Jump to content

The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread


TopTenn

Recommended Posts

does anyone know if Charlotte ave is considered a state road? I really think the most realistic route is to get some sort of (1) get some sort of dedicated funding source (tax on alcohol, cigarettes, tobacco?) (2) permit buses only to use the emergency lanes on the outermost left and right lanes on the interstate to move past car traffic, and (3) get some sort of BRT on Charlotte first (dedicated lanes only during rush hour?). 

Points 2 and 3 can be done very cheaply, and could be a test to show the people willing to use mass transit... which could enable further transit initiatives in the future. 

They change stuff so frequently without engaging the awareness of the public, that I can't readily determine which portion of Charlotte remains commissioned as Federal US-70.  Last time I recall truly noticing, during the last 25 yrs., US 70 west of DT had been relocated from Charlotte to Broadway / West End, Murphy Road to 46th Ave., where it then followed Charlotte westward to a point near Pegram where it was joined by US-70S (from Harding Pk back east).  Seems that each of the city's arterials (and then some) is designated as some kind of numbered state highway with label "S.R.", in addition to any separate federal U.S. hywy commission status.  That being said, almost any roadway affording "through" passage has been labeled a "state-highway" along at least some of its extent (although it appears that Main Street and "near"-Gallatin Road was stripped of any highway designation, in favor of Ellington- and Briley Pkways for US-31E.

So the passage last year of a state bill which requires the legislature's approval for any project using dedicated lanes, pretty much covers anything resembling a thoroughfare, and any RT not requiring such state approval would need to weave back and forth to nowhere, theoretically.  If the state ever could or would decide to commit itself to liberal funding for and proactively support the design of any urban RT, then its ruling actually could become an asset for embracing RT planning and development.  But until then....

-==-

Link to comment
Share on other sites


does anyone know if Charlotte ave is considered a state road?

They change stuff so frequently without engaging the awareness of the public, that I can't readily determine which portion of Charlotte remains commissioned as Federal US-70.  Last time I recall truly noticing, during the last 25 yrs., US 70 west of DT had been relocated from Charlotte to Broadway / West End, Murphy Road to 46th Ave., where it then followed Charlotte westward to a point near Pegram where it was joined by US-70S (from Harding Pk back east).

Charlotte Pike/Avenue is SR-24/US-70 from the SR-1/US-70S split west of Bellevue all the way in to George L. Davis Boulevard (the northbound C/D road for Interstates 40 and 65). It's only Metro-owned for about ten blocks through the CBD to Third.

As an aside, all US Numbered Highways in Tennessee are unsigned state routes, though the state designation is not necessarily coterminous with the US route designation. For example, at various points in Tennessee US Route 70 (just the plain vanilla 70, not split or bannered routes) may also be State Route 1, 9, 14, 24, or 26. This is mostly for bookkeeping though every once in a while someone gets too happy with construction detour signing.

In Nashville only short stretches of major roadways are not state-owned and thus invulnerable to the whims of the General Assembly. (As a point of reference, the longest "major" radial local road appears to be 12th Avenue / Granny White Pike.) So until the legislature decides to let TDOT make decisions about taking care of the state's transportation assets, i.e., their reason for existence, then we're stuck with outside-lane BRT. And monorail!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alternate headline:  "Positive trends in Millennials' mobility choices spurs need for transportation tax reform"

"Millennials to blame for unsafe and deteriorating roads, report says" is terribly misleading and unacceptable, for the content of that article.  I think a reporter spankin' is in order, in this case. Neither "Millennials" nor the otherwise transit conscientious should be held culpable for that plight,  If any consumer group is to blame, then it should be the older drivers, "normal" in the eyes of the reporter ─ those who drive as singles in gun-boat size vehicles, as well as commercial units which pound and rut the roads.  Millennials are the least ones who should be vilified. -==-

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Millennials to blame for unsafe and deteriorating roads, report says" is terribly misleading and unacceptable, for the content of that article.  I think a reporter spankin' is in order, in this case. Neither "Millennials" nor the otherwise transit conscientious should be held culpable for that plight,  If any consumer group is to blame, then it should be the older drivers, "normal" in the eyes of the reporter ─ those who drive as singles in gun-boat size vehicles, as well as commercial units which pound and rut the roads.  Millennials are the least ones who should be vilified. -==-

Definitely the headline is misleading...but the story does provide insight into why Millenials driving habits have effected tax revenue.  And I agree with RonCamp that the headline should be talking about how Millenials are hopefully going to force a change in the way we view transportation in the future and the need for tax reform to provide for infrastructure improvements.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Definitely the headline is misleading...but the story does provide insight into why Millenials driving habits have effected tax revenue.  And I agree with RonCamp that the headline should be talking about how Millenials are hopefully going to force a change in the way we view transportation in the future and the need for tax reform to provide for infrastructure improvements.

