Nathan_in_DC

The article does have a good discussion of how the nice, packaged-and-tied-with-a-bow brand is contributing to the Disney-fication of Nashville, though. With the good comes the bad.

Simple Flying is a joke. I stopped using them for any sort of information a long time ago...Way too many factual errors compounded with just bad writing destroyed their credibility for me. The dumb clickbait articles didn't help, either.

These are basically four huge, mostly-separate projects that would have the potential to transform commuting and travel in the region. The easiest, and most likely to happen in the near term, is the resumption of service to Louisville. I guess Louisville-Cincinnati-Chicago is doable, but including Cincinnati on the same line would invove a pretty indirect, long ride to Chicago. Nashville-Lousville, then splitting to Chicago via Indianapolis and Pittsburgh via Cincinnati and Columbus would make more sense. Either way, good first step. If it's frequent enough (not the normal 1 or 2 train a day that you see outside of the NEC), I would imagine it would get lots of ridership. Unfortunately, I imagine that it will be more of the same...one train leaving at a completely unreasonable hour that takes forever to get anywhere because being stuck behind a "precision scheduled" freight train, but maybe I'm just being pessimistic. The second possibility, Nashville-Murf-Tullahoma-Chatt-Atlanta, would be what I would want to see the most, especially if it includes a frequent commuter connection to Murfreesboro (even better if it enables a reverse commute). That would have the potential to be truly transformative. The distance between Nashville-Chattanooga-Atlanta is basically perfect for passenger rail, especially if it can maintain a somewhat decent average speed. The third possibility, a Memphis-Nashville-Knoxville connection, would also be huge...again, if it was frequent, reliable, and fast. When I lived in Philadelphia, I had coworkers that would commute from as far away as Lancaster on Amtrak, and that was made possible because of the frequency and speed of operations. I don't expect any sort of frequency like you see between Philadelphia and Harrisburg, mainly because Amtrak owns the line and it's well engineered for passenger train service (dual track, if not quad track, and largely grade separated), but there's no reason a 4-a-day or 5-a-day service isn't feasible. The fourth possibility, commuter rail between Memphis and Jackson to serve BlueOval, would also be awesome, and potentially could be GREAT for Memphis.

Analogic? Always have a 12 year old review your company or product name before you finalize it.

I don't know... I mean, if they had better headways, better waiting areas (not just a sign on a pole...), and dedicated busways through congested areas especially, I do think more people would ride. Especially if combined with a concentrated marketing and education campaign. It wouldn't take much, either. A couple of trunk lines connecting areas people want to go with busses that run every 10 minutes WILL bring riders. If people can walk two or three blocks, and not have to plan around unreliable schedules (just get up and go...you'll never wait more than a few minutes), then more people will ride. I'd LOVE to see more train lines connecting people to the suburbs and exurbs, especially with reverse commute options and frequent headways, but that is much more of a pipedream than better bus connections in the city.

Wait until you think about the widening and straightening projects on Highway 13 between Linden and Lobelville in Perry County...the least densely populated county in the state, and one of the least densely populated areas east of the Mississippi. Or the four-laning of 13 five miles south of Wavelry, not even getting close to connecting it to I-40 with 4-lanes. Millions spent on an almost complete rebuild of large stretches of lightly travelled roadway where the simple addition of a couple of passing lanes would have sufficed, effectively nothing more than poorly conceived, planned, and executed vanity projects. Ostensibly it was to encourage development and boost the local manufacturing economy, but it's frankly too little, too late for that to be of any real impact.

It is so stupid that there isn't a dedicated airport bus with only a couple of stops (absolute max 3) to/from the airport with no-less than 15 minute headways, preferably 10 during peak hours, using dedicated lanes!

