The Beach seemed to have garnered a possible interest in extending the Tide into its corporation limit to serve its primary business center (Pembroke Town Center) and eventually closer to the tourist district at the oceanfront.  Surprisingly the Beach even went as far as purchasing the remainder of that abandoned freight line within its border, in part after realizing an evident success with the Tide’s operation within Norfolk, Va Beach “managed” to successfully take this measure to prevent further loss of the abandoned portion of the old RoW, some of which already has been converted to trail at its eastern extremity, but in part due to the inability to approve funding, no extension project can get underway.

But ever since racial tensions of 1989 (when I still lived in the area) which exploded with the "Greekfest" (sorority-fraternity) riots in which a large number of stores got creamed along the oceanfront strip and for which to this day I totally feel had been unjustifiable but had been an impulsive reaction by college students and those others looking for any excuse to cause trouble.  The fact is there was enough blame to be shared by both sides of the nationally infamous fracas, during the 20-year reign of then-Mayor Meyera Oberndorf, who had publicly declared the city of VaBeach unable to handle such large openly festive crowds on its strip, where petty ordinances had been prevalent but not necessarily consistently enforced except at such events.  I believe that VaBeach has no mayoral term limits, as does Nashville.

Roots of this have been far deeper and much older than 1989, typically since historically heterogeneous interaction among many southern public resort beaches had been rife with hostility and disrespect for many higher-ed students not from the region.  I can attest to this first hand of “civilians” and actually the military, frequently being asked to leave the strip by the police force on numerous occasions and in some cases told outright that they would best re-locate to Buckroe Beach, way across to the Peninsula in the city of Hampton.  With Va. Beach being overwhelmingly the most populous city in its state, we have to admit without necessarily liking the fact that VaBeach has the right to insulate itself, and as a those who press for policy and political diversity continue to be underrepresented in all positions of power, the Beach never will see the Tide extended, and that same abandoned portion of track will continue to be a weed-bound alley of rust.  In this case there seems to be a power minority which thinks and makes decisions as a representation of a popular majority.  Nothing new with this song-n-dance, is there?  I think, as they see it, a bus or two of riff-raff can be better regulated than a rail line.  The reason that I am qualifying this digressive bit of discussion it that socially it has had much to do with the very mentality that currently belies the purported intention of promoting more civic progress for the commonweal of that region as a whole, in particular rapid transit.  And it matters not the race or ethnic background, but rather social (particularly given the influence of nearby Pat Robertson founded Regent University (formerly CBN Univ., in the Kempsville district of the Beach).  Some bastions seem to be simply inert to certain changes, which might eventually still evolve based on long-term speculative assessment.  Since the '70s the change in demographics has all but eliminated the most flagrant and overt harassment

Here in the greater Metro Nashville region is more poised in many respects to become on a brink of at least the start of a major change in mindset for rapid transit (or broadly, “rapid transport”).  Unlike Va Beach, which also is consolidated (from former Princess Ann Co.) and consists of boroughs (e.g. Kempsville), again without mayoral term limits, Metro Nashville seems to have a wider spectrum of employers both large and small, the evolution of which continues to be fueled at an unprecedented rate.   And unlike Va Beach with is basically land-locked by the cities of Chesapeake and Norfolk (and the state of North Carolina on the extreme SE), and water-locked by the Atlantic Ocean, the Chesapeake Bay, and a number of large creeks “baylets” and inlets throughout, and a major estuary which must remain navigable for military and internationally commercial shipping), the Nashville metropolitan statistical area (as opposed to Metro Nashville proper), is much larger and radially expansive than the South Hampton Roads region (although smaller than Greater H-R), to the extent that surface transportation patterns and needs as a whole for each of the two regions are quite different from each other.  

As a major mid-Atlantic terminus for multi-modal interchange, Hampton Roads has major employment in shipbuilding and repair, railroad and repair (for CSX and NS), maritime activity (stevedore/longshoreman), military and civil service at its four bases (notwithstanding possible military Base Realignment and Closure – BRAC – of Oceana NAS) along with the many ancillary businesses that serve the military; and tourism, for which Va Beach itself is considered de-facto standard in that greater region (since commercial beaches always have been in demand).  In the Nashville MSA is a seemingly exponentially growing tourism industry, along with music production and publishing, entertainment, technology support and research, health care, print publishing and distribution, and higher ed. from the many schools in the region, and state govt being a capital city .  Ground shipping has become a hotpoint in Nashville, because of the 3 major interstates radiating as crossroads to other geographical land regions.