I also agree with that.  I just take exception to the tactic of the reporter's use of a "sensational lure" of a title which doesn't properly represent the point being discussed. -==-

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

"Millennials to blame for unsafe and deteriorating roads, report says" is terribly misleading and unacceptable, for the content of that article.  I think a reporter spankin' is in order, in this case. Neither "Millennials" nor the otherwise transit conscientious should be held culpable for that plight,  If any consumer group is to blame, then it should be the older drivers, "normal" in the eyes of the reporter ─ those who drive as singles in gun-boat size vehicles, as well as commercial units which pound and rut the roads.  Millennials are the least ones who should be vilified. -==-

How in the world does the "OLDER" or "NORMAL" get the blame for this.  The separation of people into age groups is just ridiculous.  It's the Boomers fault, it's the Gen Xers fault. No, it's the Gen Yers fault.  It's the soccer mom's.  Geez.  So you assume the millennials are better, because they want to live downtown or drive Leaf's.   There are as many millennials as any other group that want big gun boat size vehicles and giant houses in suburbia.  They are not any more conscious of the environment or impact to anything as anybody else.  In my workplace there are six electric vehicles out of hundreds of cars.  One is owned by a millennial.  The rest of the owners are over 40.  The smugness of the comments kind of bugged me.    

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How in the world does the "OLDER" or "NORMAL" get the blame for this.  The separation of people into age groups is just ridiculous.  It's the Boomers fault, it's the Gen Xers fault. No, it's the Gen Yers fault.  It's the soccer mom's.  Geez.  So you assume the millennials are better, because they want to live downtown or drive Leaf's.   There are as many millennials as any other group that want big gun boat size vehicles and giant houses in suburbia.  They are not any more conscious of the environment or impact to anything as anybody else.  In my workplace there are six electric vehicles out of hundreds of cars.  One is owned by a millennial.  The rest of the owners are over 40.  The smugness of the comments kind of bugged me.    

Nashbill, I think you missed most of the whole point, if not entirely.  I never intended to actually "fault" any one group, or any group at all.  The point is that the reporter tries to dramatize an issue, as if it were a fault, a misdeed, or worse as a transgression, none of which should have applied here. It's the title that has ripped any coherence from the content of the article.  The only thing I used the reference to old people like me (and may you by your reaction), is that older cars often have been associated with being heavier than newer cars (1990's compared to 20-mid-teens), and also some older sectors have tended to prefer phat and long cars, even if you yourself or I do not.  Heavier cars, particularly those negotiating curves on the interstates, impart cumulatively more wear on the roadways, even if infinitesimally and immeasurably small, than do newer sub-compacts, while it's not to say that anyone group drives this or that. -==-.

Edited by rookzie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This article details the path taken far too often by politicians selling mega-projects (mass-transit as well as others...) that leads to cynicism from me and other tax-payers.

 

This project has already doubled the price - tag approved by the voters with no end in sight. Additionally the original timeline is a distant memory. My final thought is what the hell are they thinking by routing this through massive fault lines? It seems the 'investment' and time spend constructing this white-elephant is just waiting for an quake .....

Special Report $68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This article details the path taken far too often by politicians selling mega-projects (mass-transit as well as others...) that leads to cynicism from me and other tax-payers.

 

This project has already doubled the price - tag approved by the voters with no end in sight. Additionally the original timeline is a distant memory. My final thought is what the hell are they thinking by routing this through massive fault lines? It seems the 'investment' and time spend constructing this white-elephant is just waiting for an quake .....