Been playing around with this interesting tool I found where you can easily compare two maps at the same scale. Usefull for illustrating the relative density of various urban areas. https://acme.com/same_scale/ American cities I have lived in... Nashville vs. Philadelphia, PA: Nashville vs. Washington, DC: Nashville vs. Knoxville, TN: ...international cities... Nashville vs. Berlin, DE: Nashville vs. London, GB: (Judging by my back-of-the-napkin math, London inside the M25 has well over 10x as many people in an area 100sq miles smaller than Davidson County...but it feels *so* much bigger size-wise because of the variety of neighborhoods.) ...sprawling sun-belt cities... Nashville vs. Houston, TX: Nashville vs. Phoenix, AZ: (After seeing this I'm not convinced Phoenix isn't some dystopian vision of a suburban hellscape, by the way.) ...peer and near-peer US cities... Nashville vs. St. Louis, MO: Nashville vs. Portland, OR: Nashville vs. Jacksonville, FL: Nashville vs. San Diego, CA:

There have been rumors of a Paris route floating around for a while, but like @nashscanmentioned we probably won't see any airlines seriously consider additional transatlantic connections until after the international terminal is finished and the economy has stabilized a bit.

Yes! That was it! Man, talk about some 80s Nashville nostalgia. Back before you'd get shot at in the the Fountain Square theater parking lot, Church Street Center was all the rage, and there were more peep shows than honky tonks on Broadway.

I was unaware that Nashville was at least interested in exploring the idea of bringing in an MLB team as early as 1984. Pretty neat article from the May, 1984 issue of Nashville Magazine (also has a pretty hilarious article on new and interesting beer...like Heineken, Dos Equis, and Fosters) : https://archive.org/details/sim_nashville_1984-05_12_2/page/n35

They've done something similar at Gatwick! If it works for the size of aircraft that come and go from there, then it'll work for BNA.

I had a super random memory pop into my head today when looking at a map of Nashville. I remember rather vividly going to a seafood restaurant a few times in my youth in the mid-to-late '80s that was located along a waterfront. I'm fairly certain it was in MetroCenter, on the water feature in the middle. I cannot for the life of me remember what it was called. Does anyone else recall this? I believe the building is still there, repurposed as an office...one of these two with the gazebos on piers:

I live in a 1940s rowhouse in Alexandria, VA right now...part of a bunch of housing built by the railroad to house workers at the massive Potomac Yards back in the day. I'm convinced that it is a great way to create moderately dense, walkable neighborhood, especially if paired with decent transit connections and with commercial zones integrated or nearby (e.g., corner shops and cafes in the neighborhood, and supermarkets on the periphery). Throw in an alleyway and you can even have a little bit of a back yard and parking spot in a pretty compact package. Even concerns with noise aren't much of an issue with brick, concrete, or cinder block firewalls, and it's infinitely better than a stick frame apartment because of the lack of upstairs or downstairs neighbors.

I was intrigued by this comment in their release: A year-round community gathering site surrounded by parking lots in an area inaccessible by any method other than car 10 miles away from downtown? Right...I'm sure it'll be just overrun by locals every weekend in the offseason.

Wow, this is awesome! If they can pull this off, especially with the development around it, I'll be impressed. No sea of parking that is a huge waste of space for 350 days out of the year, plazas that will provide open space for the development around it, and a design that blends in with the neighborhood...a huge win that will be an asset for the city and that will hopefully result in a vibrant East Bank. Now, just to get some good transit to get people to and from the games by something other than car!

The way we have laid out subdivisions in this country is so frustrating. There are all those homes located a hundred yards from the train station that have to walk 3/4 of a mile to get to it (or to any of the amenities that are going up there that would otherwise be an easy 5 minute walk away). And this is hardly the most egregious example of disconnected developments in the Nashville area. A 5' right-of-way at the end of Overhill Cir between the two properties for a small, paved path with a pedestrian bridge over the tracks (or even an at-grade crossing considering the lack of frequency and low train speed) would extremely easy, and entirely too controversial to ever happen.

