Jump to content

The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread


TopTenn

Recommended Posts

3 minutes ago, Chris Lee said:

In the Before image I see 2 lanes in each direction with no turning lane. 

The After image has the equivalent of EIGHT traffic lanes, 3 car lanes in each direction and two train lanes. The left side of the image has conveniently lost all of the bike lane, sidewalk, and utility corridor...

What sorcery is this?

Methinks you are on to something.    The cars got much smaller in the after image, too.   LOL.   

Link to comment
Share on other sites


57 minutes ago, Chris Lee said:

What sorcery is this?

Gallatin Pike in this location is 48 feet wide from curb face to curb face. From backs of sidewalks, it's 75 feet wide.

TDOT is not going to want to see vehicular lane widths less than 10 feet on a primary state route. If the light rail lanes are exclusive, they could be 9 feet wide but really need at least 10 feet of width. And Metro wants a 12-foot-wide sidewalk and furnishing zone for Gallatin Pike.

If you asked me to squeeze all this in without ROW takes I would do 8-foot-wide sidewalks, 4-foot-wide furnishing zones, and either four 10-foot-wide travel lanes (of which two were mixed vehicular and transit) or three 10-foot-wide vehicular lanes and two 10-foot-wide transit lanes, along with an 11-foot-wide two-way left-turn lane / regular left-turn lane / boarding platform / landscaped median / catenary pole buffer in either case.

This all goes back to the cost. If you want exclusive transit lanes, you're either taking vehicle capacity away or buying expensive ROW. If you try to stick with mixed lanes, you're not providing better service than the existing BRT lite system. And if light rail is involved then the whole road has to be torn up to build the associated infrastructure. It's a lot of money to spend for the prospect of transit service marginally better than the existing bus and BRT lite services.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The cost to buy the sexiest, modern buses, and as many as needed, implement ROW lanes throughout the entire city... would be less expensive than the light rail line on gallatin pike. 

I don't believe the premise that people, especially millennials in east Nashville, won't ride a modern bus with ROW.  

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

22 hours ago, Chris Lee said:

In the Before image I see 2 lanes in each direction with no turning lane. 

The After image has the equivalent of EIGHT traffic lanes, 3 car lanes in each direction and two train lanes. The left side of the image has conveniently lost all of the bike lane, sidewalk, and utility corridor...

What sorcery is this?

Yeah noticed this too...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I feel like the whole "we should just build awesome bus service" ship has sailed now. It's not because the logic is flawed (it's absolutely true that BRT is the appropriate level of service for our current size/density); it's because of the way the Amp played out. I don't pretend to fully understand it, but it seems to involve a dynamic where dedicated-ROW bus service fully engages the anti-transit crowd without being quite ambitious and flashy enough to bring out the full energy of the pro-transit crowd. Anyone that wants to seriously advocate for BRT in Nashville (as opposed to just using it as a rhetorical tool to resist light rail) needs to address how or why it could be made politically viable in the aftermath of the Amp debacle.

The Amp had its pluses and minuses, but at a very basic level, it was an effort to dip a toe into the next level of transit service without over-committing. When the people that agitated against it successfully toppled it, they should have known that the underlying pressures driving Nashville's interest in transit weren't going to just dissipate. If a relatively gentle ($174M), incrementalist approach didn't work then the next push was always likely to try a "go big" approach, built around a more ambitious (and expensive) headline service.

Of course, the irony here is that many of the loudest voices currently explaining that light rail is too expensive and better bus service is the correct answer were either silent or stridently against the Amp (see professor Getz). To me that's not an argument in good faith any more.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, nashvylle said:

I think The Amp going down West End is what killed it. Should we have ROW just in East Nashville to start out, I think it would be fine and will pass. Light rail is doing the same thing, taking away a lane, but at 10x the cost. 

Would ROW be able to bypass traffic jams? Or would that lane get filled up too. Mass transit has to be able to move people regardless of the traffic situation.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, nashvylle said:

I think The Amp going down West End is what killed it. Should we have ROW just in East Nashville to start out, I think it would be fine and will pass. Light rail is doing the same thing, taking away a lane, but at 10x the cost. 

So just up the page you said "The cost to buy the sexiest, modern buses, and as many as needed, implement ROW lanes throughout the entire city... would be less expensive than the light rail line on gallatin pike." This makes the conversation confusing, because it sounded like you want comprehensive BRT, but you're evidently mostly OK with how things are right now, maybe with a small side project in East Nashville. Be honest, are you in favor of sexy buses, or was that rhetorical too? :)

Having bus ROW in East Nashville alone wouldn't accomplish anything. You have to take it across the river and deliver people somewhere useful. If you terminate at the main bus station, you're at best going to get people to walk 3 or 4 blocks from there, which means you've occupied two lanes all the way down Gallatin/Main and across the river to basically create a shuttle service for the tiny fraction of East Nashville that works in about 5 or 6 office towers. I'm in favor of just about any transit at this point, but even I'd probably be against taking up the roadways for that meager accomplishment.