This is not to be exhaustive by any means, and a degree of overlap of economics and industries between H-R and mid-Tenn.  For example, they both have auto-related mfg. (losing Ford truck ass’y in Chesapeake, but gaining Continental AG parts mfg in Newport News); Nisson, GM, Bridgestone (both corporate and mfg) in mid-Tenn.  With the cities of Franklin and Brentwood being perhaps the most resistant to the advancement of public transportation (beyond the use of buses), they are in a minority as far as standing separate from a mounting sentiment shoving transit as a foremost concern for the greater region.  MSA’s and particularly CSA’s don’t do a whole lot in gauging densities, IMO, since the methodology for designation do not necessarily appear logical w/r/t some overall interaction patterns vs commuting patterns.  This also is not to say that Nashville will ever get anything other than some form of advanced-capacity transit beyond BRT, but the climate is quite predictable to erupt as a motivating force to do something.

But it is quite disconcerting for a city like Va Beach, which a combined population with neighboring Norfolk being not much larger than that of Metro Nashville-Davidson, to have a totally urban-type boundary with Norfolk, but without an arrangement to carry its share of extending the Tide rail line on its portion of the existing abandoned freight line, which comes to a dead end at the Norfolk boundary (Newtown Road), when it long should have been extended shortly following the opening of the initial portion of the line in mid-late 2011.  That would be like running a light-rail train from downtown Nashville to the K-Mart at Walton Ln in Madison, but not past there, and with no political will to advance it (even though Walton is not a jurisdictional line as is Newtown Rd.).  But that also would be half-assing a good thing, IMO.

 

The Tide LRT passing over Norfolk Southern mainline, east edge DT Norfolk

(I-264 in background with brand new Amtrak station in distance, opened 2012)

-==-

 

Edited April 19, 2015 by rookzie

[Nathan_in_DC]

Right on in pretty much everything you said, rookzie. I do think I'm a little more optimistic that the Tide will, eventually, be extended at least to the Virginia Beach Town Center (a half hearted attempt to build a quasi-urban center of the city away from the beachfront, for those of you not familiar with the region).  I think we could see that in the next 10 years. There has been a LOT of planning going on about that. I think it'll be at least 25 years before we see it to the beachfront, though.

 

One thing that is spurring this advance is more and more people are looking for alternate ways of getting around. I-264 is basically running at-capacity these days, and people are getting more and more tired of being forced to drive everywhere. I was in Virginia Beach because of the Navy, and many of my fellow officers, and most of the enlisted I worked with, often complained about the fact that they didn't have options. The rise of services like Uber has somewhat alleviated that, but there is still a very large underlying desire to have a good public transit system. Many of the people I was working with had spent time in DC, and made regular use of Metro to commute to and from work at the Pentagon and other outlying DoD offices, and they were annoyed at the fact that nothing like that existed in Hampton Roads. Unfortunately, the military community is a transient community, rarely staying in one place more than 3 years, which does not make for a strong political base to make change happen.

 

I will say though, Hampton Roads and Nashville share some similar problems, although I would have to say that Hampton Roads does have it much worse off because of its layout, and the fact that its sprawl makes Nashville look downright compact. For instance, driving from the oceanfront in Virginia Beach to the north side of Newport News (the two extremities of the urban area)  will usually take around an hour, whereas the drive from Bellevue to Mt. Juliet (what I would consider the general boundaries of the urban area of Nashville) will take around half that time. 

[Rockatansky]

Rookzie may have some wonderful insights, but I'll never know because TL;DR.

[rookzie]

Rookzie may have some wonderful insights, but I'll never know because TL;DR.

 

Well, it was intended for, and meant primarily in response to, two members who have had much to do with the Tidewater Va. region.  The comparison I made was w/r/t to jurisdictional "standouts" and their possible (or "probable") motives, here and there.