MUC is definitely a nicer/easier airport, and Munich is much preferable to Frankfurt as far as cities go, but...for pure connectivity, FRA would probably be better. They have non-stop flights to significantly more destinations in Europe, north Africa, and southwest Asia than MUC does. There are also significant overcrowding concerns at MUC that could make additional international flights difficult to justify. They keep trying to build a third runway, but it keeps getting delayed due to pushback from local communities and environmentalists. FRA is also pushing its capacity, but doesn't seem to be at the bursting point that MUC is. The fact that FRA is Europe's banking and financial center, as well as HQ for numerous engineering and automotive firms, also adds to the business case for a FRA-BNA connection. That being said, MUC's only flights to the southeast US are Washington Dulles, Miami, Charlotte, Atlanta, and Houston. FRA however already has all of those plus Dallas, San Antonio, Tampa, Orlando, and Fort Myers (plus St. Louis). A BNA-MUC flight would fill a bit more of a gap than a BNA-FRA flight would.

Black Abbey - Haven't been in a couple of years now, but the brewery on Sidco Dr. is an awesome place to drink great beer Bearded Iris - Both locations are great. I love the one out on Charlotte if I want a pretty quiet place to hang out in the middle of the day. Yazoo - I was sad when they moved up north, but it's a really cool space and gives them more room to brew Harding House - One of my favorite new-ish breweries in Nashville. Great, great beer and a cool location. Jackalope - One of my favorite older breweries in town. I used to love going to their old taproom, but I've not had a chance to check out their new space since they relocated. And shout out to Cedar Glade in Murfreesboro! The owners are family; I've not been able to make it down to the brewery yet but they've given me a few cans, it's pretty great stuff. And, not a brewery, but... Hops and Crafts - Still a favorite place to grab a beer on a nice fall day. May Flying Saucer and Beer Sellar rest in peace. I truly loved those places (even if FS was a chain), it's sad that they didn't survive the Bachelorettification of Nashville. DC and Northern VA have a decent enough brewing scene, but honestly, this place sucks for trying to find a drink sometimes. Most places don't open until after 3:00, even on weekends (which sucks when you're old and want to drink but be home by 5:00)...and everywhere is expensive. Nashville and Philadelphia have spoiled me.

Holy crap, don't look at the price estimates on some of these. For instance, $1.4 million to add sidewalks to Eastland between 16th and 17th Streets. That seems excessive, even if they're burying utilities in the process.

I don't know why, but for some reason I was skeptical that this would ever actually get out of the ground. Glad to see they're making progress on it!

I was coming to post this very article. However bad Nashville may be when it comes to highways, Houston will always be worse.

Amazing post as per usual, Rookzie! I think your point here about outside limitations on service keeping Nashville from realizing its commuter rail potential is a very good one. With the huge influx of workers into the CBD and the exponential growth (in both population and density) of the exurbs as people try to find affordable housing in the region, Nashville would theoretically be an ideal scenario for expanded, frequent, commuter rail. In order for that to happen though we're basically going to have to tear it down and start over with the downtown connections, though. To service two lines effectively you need at least a two-track terminal station, or ideally, a four-track in-line station. The rail infrastructure is almost there, especially if the state could work with CSX to make use of right-of-way to double or triple track existing lines to terminals in Franklin, Murfreesboro, Gallatin, and (maybe) Dickson. Murfreesboro and Franklin could almost certainly sustain frequent, two-way, 6 or 7 day a week service with DMU equipment. Gallatin and Dickson could at least do rush hour weekday service serviced by push-pull consists (maybe not enough demand to justify reverse commutes on those routes, though). And hey, if CSX is reducing operations at the downtown yard, that kind of makes an ideal location for a downtown terminal station. There are a lot of moving parts that make this all more of a pipe-dream than anything, as well as CSX playing nicely (which we know is almost certainly not going to happen). Who knows though, if fuel costs keep rising, maybe people will start demanding alternatives to 40-mile-one-way commutes?

Clearly sidewalks are for keeping utilities out of the road, not to let pedestrians have a safe place to walk. I don't know how the city isn't constantly being sued for ADA violations with crap like this everywhere.