The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[MagicPotato]

3 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

TDOT relocated two of the ramps (Briley SB to I-40 EB and I-40 WB to Briley SB) in design as a stack interchange violated FAA height restrictions and the original design took the ramps in tunnels under the Interstate. It was featured for a long time on TDOT's website as an example of value engineering (possibly because for a long time it was TDOT's only example of value engineering).

 

Nashville's FAA height restrictions are so ridiculous.  "Hey building this will make our lives better and more efficient . Meanwhile, the FAA, too bad it's 1.23 cm too tall, we can't build it."

[Sean blackdog]

Today this morning  from News Channel 5. 
TDOT to widen I-65 from Nashville to Kentucky state line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Department of Transportation has announced plans to widen Interstate 65 through Davidson, Robertson, and Sumner Counties.

Approximately 25.8 miles will be widened from Nashville to the Kentucky state line. TDOT officials said the project will "address congestion, improve safety, and traffic operations, and accommodate current and future traffic demands.”

TDOT provided the following outline of the project:

• I-65, north of Nashville, will be widened from four to six lanes with three 12-foot travel lanes in each direction, 12-foot paved outside shoulders, 12-foot paved inside shoulders, with approximately 300 feet of right-of-way and a concrete median barrier wall where required.
• Two northbound truck climbing lanes will be constructed – one between mile markers 99 and 100 and another between mile markers 102 and 104.
• An auxiliary lane will also be added in each direction between the interchanges of Rivergate Parkway (Exit 96) and SR 174 (Long Hollow Pike, Exit 97) to accommodate traffic exiting and entering the roadway.

TDOT said due to the length of the corridor, improvements have been separated into smaller sections or phases:

• from Rivergate Parkway to near SR 41 (US 31W)
• from near SR 41 (US 31W) to near SR 257 (Bethel Road)
• from SR 257 (Bethel Road) to SR 25 (Main Street)
• from near SR 25 (Main Street) to near SR 109
• from SR 109 to Kentucky State Line - completed

TDOT said the northbound weigh station near the Kentucky state line will also be converted into a truck parking area to provide additional parking spaces to accommodate the increase in trucks along I-65.

Edited June 21, 2021 by Sean blackdog

[nashvylle]

24 minutes ago, Sean blackdog said:

Today this morning  from News Channel 5. 
TDOT to widen I-65 from Nashville to Kentucky state line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Department of Transportation has announced plans to widen Interstate 65 through Davidson, Robertson, and Sumner Counties.

Approximately 25.8 miles will be widened from Nashville to the Kentucky state line. TDOT officials said the project will "address congestion, improve safety, and traffic operations, and accommodate current and future traffic demands.”

TDOT provided the following outline of the project:

• I-65, north of Nashville, will be widened from four to six lanes with three 12-foot travel lanes in each direction, 12-foot paved outside shoulders, 12-foot paved inside shoulders, with approximately 300 feet of right-of-way and a concrete median barrier wall where required.
• Two northbound truck climbing lanes will be constructed – one between mile markers 99 and 100 and another between mile markers 102 and 104.
• An auxiliary lane will also be added in each direction between the interchanges of Rivergate Parkway (Exit 96) and SR 174 (Long Hollow Pike, Exit 97) to accommodate traffic exiting and entering the roadway.

TDOT said due to the length of the corridor, improvements have been separated into smaller sections or phases:

• from Rivergate Parkway to near SR 41 (US 31W)
• from near SR 41 (US 31W) to near SR 257 (Bethel Road)
• from SR 257 (Bethel Road) to SR 25 (Main Street)
• from near SR 25 (Main Street) to near SR 109
• from SR 109 to Kentucky State Line - completed

TDOT said the northbound weigh station near the Kentucky state line will also be converted into a truck parking area to provide additional parking spaces to accommodate the increase in trucks along I-65.

TDOT has announced plans for their weight loss program by buying a bigger belt to handle the increased weight. 

[donNdonelson2]

1 hour ago, Sean blackdog said:

 

Today this morning  from News Channel 5. 
TDOT to widen I-65 from Nashville to Kentucky state line

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — The Tennessee Department of Transportation has announced plans to widen Interstate 65 through Davidson, Robertson, and Sumner Counties.

 

This project is LONG overdue! Can TDOT put a rush order on this one…PLEASE.

[PruneTracy]

1 hour ago, nashvylle said:

TDOT has announced plans for their weight loss program by buying a bigger belt to handle the increased weight. 

This isn't suburban, sprawl-enabling widening of the sort denounced by urban planners. The truck percentages on I-65 north of Nashville are as high as 40%. If you like being able to walk, bike, or take a bus to the store to purchase any number of goods then this project is for you.

