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The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread


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I certainly do hope they can get it operational by August. It will be sweet when it starts up. The article says they are expecting 1500 riders a day. That would be an excellent number, probably enough to get the other routes going in the future. I think they could expect even more commuters on the Murfreesboro, Franklin and Gallitan routes.

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Just a couple of pics of the Light Rail system in St. Louis. I took these last week while in town for the Preds game. Let me just say, it is awesome.

Downtown 8th and Pine Street station with the outbound train leaving station.

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On the train riding through midtown.

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Delmar station out in the burbs. This is one of five or six park and rides on the line.

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The interior of the train. Keep in mind this was taken around 10am after the morning rush. The lot was full, literally, of cars when we got there. Morning rush has got to be fun to see.

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All day passes to ride both the train and the buses are $4.25 each. We purchased two and never, EVER drove while in the city. The money we saved on gas was beyond belief!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Article in the NCP about insurance troubles:

NCP Link

I think the MCS is a great idea for Nashville but is well ahead of its time. I am going to go ahead and predict that this project will be a failure and will lose millions. I think the common theme may well be underestimated costs and overestimated revenues for this project. As we all know this often happens with government projects because you have officials trying to sell a project downplaying the true costs to taxpayers. I have a lot of trouble believing that there will be any substantial sustained ridership numbers.

Frankly I am shocked that everyone on this board seems to think this will be a success. This project is requiring a huge amount of taxpayer dollars initially and will not be able to support itself without the aid of more money year after year. We are spending millions of dollars for an extremely small gain. When you really sit down and think about the amounts of money being spent on this project to benefit a few it truly seems absurd.

I know I am in the minority here but there is no way this project will be successful. I am a betting man and I would put a huge sum of money on it. Many times I wish we were more realistic, instead of being cheerleaders to the next moneypit government is telling us will help us.

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samsonh, how much money do the highways make in the area? Don't the taxpayers also layout billions to build roads? Do you hold the definition of "success" of a highway to a different standard than mass transit and that roads are not also a money pit?

Too often people who are against transit, don't seem to mind the huge cost of highways to society and balk against the relatively minor amounts going towards building trains. Build a freeway and you strip hundreds of square miles of land that nobody wants to live next too. Build a transit line and most times you get high density high value development that generates a lot of tax revenue for a city, is less costly to support, and causes the economy to grow. It's not surprising the most desirable places to live in the country, based on prices, are places that have good alternative transit. That is the defintion of success as the whole point of this is making cities better.

I personally don't consider an exit on a freeway, with Walmarts, Best Buys, and sprawling cul de sac development a good measure of a successful place.

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Quick reply now before I have time to make a more in-depth answer. I am not against the idea of mass transit. I am against the idea of this project at this time. Their is very little if any market for it. Taxpayers have spent millions on a project that I fear will barely be used by anyone in Lebanon. Mass transit works in high density places, at this time Lebanon is not really one of those places and will not be for years.

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Quick reply now before I have time to make a more in-depth answer. I am not against the idea of mass transit. I am against the idea of this project at this time. Their is very little if any market for it. Taxpayers have spent millions on a project that I fear will barely be used by anyone in Lebanon. Mass transit works in high density places, at this time Lebanon is not really one of those places and will not be for years.

FWIW, I agree with you 100%.

Mass transit is awesome, but not in Lebanon and spread out 'burbs like Mt. Juliet.

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samsonh, how much money do the highways make in the area?

They don't make enough, I'll tell you that! They need to make all the interstates and most state highways toll roads, and reduce the gas tax accordingly. It's totally wasteful for drivers statewide to fund additional highway projects, only to have them clogged with single-occupancy commuters.

A product offered below the market clearing price will inevitably lead to a shortage. It seems like there is always a shortage of open roadway in nashville - - - this is a direct consequence of the fact that all the roads are free. Thus, there is over-consumption. If there were tolls, maybe people would think ahead about the most economical way to get from point A to point B.

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Nashville got the bargain of the century when it comes to a commuter rail system. It would be unfortunate if they had passed on it as most other places are paying from 5x to 25x as much just to get started.

Growth is going to come to your area regardless of if the rail is built or not, but this at least gives some opportunities to build development that isn't completely dependant upon the automobile for everything.

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Very true metro m. The design is flawed though. They only have one rail going in to the station downtown. Seems like common sense would dictate two lines. One in and one outbound. I think the city did it as cheeply as they could and will pay for it in the long run.

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This is a pretty common design among starter commuter rail systems. Their main purpose in the beginning is to deliver commuters to work in the morning, and back home in the evening. So a single rail track works for this. Usually they schedule the trains to all head in in the morning on a fixed schedule, during midday they may do a few runs back and forth, then in the evening the trains return back to the suburbs.

When the line gets busier, they can offer two way service on a single tracked line by adding pullouts and advanced signaling. If they add additional stations, they can be designed with two platforms that would also allow the train to pass each other.

This is a much better approach than what they did in Raleigh were they proposed a 16 station 35 mile dual tracked commuter rail line with bi directional traffic. The costs of that line, which originally was proposed to be $100M, went to $1.1 Billion and still rising. They have since scaled it back to cut costs but its still appproacing $1B and as a result most likely won't be built. (and after they have already wasted $100M on it)

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^ Makes sense and very interesting info on the Raleigh line. Thanks a billion, no pun intended, for sharing.

