The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[12Mouth]

2 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

What ya want to bet Lime and Bird are banned again. There was an article on News2 tonight saying what I have been seeing. This is from a hotel manager. We just have too many visiting idiots for these things to work here.

Well yes, you might be correct on that last point, unfortunately. I just don’t think the scooters are the problem and I see people making poor choices in cars (and on bikes and foot) every day. 

On my ride home today I probably saw ten scooters, none wearing helmets, but all following the law, riding in bike lanes. Really a great way to get around if people have safe options and follow the rules.

[titanhog]

Really wish we had a better infrastructure inside the downtown loop.   One lane each for coming and going autos...a dedicated and protected bike / scooter lane...and then wide sidewalks (especially on lower Broad.)  And...lower Broad should really go down to just one lane coming and going for autos and dedicate more room for pedestrians / bikes / scooters.

[smeagolsfree]

Here is one thing that could help. All it takes is Metro passing an ordinance.

 

Metro needs to put signs on the sidewalks stating the following:

No Bicycles, Scooters, skateboards on sidewalks.

Bicycles, scooters, skateboarders use street or bike lanes.

Bikes, scooters and skateboards left on public right of way subject to impound.

Violators subject to fine and court cost and impound fees

This could be in the business area of Downtown, Midtown, the Gulch, SoBro

AND then Metro needs to enforce it!

 

 

 

[12Mouth]

43 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

Here is one thing that could help. All it takes is Metro passing an ordinance.

 

Metro needs to put signs on the sidewalks stating the following:

No Bicycles, Scooters, skateboards on sidewalks.

Bicycles, scooters, skateboarders use street or bike lanes.

Bikes, scooters and skateboards left on public right of way subject to impound.

Violators subject to fine and court cost and impound fees

This could be in the business area of Downtown, Midtown, the Gulch, SoBro

AND then Metro needs to enforce it!

 

 

 

I agree and this could be helpful. But Metro also needs to provide designated areas to park them and safer places to ride. 

[Bos2Nash]

Stumbled across this article that makes one of the most compelling arguments to date for adding more mass transit into our city. Traffic Safety!!

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2018/08/29/the-best-tool-for-reducing-traffic-deaths-more-transit/

For example, Nashville as suffered 52 traffic related fatalities so far in 2018 (as compared to 54 in 2017) (source: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/safety/documents/dailyfatalitybycounty.pdf). We average approximately 29,800 vehicular accidents a year (69 of which are fatal) (source: https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/safety/documents/CountyRankings.pdf). If we use the example of Boston to Birmingham (as stated in the article) as a benchmark (an extreme benchmark), a well developed mass transit system could potentially reduce the our total number of accidents to 3,725 and the number of fatalities to between 8 and 9.

Granted I know my math is flawed, because the Boston to Birmingham example is based on 1 in 100,000 scale, but the change between developed transit and undeveloped translates to an 8x difference.  

[AronG]

2 hours ago, 12Mouth said:

I agree and this could be helpful. But Metro also needs to provide designated areas to park them and safer places to ride. 

The need for bike lanes is 95% of the issue. These things are going to be an unmitigated good as soon as we designate a few protected lanes that cut across the major areas of the city. And each one will be able to move 10x as many people as a car lane. I personally am super excited about having a way to get around that will never be caught in traffic.

[e-dub]

I stopped at Proper Bagel a couple weeks ago on a Saturday for a Nova salmon sandwich and some jackass parked their 18 wheeler in a place that blocked the bike lane on Belmont, I was pretty peeved.

 

Also, if you've not tried the Nova salmon sandwich at Proper Bagel (and you're into things that delicious) you're missing out BIG time. Of course, if delicious isn't your thing, then, you know... sure...

[CenterHill]

Walked 2 blocks for lunch today downtown.    Encountered 4 scooters (separate riders, not a group).    All were riding on the sidewalk, none on street.  

Even though the apps instruct the users not to ride on sidewalks, in the absence of dedicated lanes, we should expect that users will MOSTLY ride them on sidewalks.     This was predictable.     Maybe we can get Terry Tate to start patrolling.     