[BnaBreaker]

3 hours ago, nashvylle said:

TDOT has announced plans for their weight loss program by buying a bigger belt to handle the increased weight. 

I agree completely that generally speaking, the eternal widening of highways is a piss poor solution to traffic woes.  However, in this particular instance, as someone who drives that stretch several times a year, I think this is LONG overdue.  Beyond being widened, it just badly needs to be updated.  It's such an antiquated stretch of highway that it actually feels dangerous.  The juxtaposition between the modern, quick moving, well monitored, well maintained expressways of Kentucky and the narrow, congested, brown pathways winding through the woods of Tennessee is like sudden jolt back into the 1950's.  

[bnacincy]

10 minutes ago, BnaBreaker said:

I agree completely that generally speaking, the eternal widening of highways is a piss poor solution to traffic woes.  However, in this particular instance, as someone who drives that stretch several times a year, I think this is LONG overdue.  Beyond being widened, it just badly needs to be updated.  It's such an antiquated stretch of highway that it actually feels dangerous.  The juxtaposition between the modern, quick moving, well monitored, well maintained expressways of Kentucky and the narrow, congested, brown pathways winding through the woods of Tennessee is like sudden jolt back into the 1950's.  

Finally! I hope this starts soon-any idea when it might?

[MLBrumby]

Dear TDOT:

[cough, cough]  I-24 to Chattanooga!  I-24 to Chattanooga!  I-24 to Chattanooga!  Please!

Sincerely,

MLB

[nashvylle]

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/06/24/fact-sheet-president-biden-announces-support-for-the-bipartisan-infrastructure-framework/

$66BN for rail. Will Nashville to Atlanta be included? I know it still must pass congress, but hopefully we get Amtrak back on "track". 

[smeagolsfree]

I have a feeling that the elephants in the room will derail that train.

[markhollin]

Form NASHtoday:

Vision Zero + what it means for Nashville

Nashville is embarking on a plan to eliminate all traffic-related deaths + reduce crashes and serious injuries.

The city's Vision Zero initiative — still in the early stages of development— began in January 2020 when Mayor John Cooper committed to joining more than 40 cities across the US in implementing data-driven transportation policies and projects. 

Since then, the Vision Zero team has spent the past year analyzing local traffic incident data and working with community groups like Walk Bike Nashville on developing an action plan.

With the official launch of Nashville’s Department of Transportation last week, the team now wants to hear from residents about their experiences walking, driving, bicycling, and taking the bus around Nashville.

From now through Aug. 6, you can visit the city's Vision Zero website to  share streets or intersections where you feel unsafe traveling on foot, bike, or car. The community survey results will help transportation officials develop the overall plan — expected to be released in full later this year — with short-term and long-term safety improvements. 

In the meantime, ongoing initiatives include safety projects at dangerous roads and intersections, installing new lighting at pedestrian crossings, and lowering speed limits from 30 to 25 mph in neighborhoods across the city.

Ready to get started? Click the button below to launch the survey, which takes about 5 minutes to complete.

SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS

[grilled_cheese]

Time and time again the powers that be do things that only serve the ex/suburanites.

 

Meanwhile the interchange under the Fern Ave bridge remains unchanged since Eisenhower.

[Mr_Bond]

Vision Zero.  Not sure that's the best name for this initiative.  

[MLBrumby]

It's an awful name. 

[rookzie]

23 hours ago, grilled_cheese said:

Time and time again the powers that be do things that only serve the ex/suburanites.

 

Meanwhile the interchange under the Fern Ave bridge remains unchanged since Eisenhower.

 

41 minutes ago, Mr_Bond said:

Vision Zero.  Not sure that's the best name for this initiative.  

Just the glimpse impression of that name makes a half normal half eccentric person like me think more of tearing things down, far more than it's purported intention.

In a way it reminds me of the reason Amtrak renamed a Chicago-Detroit passenger train it inherited from the railroads in 1971 ─ the "Twilight Limited" ─ to become the "St. Clair", because it felt that the original name connoted something a bit morbid and portentous, if not evil.

[Nashvillain]

Vision Zero isn't something cooked up by the same visionaries as WeGO, ya'll. It's an international initiative (started in Sweden) that Nashville has joined with a mission of reducing traffic fatalities to zero. 

So maybe in a sense, it could be about tearing things down, i.e. the infrastructure that leads to 40,000 fatalities a year 

[Bos2Nash]

  Quoting you here as it speaks more to WeGo's system rather than specifically Green Hills.

19 minutes ago, smeagolsfree said:

Sorry Mel this is not a city you can live in without a car. I am not picking on you here I am venting at the idiots that think we can live in Nashville without a car. If these businesses are trying to fool people into thinking this when they move here then they have another thing coming. The time you will waste on a Metro bus will be extreme. Cooper has no idea what he is doing when it some to making buses work here. They will not work because they are stuck in the same blasted traffic that everyone else is stuck in and its only going to get worse.

