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133 KVB (two 49 story towers of 574’ & 512’ featuring condos, apartments, hotel, ground level retail, public park & 8 levels of parking)


Paramount747

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33 minutes ago, markhollin said:

On the taller tower I really like the curves in the design (that represent a curtain opening), the staggered windows, as well as the three indentations.

I also enjoy that the 14 story tower will be primarily brick/glass...has similarities to the Graduate Hotel design on West End Ave. 

More like the curtain closing on the views from the new City Lights(?) or View(?) to the south, just up the hill from this site.  Happy to see that it will block the northwest/western views from Eakin's stubby office building on RMH. I do find it a bit surprising that the design wasn't for the taller portion to go behind the shorter portion from KVB. I guess the shorter tower will be the budget brand with no views. Maybe that will be the AirBNB option. That lobby level looks really nice though with 3-story high ceilings, like the lobby of an office building. 

Edited by MLBrumby
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I'm with you there. Almost got hit once by a left-turner going onto the bridge who floored it once their light turned green, without noticing that I had a walk signal and was in the crosswalk

Some intersections do wisely delay the beginning of the green phase to allow the pedestrians to step off the curb where they can clearly be seen. I don't know if this intersection is timed in that manner, but it might help if it were. And if green arrows are displayed, the opposing ped crossing should remain off until the green arrow phase is ended to avoid a conflict.

Also, I seem to remember a proposal to run the pedestrian crossings underground some years ago. I would like to see that happen. It works well in London.

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12 hours ago, AsianintheNations said:

For an enormous intersection like this, the cheapest solution for safety will probably be to have a part of the traffic light cycle be pedestrians-only like on Broadway, which would also allow diagonal crossing.

The problem is that the intersection is so large that a scramble phase would eat up tons of cycle time.

My solution would be to beef up the median on KVB (and add one on the bridge approach if it can get by with a single left-turn lane) and use those as pedestrian refuges. Even in the middle of a walk cycle they help to allow people to focus on traffic coming from one direction, get to the median, then focus on the other direction.

The other option as @PHofKS alludes to is to change the phasing. You could always take out permissive left turns from First.

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3 hours ago, PruneTracy said:

The problem is that the intersection is so large that a scramble phase would eat up tons of cycle time.

My solution would be to beef up the median on KVB (and add one on the bridge approach if it can get by with a single left-turn lane) and use those as pedestrian refuges. Even in the middle of a walk cycle they help to allow people to focus on traffic coming from one direction, get to the median, then focus on the other direction.

The other option as @PHofKS alludes to is to change the phasing. You could always take out permissive left turns from First.

Yeah, KVB isn't terrible above 1st (although it's no prize either), but the intersection with 1st is a total cluster. It's most obvious when something's going on at Ascend, but to me the worst part about it is that it basically feels like the edge of pedestrian-friendly downtown, when that vibe should be spreading way south of there.

I'd advocate for all the countermeasures above. I screen-shotted the two KVB crosswalks below—they both feel like death traps. The median on the top one (west side) definitely needs to be extended so pedestrians aren't sitting there unprotected. And the east side has no refuge at all, which leaves you to play frogger across 8 (!) lanes of traffic.

At some point we have to acknowledge that we've reached a point where we don't need streets with 8 lanes of vehicle throughput in downtown Nashville. The hordes of pedestrians are worth a lot more to the city than decreasing commute times for a few more outer county residents. A friend of mine just bought in City Lights. He's disappointed about the view, but pretty sure he'd be delighted if this project provides an opportunity to move KVB away from the suburban superhighway vibe.

And to smeag's point about the underpass, I'll just add that metro inexplicably closes that down half the time, especially when there's an event anywhere nearby, which pushes that traffic back to the surface crossings. Would be incredible if this (plus peabody) would build some pressure on them to actually take the pedestrian throughways seriously as important routes for people to get around the city instead of categorizing them as some kind of glorified recreational path to be shut down as soon as there are a bunch of cars trying to get downtown.

image.thumb.png.9a8dbd316cc00dceab5f7d7e6c4cee49.png

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