 

[12Mouth]

50 minutes ago, e-dub said:

I stopped at Proper Bagel a couple weeks ago on a Saturday for a Nova salmon sandwich and some jackass parked their 18 wheeler in a place that blocked the bike lane on Belmont, I was pretty peeved.

There are literally trucks blocking the Belmont bike lane right in that area every single morning. I ride it every day. They are making some design changes to the lanes, including some "key areas of protected lanes", but I'm not optimistic. 

[e-dub]

Does "protected lanes" mean physical barriers?

[12Mouth]

2 minutes ago, e-dub said:

Does "protected lanes" mean physical barriers?

Yes, but unless they move the lanes to  inside of the cars, I don't see how they will do this. My guess is that they may create a few areas without street parking?

[titanhog]

2 hours ago, e-dub said:

Does "protected lanes" mean physical barriers?

Something like this would be ok

 

Something like this even better

 

Edited September 5, 2018 by titanhog

[e-dub]

Both of those would be fantastic, imo, @titanhog!

[GregH]

25 minutes ago, titanhog said:

Something like this would be ok

 

 

 

 

I bike the 51st ave 2-way lane almost every day and I really hope they don't do something like that on Belmont. Cars turning right across the lane from side streets almost never look for bikes coming from the right and I think Belmont, with increased pedestrian traffic, the hill and a less-straight road would be even worse, visibility-wise. The current Belmont situation is better than a two-way, IMO. Also, so far Metro's approach to entering and exiting opposite-side bike lanes seems to be "good luck!" 

[BnaBreaker]

Jim Carrey rode a Bird scooter onto the set of the Jimmy Kimmel show tonight.  lol

 

[Guest]

Website says deliver this December....not price listed.

http://huvrtech.com/about.html

[ruraljuror]

1 hour ago, nashville_bound said:

Website says deliver this December....not price listed.

http://huvrtech.com/about.html

Pretty sure that's a hoax.

[smeagolsfree]

I have to wonder if its not a hoax video. If they are able to this, then tires on cars and roads would be a thing of the past.

Looked up info online and video seems to be from 2014 and it was a hoax then. I cant find anythiing current.

[Guest]

A good hoax then....went pretty far with website and Mark Cuban...wonder if he was in on it?

Edited September 9, 2018 by Guest

[nashvylle]

Not sure what this is, but I’ll post it here. 

 

[henburg]

39 minutes ago, nashvylle said:

Not sure what this is, but I’ll post it here. 

 

 

I'm sorry, but it's really difficult for me to take ideas like this seriously when their website is that terrible. Outside of that, the descriptions of it are so vague that I'm still not totally sure I understand what it is exactly. 

 

Innovation is cool, but I don't know if it's going to come from places like this to say the least. 

[e-dub]

From the "Go Nashville!" twitter page. Yankee inventions, lol:

 

[PaulChinetti]

"By removing the aisle from the inside of a standard city bus, we have created a system that enables all riders to enjoy public transportation without the cramped and uncomfortable problems and replaced it with the bliss of private space and bigger seats!"

So now when it's raining and one person gets off, everyone in the compartment will get wet. There are some interesting ideas in there for cargo carrying but I don't know why this would be better for than a regular bus.

[GregH]

59 minutes ago, PaulChinetti said:

"By removing the aisle from the inside of a standard city bus, we have created a system that enables all riders to enjoy public transportation without the cramped and uncomfortable problems and replaced it with the bliss of private space and bigger seats!"

So now when it's raining and one person gets off, everyone in the compartment will get wet. There are some interesting ideas in there for cargo carrying but I don't know why this would be better for than a regular bus.

Unless I'm looking at it wrong, it also seems like the driver-side half of the bus would have to load in traffic rather than curbside. 

[Tennessine]

On 9/9/2018 at 4:12 PM, e-dub said:

From the "Go Nashville!" twitter page. Yankee inventions, lol:

 

Yeah! Yankee inventions! Git em! Lee surrendered, but I didn't!

 

Lol if they hate "Yankee inventions", I guess they shouldn't be driving cars either!!