Anyone that thinks they can make buses work in Nashville now is a MORON. I purposefully took the bus in NYC to see how long it took and it was a nightmare in the middle of the day with little traffic for NYC standards from Chinatown to the Highline. Forty five minutes! If I had talked the subway probably 15 including the walk to get there.

If you do not have a car in this city it will get old very fast. I want to go to the movies, but its not playing in GreenHills, but at Opry Mills, different bus and a lot further. I need to go to Target and not Green Hills Mall, different bus across town. I want to see a friend in Franklin, you can’t get there from here.

Unfortunately this is a small step forwards that is unfortunately necessary as clearly other steps have not worked. Mankind has this urge of big solutions that come in one massive proposal that paints a pretty picture right before our eyes. Unfortunately this topic will just not be the case as it will be a slow and painful improvement process.

I do agree that you cannot live in this city without a car. Coming from Boston where my car moved literally only on the weekends or for job specific trips, Nashville has been a complete disappointment in this category. Some true urbanites could try to make it work, but it would certainly get old quick. Owning a car may not be a feasible option though if they choose to live in the city and the bus system is their only choice. 

If we are calling Cooper a moron, then we have to call every single mayor who has failed to implement reasonable transit change a moron as well. This includes Bredeson, Purcell, Dean, Barry and Briley and the ones prior to them. Cooper has done a pretty good job in my opinion and whether tactics have rubbed people the wrong way, his results speak for themselves. At least he is making improvements. This is a hub at the end of the 7 Line, we have the North Nashville Transit Center moving forwards (I know this wasn't his brain child). These are incremental improvements that will slowly build toward a bigger future. 

Ultimately the state is going to have to get more involved on a regional level for transit. They are going to have to do it for the four major hubs in the state too and that is a difficult task. Also the next time we get a transit referendum they better not pitch it as a congestion mitigator, but rather a transportation equalizer. Whoever pitched the idea that it should be sold on a congestion posterchild should be fired

Edited July 7, 2021 by Bos2Nash

[Nash_12South]

I don't think Nashville or perhaps any of Tennessee's big cities can rely on the state for any help or guidance on regional transit. Our State legislators hate the big cities and will be loath to do anything that requires spending money around here. It's hard to even get much buy in from even our adjoining counties on mass transit. 

[andywildman]

Nashville's population density is still low compared to cities that do public transportation well. There are two main things that would make public transit work for this city:

• Pandering to the tourists (start with BNA to Broadway; expand to tourist hotspots)
• Incentivizing density on corridors, either before or after we prioritize, modernize, and increase frequency.
  • Tax relief and increased height allowances within a mile of transit hubs. I'm honestly not sure why Nashville's not doing this today, but the city should spend on developments like Madison Town Center that can effectively leverage existing and future transit hubs.
  • There aren't many 15-minute complete neighborhoods in this city, in part because we don't broadly have the density to support that level of walkability. (Maybe there are areas around the Gulch that could lead "car-light" lives in the next couple years but that only works for folks who can buy condos or are willing to pay highrise rents.

[rookzie]

On 7/6/2021 at 6:55 PM, Nashvillain said:

Vision Zero isn't something cooked up by the same visionaries as WeGO, ya'll. It's an international initiative (started in Sweden) that Nashville has joined with a mission of reducing traffic fatalities to zero. 

So maybe in a sense, it could be about tearing things down, i.e. the infrastructure that leads to 40,000 fatalities a year 

Well, in expressing my perception or a lack thereof, I never claimed to be the most discerning and intuitive boy on the block (as you already know)..

[Nashvillain]

50 minutes ago, rookzie said:

Well, in expressing my perception or a lack thereof, I never claimed to be the most discerning and intuitive boy on the block (as you already know)..

Sorry, you got kind of lumped in with my response. You're absolutely the hero of the Transportation and Mass Transportation Mega Thread

[AsianintheNations]