Special Report $68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets

I've been watching since the conception of that project during Schwarzenegger years in Sacramento.  Even then I considered it a boondoggle, primarily because of the manner in which it has been earmarked for funding and implementation.  Let alone the mushrooming issue of geological faults, which exacerbate the project-planning processes, a High-Speed-Rail project of that magnitude in the States is unprecedented, and at the very least it represents a case history of how not to plan an initiative.  The fact is, it's way too much to attempt such an undertaking at once, without any "reasonable-time" delivery of tangibles, with which stakeholders directly affected can evaluate a perceived benefit.  It's should not be an initiative which would have to be implemented as all or nothing, because resources for such action just are not sustainable, in terms of funding and the sheer amount of negative buy-in and lack of support from a diverse mix of locales and districts within the geographical scope of the proposal.

Similarities can be found between this and the EW-AMP, in that supporters seem quite zealously unapologetic toward legitimately addressable concerns, although the bullet-train proposal never had been a totally done deal thrust upon voters without some semblance of wide public engagement.  Another big difference is that, while the EW-Connector would have had cost overruns, predictable with any such type of infrastructure project, at least it's funding costs probably would not have become runaway.  This alone makes the Cal. Bullet Train a "train to nowhere".

Frankly, I also have conviction that this endlessly contentious "collaborative enterprise" for the Cal. B-T, rife with black-hole over-cost estimates, has to a significant extent reduced the amount of overall Federal capital funding annually budgeted for the aggregate sum of all competing transportation project start-ups and expansions.  Just last week, the House Committee on Transportation approved a surface transportation bill extending highway and transit funding at current levels for six years, which effectively freezes in place current funding levels (with small inflationary adjustments). While a proposed major boost in allocation was not passed, this at least would ensure six years of annual predictability for which states finally could plan infrastructure investments, without concerns of stalling and cancellation due to congressional uncertainty.  The bill is staged for a full House upcoming vote, before the Senate wrangles with its own version.  IMO what makes the Cal. bullet-train project so egregious is a 2012 agreement between California and the administration that allows that project to sap federal funds without immediately providing required state matching money.  So far, the $3.2 Bn, awarded Cal. for the B-T as of last June, would make many states salivate for even a modest chunk of that for transit improvements.
-==-

Edited by rookzie
  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Just looking at the study and figured a good high school student could have come up with the same study. Very little detail. IMHO

Mass transit is a service and will never be a money makerIt has to be considered just like garbage pick up and sewer service.  I do know that as times change more items like affordable transit, Internet access has to be considered in the greater scheme of services and for the purist that say it's not the governments place because it's not in the constitution, I will quote Thomas Jefferson. "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors."

 

According to the description, that graphic represents the 2035 Regional Transportation Plan, which has been released a number years ago when this was last revised.  The MPO clearly "promised" last year a release of a 2040 revision, and if so then this is a rather sloppy handling of what an attentive audience would expect by now ┴ a disappointment to say the very least.  It was announced in the media and is briefly mentioned on the MPO Web site (http://www.nashvillempo.org/regional_plan/).  It's been high time that the MTA/RTA nMotion site make good by at least making readily visible, if not foremost, some update status of a release for 2040, rather than to serve active readers nothing more than a warmed over serving of what's been "cold" for five years.  I trust that this has been in the making (as benefit of any doubt), and the one prerequisite for regaining years of questionable confidence is to focus on keeping the audience well informed and to strive to remove inconsistencies of amy posted content.  Just as the Smeags said, an elephant at the Hohenwald sanctuary could have trunked up a brush and dashed up the same.as that grid on that final page.

That transit should not be expected to become and to remain sustained as a profitable business is "a" if not "the" first "credo" in establishing a comprehensive public mobility network, whether or not some services thereof are deemed lucrative.  This not to state that services for which little demand has been demonstrated in terms of patronage must not be assessed, adjusted, and amended to better address trended needs, as evolving conditions affect all such systems for expansion or curtailment.  As the Devil's advocate, with the saying, "build it and they will come," I can say that infusions of well-informed planning and implementation resources as investments in transit infrastructure actually can "breed" a culture toward familiarity and understood confidence.  Transit systems are not self-sustaining and can be subjected to the whims of ridership surges or ebbing, as the public perceives how its demands can be reliably met more so than not. -==-

Edited by rookzie
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am afraid I am in rare form today. I saw the headline and the first thing that hit me was strippers on a street car. Sort of catchy and how could the opposition of the AMP scream about that.

 

Being serious here, the street car system is a very efficient way of transportation. I believe as do a few others here that it may have had a chance if it had not crossed 440.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This article details the path taken far too often by politicians selling mega-projects (mass-transit as well as others...) that leads to cynicism from me and other tax-payers.