The Amp was designed to pass near lots of dense residential and commercial developments and provide useful service in both directions for both the morning and evening commutes. There was plenty to criticize about it, but if your criticism of it is that it was too ambitious you're basically advocating for the status quo.

My point here is only that Nashville is growing and people are 100% certain to get more frustrated with car traffic and demand transit solutions. If we could agree (or could have agreed, I guess) on moderate solutions (of which the Amp was pretty close to the *minimum* viable scope), then we wouldn't be looking at committing to a big light rail solution that's more appropriate for the Nashville of 2040 than it is today.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, AronG said:

So just up the page you said "The cost to buy the sexiest, modern buses, and as many as needed, implement ROW lanes throughout the entire city... would be less expensive than the light rail line on gallatin pike." This makes the conversation confusing, because it sounded like you want comprehensive BRT, but you're evidently mostly OK with how things are right now, maybe with a small side project in East Nashville. Be honest, are you in favor of sexy buses, or was that rhetorical too? :)

Having bus ROW in East Nashville alone wouldn't accomplish anything. You have to take it across the river and deliver people somewhere useful. If you terminate at the main bus station, you're at best going to get people to walk 3 or 4 blocks from there, which means you've occupied two lanes all the way down Gallatin/Main and across the river to basically create a shuttle service for the tiny fraction of East Nashville that works in about 5 or 6 office towers. I'm in favor of just about any transit at this point, but even I'd probably be against taking up the roadways for that meager accomplishment.

The Amp was designed to pass near lots of dense residential and commercial developments and provide useful service in both directions for both the morning and evening commutes. There was plenty to criticize about it, but if your criticism of it is that it was too ambitious you're basically advocating for the status quo.

My point here is only that Nashville is growing and people are 100% certain to get more frustrated with car traffic and demand transit solutions. If we could agree (or could have agreed, I guess) on moderate solutions (of which the Amp was pretty close to the *minimum* viable scope), then we wouldn't be looking at committing to a big light rail solution that's more appropriate for the Nashville of 2040 than it is today.

I was in favor of The Amp, I am stating why it failed - too many people didn't want a dedicated lane going down West End. 

I want BRT with dedicated lanes all over the city. Why? it will accomplish  exactly what light rail will do all across the city at 1/10th of the cost and will open much sooner.

Wherever the Donelson light rail project is currently project, I would rather have BRT with dedicated lanes, as mentioned above.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Philip said:

I've never seem BRT in person. I guess that means it operates separately from normal traffic.

Yeah, to me dedicated right-of-way (ROW) is the key question in all the different transit options. BRT, light rail, and street cars can all be designed with or without dedicated ROW, or with ROW only for some parts of the line. To me I would be happy with any of those types of service IF they have dedicated ROW.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

IMO, Mayor Dean couldn't have picked a worse corridor to intro mass transit. The rider demographics,  cost of ROW's, perceived negative local impacts and total cost vs. ROI were hard to overcome. He did minimal pre-selling - and as a result - a lot of stakeholders were ready to stick a fork in it from the get go. As a taxpayer,  I was not supportive, either. My mindset has changed somewhat over the past year. I'm utterly convinced of the need for mass transit solutions, but less and less sold on fixed rail (only because of the COST and ROI). BRT/ ridesharing modalities with dedicated ROW and first/last mile components,  with complete streets - including sidewalks throughout all Nashville urban core neighborhoods seems more and more attractive (to me). 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Philip said:

Would ROW be able to bypass traffic jams? Or would that lane get filled up too. Mass transit has to be able to move people regardless of the traffic situation.

Transit services can also implement transit signal priority (TSP) which facilitates communication between transit vehicles and the traffic signal network to alter signal cycles and allocate extended green time to keep the transit vehicles moving. This can be used with or without dedicated transit lanes but generally requires at least queue jumps.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_priority

Nashville MTA is implementing TSP for the Murfreesboro Pike corridor (with queue jumps) with construction to begin later this month.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

WHY are we building light rail is it costs TEN TIMES AS MUCH and ISN'T ANY BETTER than BRT????????

With dedicated lanes and sexy buses, people WILL USE IT. And we won't be putting a huge tax burden on all of the Davidson County residents for the sake of NOTHING. And it will be implemented sooner. Please someone in power make a wise decision on this one!!

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

13 minutes ago, nashwatcher said:

WHY are we building light rail is it costs TEN TIMES AS MUCH and ISN'T ANY BETTER than BRT????????

With dedicated lanes and sexy buses, people WILL USE IT. And we won't be putting a huge tax burden on all of the Davidson County residents for the sake of NOTHING. And it will be implemented sooner. Please someone in power make a wise decision on this one!!

They already tried and it crashed and burned.

BTW here's the full NMTA report. Pretty awesome if you've got like 10 hours.

http://139e83c06b73767fe1d7-3a0b03ce999659cce0d32d4cee74e7f8.r68.cf5.rackcdn.com/Nashville HCT Opps Briefing FINAL v2.pdf

Edited by AronG
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.