If I hypothetically moved to Green Hills relatively near Hillsboro and still worked at Vanderbilt, I'd happily take the 7 bus to/from work from the fancy new hub, not even because it'd be free (not sure how well this is publicized but Vandy IDs serve as free bus passes) but to take away the stress of having to actually operate a car in the awful traffic and having to spend 5+ minutes each way navigating the equally awful Vanderbilt parking garages. When I lived in Boston, I thought of riding buses as paying someone to bully other traffic on the road on my behalf while I listened to music, did work, or admired the architecture. A bus driving on regular lanes is by definition slower than a single-occupancy car (light rail would also be without light priority or a separate ROW for that matter, and Nashville needs to be at least 5x denser to even start thinking about a metro system, which the US is incapable of building at any reasonable cost anymore). Many of my work colleagues here cannot fathom riding the bus, and most have never done so even once. And so there's a pervasive thought that the goal of a commute is to essentially make it as fast as possible, because it's a sunk cost. That's only true when you're the one driving. I had a research coworker in Boston who had something like a 2 hour train ride every day. She would review entire papers and grants during that time. Yes, the bus routes here are too infrequent and too downtown-centric. But the buses themselves are modern and quite clean (way less urine odor than in Boston or NYC; yes, I am comparing when riding without a mask on), and virtually every major arterial road does have a bus line on it. Changing the conception of what a commute is supposed to be when the sole experience has been driving a car alone has to be the first step, and maybe the hub will be a tilting point for a few people - it has to start with someone.

I do know several people who do not own a car and who are not students; it is only really feasible in Midtown/West End, the Gulch, or Downtown. There's always uber/lyft and carshares for places out of reach of biking or buses, but it does seem like their world is a little smaller. That said, I once walked from Centennial Park to East Nashville and boy was there so much I saw along the way that I had never noticed while driving - so it's a smaller but perhaps more detailed world.

[smeagolsfree]

14 hours ago, Nash_12South said:

I don't think Nashville or perhaps any of Tennessee's big cities can rely on the state for any help or guidance on regional transit. Our State legislators hate the big cities and will be loath to do anything that requires spending money around here. It's hard to even get much buy in from even our adjoining counties on mass transit. 

Yep, most of the legislators in office have the Danil Boone mentality and probably the education level as well. You can's get them to see past the nose on their face.

12 hours ago, andywildman said:

Nashville's population density is still low compared to cities that do public transportation well. There are two main things that would make public transit work for this city:

• Pandering to the tourists (start with BNA to Broadway; expand to tourist hotspots)
• Incentivizing density on corridors, either before or after we prioritize, modernize, and increase frequency.
  • Tax relief and increased height allowances within a mile of transit hubs. I'm honestly not sure why Nashville's not doing this today, but the city should spend on developments like Madison Town Center that can effectively leverage existing and future transit hubs.
  • There aren't many 15-minute complete neighborhoods in this city, in part because we don't broadly have the density to support that level of walkability. (Maybe there are areas around the Gulch that could lead "car-light" lives in the next couple years but that only works for folks who can buy condos or are willing to pay highrise rents.

Agreed, but this will take some forward thinking council people, Planning dept. staff and a mayor that is forward thinking which at this time we do not have, as he is visionless IMO.

He has not really put any kind of future vision out for the future of the city other than the East Bank and the worthless transit plan. You have to have cooperation of all the surrounding municipalities and you are going to have to force the issue with the State. You have to harp on it and keep the issue front and center. That's the problem, they just ignore it until the net election cycle or until people start to moan and bitch again. This has to be a constant effort on the local, regional, and State level, with everyone involved.

They are going to have to face the giant at some point or end up like Austin in grid lock at noon everyday on the interstates. Its coming and they are clueless! It has taken us years to get into the mess and will take years to get out of it because the longer you do nothing the worse it will be.

I guess you guys think I am a crazy old fart, but I speak truth and the canary in the coal mine started to die years ago and yes every mayor has kicked the can down the road because it was too expensive and now it is really expensive. It is a regional problem now and not just a Nashville problem because no one wants to work together, so now they are all stuck in traffic together sharing the same pain. As for me. I dont have to come into Nashville if I dont need to except for doctors appointments and I know how to get around the mess and schedule them accordingly. I work remotely and glad I do.

To counter the argument of the transportation issues of the tourist, it will still take years to get any kind of system in place to handle the traffic from BNA to DT via rail and you still have the majority of people that will drive here, because that is what they do because of the caliber of people that come here for Country Music. "Lets just Drive up to Nashvillllle"

In two years the traffic will be unbearable as things really heat back up! See what happens when the people start screaming then. And you guys are correct I have no love for the mayor or the governor. 

[smeagolsfree]

I did misspeak one thing Dean had the Amp which was sprung on the city by surprise. Berry had her plan which was the whole ball of wax at once which should have been phased in.

[AsianintheNations]

2 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

In two years the traffic will be unbearable as things really heat back up! See what happens when the people start screaming then. And you guys are correct I have no love for the mayor or the governor. 

Exactly, I feel like with traffic levels still nowhere near pre-pandemic levels, people have practically forgotten how bad the congestion was. But even if a lot of people remain work-from-home permanently, the ongoing influx of people moving in, many to surrounding communities and driving into Nashville, are going to bring the congestion right back in a year or two.