 

This project has already doubled the price - tag approved by the voters with no end in sight. Additionally the original timeline is a distant memory. My final thought is what the hell are they thinking by routing this through massive fault lines? It seems the 'investment' and time spend constructing this white-elephant is just waiting for an quake .....

Special Report $68-billion California bullet train project likely to overshoot budget and deadline targets

That project was a failure from the beginning. Elon Musk had a way to make it better for 1/3 the starting price tag but they went on with this cluster.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The cost of this thing is just astonishing. I think I could come up with several better ways to spend $68 billion on transit. 

If they took half the capital invested in this project, put it in a conservative investment vehicle that returned 4% they would have $1.34 billion annually.  How many daily flights do you think California could provide people traveling along that route with $50 one way tickets?

If that $68 billion was able to be spread among cities around the country I contend more good would be done by building 390 AMP-like transit lines instead of one bullet train?  Or what if that $68 billion was used instead to expand the national Amtrak system to one that could reliably get speeds approaching 100 mph? 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think you guys are missing the point... the point was not to build a railroad (that could be done by private entities).  The point is a (publicly) "jobs program" and (privately) "greasing palms" for major contributors. After all the political back and forth, I put in my $.02... and I seriously doubt those same "politicians" will have to account for this boondoggle by losing their power. 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Right, those "Riptide" undercurrents always belie such ballooned projects as the Cal. B-T.  I just didn't want to offend anyone by laying the complete "deck on the table".

Hey_Hey is right about much more practical (and practicable) spending of that kind of money on transportation projects, as distributed more equitably among other U.S. cities.  Hell, California could have settled for enhancing its existing railroad infrastructure of the primary owning carriers (UPRR, BNSF) to augment current passenger rail for corridors already maxed out with passenger- and freight traffic, and to re-establish missing links eliminated between some 13 to 44 years, such as L.A to Las Vegas.

I have been riding passenger trains for some 62 years (with only very few gaps of skipped years), and in general since 1971 (the year of Amtrak inception for transferring control of seriously declining intercity psngr. ops from the private lines) I have witnessed Amtrak service evolve from little to start with, to much improved business model, to steadily deteriorating level of service within the last 5 or 6 years.  I can say this because I have put in a few miles, so to speak.  To me, it's disgusting and a breach of trust that the current administration has perpetuated this travesty of epic awarding funding to a single project of indeterminate proportions.  With states like NC, IL, and MI (not included in the NE Corridor) successfully striving to upgrade some stretches of rail to accommodate Emerging High-Speed Rail (90-110 MPH, e.g. Chi-Springfield-St.Louis; Raleigh-Emporia-Richmond; Detroit-Kalamazoo-Chi), these serve as metrics for more proven and effective restorative and enhancement efforts, which IMO should be more readily engendered and embraced as a basis to what Hey_Hey has advocated.  As Heh_Hey suggested, the country's Amtrak network as a whole could be the recipient for a upgrading an aging infrastructure, which remains only partially intact since the elimination of many runs and routes during the last 44 years.

As these various definitions show, discussions of high speed rail in the United States can refer to trains briefly reaching speeds of 90 mph on tracks shared with freight trains or trains traveling over 200 mph for sustained periods on dedicated track, or both. For clarity, in this report the term “higher speed rail” will refer to HSR on shared tracks with speeds up to 150 mph (encompassing both FRA’s “Emerging HSR” and “Regional HSR” classifications), and “very high speed rail” ill refer to HSR on dedicated tracks with speeds over 150 mph (equivalent to FRA’s “Express HSR” classification).

Although this country is spread out and encompasses a vast area, much benefit stands to be gained by transforming at least key arteries to HrSR status, rather than by attempting true High-Speed Rail (HSR), as with the Cal. B-T.  Even conventional speed rail could make a readily apparent improvement in schedule times by increasing the speed from 79- to 99, even though this comes at a much high price tag, when expanding to three parallel tracks is necessary to make this tenable, especially where passenger service no longer exists.  This is somewhat oversimplified, but the point is that the national network stands to gain far more with that Cal. B-T price tag re-allocated to other targets, than to the B-T itself and those likely to use it.
-==-

Edited by rookzie
  • Like 1
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.