I can see this as a possible alternative in Nashville. I just wished it would've went to Murfreesboro, the biggest of the burbs, first. Not Leb. for crying out loud.

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^ It went to Lebanon because they basically got the track for free, so this was the cheapest way to get the system started. I'm sure they would have liked to have went to Murfreesboro first, but when funding is hard to come by you do the best you can with what is being offered, and nobody was offering virtually free track to Murfreesboro.

The whole project is to get this off the ground, and even if its a nominal success they will use it as a stepping stone to expand the system if possible, because if people will ride it from Lebanon in nominal numbers at all, people would definately use it higher numbers on the better routes, and that will be touted as reason enough to expand the system.

Basically if it didn't go to Lebanon, the metro rail project would probably have remained a concept on paper simply discussed for many more years to come.

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^ It went to Lebanon because they basically got the track for free, so this was the cheapest way to get the system started. I'm sure they would have liked to have went to Murfreesboro first, but when funding is hard to come by you do the best you can with what is being offered, and nobody was offering virtually free track to Murfreesboro.

The whole project is to get this off the ground, and even if its a nominal success they will use it as a stepping stone to expand the system if possible, because if people will ride it from Lebanon at all in any numbers, people would definately use it higher numbers on the better routes.

Basically if it didn't go to Lebanon, the metro rail project would probably have remained a concept for many more years to come.

I am just curious if any cross-town routes have been thought about. From East Nashville over to the West Nashville/Charlotte Pike area??? Everything seems to terminate in downtown. The old wheel and spoke design.

Edited by Lexy
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Exactly. It was a similiar situation that got rail transit started in Charlotte. In the mid 90s, the city invested $19M to revive a historic electric trolley on a 2.5 mile line. During the first 4 years it was operating, and keep in mind this isn't real effective transit, there was $400,000,000 in investment along the line and it cause the revival of a neighborhood that had fallen on really bad times.

Because of that success, it spurred the local politicians and business people to move forward to invest in a much more extensive transit system. I feel the commuter rail line in Nashville will do the same thing.

BTW, I tooks some photos of that line if you want to see it. They can be seen in this thread.

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I am just curious if any cross-town routes have been thought about. From East Nashville over to the West Nashville/Charlotte Pike area??? Everything seems to terminate in downtown. The old wheel and spoke design.

I don't honestly know, but I would bet since this is the initial design phase of a much larger project they would using the KISS concept, so probably not to any real degree if at all. This is really a base project at the moment, now when more legs are open and the system is fully up and running (which lets all hope happens) then the incorporation of cross-town routes might be more seriously looked at as viable options to incorporate. So really that sort of thinking and planning will probably have to be done further in the life of the project.

One option may be if Nashville has a BRT system by that point, for riders of metro rail to utilize it for in city commuting. That IMO is a more sensible plan of action, as metro rail would not be nearly as efficient as BRT in carrying passengers intra-city.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Actually this is one of my beefs with modern transit systems in the USA. Many of them make the mistake of converging all lines down to just a single point. That makes cross town travel difficult as it requires you to travel further than necessary and it limits ridership. One very good example of this mistake is Marta in Atlanta.

Instead transit systems should be designed on the principle of the triangle. That is there are at least 3 lines and each line connects to the other two in at least two different places. An example of this is the DC Metro, which co-incidently, is the same age as Marta, but has 4x the ridership (if not more).

I am only speaking in terms of long range planning and I am not suggesting this be implemented now. However the sooner the area puts together a long range plan, and locks it down, the easier it will be in implementing transit in the future. Hopefully the shocks of much higher gas prices will help change opinions for the need to do this.

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Actually this is one of my beefs with modern transit systems in the USA. Many of them make the mistake of converging all lines down to just a single point. That makes cross town travel difficult as it requires you to travel further than necessary and it limits ridership. One very good example of this mistake is Marta in Atlanta.

Instead transit systems should be designed on the principle of the triangle. That is there are at least 3 lines and each line connects to the other two in at least two different places. An example of this is the DC Metro, which co-incidently, is the same age as Marta, but has 4x the ridership (if not more).

I am only speaking in terms of long range planning and I am not suggesting this be implemented now. However the sooner the area puts together a long range plan, and locks it down, the easier it will be in implementing transit in the future. Hopefully the shocks of much higher gas prices will help change opinions for the need to do this.

Good points, and I agree.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Exactly. It was a similiar situation that got rail transit started in Charlotte. In the mid 90s, the city invested $19M to revive a historic electric trolley on a 2.5 mile line. During the first 4 years it was operating, and keep in mind this isn't real effective transit, there was $400,000,000 in investment along the line and it cause the revival of a neighborhood that had fallen on really bad times.

Because of that success, it spurred the local politicians and business people to move forward to invest in a much more extensive transit system. I feel the commuter rail line in Nashville will do the same thing.

BTW, I tooks some photos of that line if you want to see it. They can be seen in this thread.

That is incredible! Obviously it is a very short distance and limited service, but the beautiful thing about this is that it educates the public. Before you try to get people to abandon their car altogether w/commuter rail, take them out to lunch on the trolley. Brilliant idea! I'm very envious and wish that Nashville would do something like this. 19 million is a drop in the bucket. This would be great to head north past the Bicentinal Mall and help revitalize that end of town.

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