 

All my posts hopefully are selectively read, whether by members of this forum or by those from other forums.

-==-

Edited April 20, 2015 by rookzie

[nashvillwill]

One "issue" I often think about is the cluster of an interchange of Ellington Pkwy to I-24/Main St/Spring St. I rarely hear any talk about improving this interchange, but as it stands, it's confusing, inefficient and a waste of land. I don't have any great solution in my head (do there really need to be two freeway access points there?), but I rarely hear any kind of discussions about this.

Thoughts?

[rookzie]

All I can say is that, in part it might have had much to do with so-called "urban renewal" when it was planned, and also because of the tendency of much of that area to flood as a canyon.  I don't know how as a state highway Ellington was initially funded (and now it has been recommissioned as US-31E, part of which has been taken away from Main St. and part of Gallatin Pk).  The "renewal" period to which I refer had been during the time that limited-access roadways were becoming mainstays in urban areas ─ the mid-late 1950s, the 1960s, and early '70s in particular, as when the Pkway had been conceived and built.  Ellington and that part of I-24 (which at the time of construction had been only I-65 before it got re-designated to run on the west side with I-40) are among the oldest parts of the urban freeway complex in the city (along with a southeasterly segment of Briley Pkwy, part of which thankfully has been upgraded since way back then).

 

While Ellington has been a possible alternative to part of I-65 and to I-24 trunk on the east bank, especially during the massive and lengthy improvement of the I-65/24 corridor and the I-65/Briley Pkway complex), I hear a lot of people complain about the approaches to Ellington during the afternoon rush periods.(and I assume in the mornings as well, when departing that highway).  I rarely ever have reason to take it, except for shooting out to Madison via Briarville Rd, Graycroft Ave, and Campbell Rd to the Amqui area, but getting to it is not exactly the easiest thing from DT during certain rush times because of the funneling backups.  The interchange complex does seem to consume a huge void of space, dedicated only to on- and off ramps at the south end.  And because of its age and design, navigating the ramps tend to be rather demanding in speed transition between fast and slow, so with an old VW air-cooled Beetle it can be challenging.

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[markhollin]

Japanese bullet train sets new speed record.  Man, I wish we were developing ideas like this in the States.  

https://www.facebook.com/newshour/videos/10153252747383675/?pnref=story

[markhollin]

Here is a summary of some of the debate on Nashville' mass transit challenges and how we can be involved.

 

http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/05/02/move-transit-debate-forward/26752801/

[markhollin]

Front page story in today's Tennessean about a Metro Government fact-finding expedition to Salt Lake City to see how successful their mass transit system has been:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/05/03/nashville-can-learn-salt-lakes-transit-success/26789857/

[jmtunafish]

Front page story in today's Tennessean about a Metro Government fact-finding expedition to Salt Lake City to see how successful their mass transit system has been:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2015/05/03/nashville-can-learn-salt-lakes-transit-success/26789857/

 

I've used SLC before on here as an example of a conservative city Nashville's size that has thoroughly embraced public transportation.  Its light rail network, commuter trains, and bus system are remarkable.  However, there are some big differences between SLC and Nashville:

 

• When Brigham Young designed SLC he made the streets extra wide, wide enough for 12 horse carriages.  Now, there's plenty of room to throw down some rail lines in the middle of the streets and still have plenty of room for cars.
• SLC is pretty flat.  It's built in a gigantic valley surrounded by soaring mountains.  But it's still a valley, a pretty flat valley.  SLC doesn't have all the hills and crannies that Nashville has.
• With very few exceptions, SLC's streets are in a perfect grid.  There are very few twisty and curvy roads in the valley.
• SLC is pretty much the only game in the state, meaning the rest of the state doesn't get bent out of shape when state dollars are used to help SLC's public transportation network.
• Downtown SLC is very clean and very prosperous.  There are large department stores in downtown SLC (Nordstrom, Dillard's), movie theaters, grocery stores, thousands of residents, the Utah Jazz, and even wildly popular restaurants like the Cheesecake Factory.  In other words, they've got the leg up on Nashville when it comes to downtown living.

I hope Nashville's city leaders come back with some great ideas, but I also hope that our state legislature sees the wisdom in helping to fund Nashville's transportation needs.