Nashville's Crumbling Infrastructure

[deninnash]

William Williams wrote a great article in the City Paper highlighting the dismal condition of this city's roadways and infrastructure. I can never understand why more people are not outraged at our governments utter neglect of our major throughfairs as well as our neighborhood streets. We are so incredibly behind other cities our size, it is hard to express in words. No curb, sidewalk, drainage, turn lanes to be found on most city roads. I swear sometimes I feel I have entered a time warp when driving in this town.

http://nashvillecitypaper.com/content/city-news/floods-puts-strain-dysfunctional-and-dangerous-streets

[MTSUBlueraider86]

William Williams wrote a great article in the City Paper highlighting the dismal condition of this city's roadways and infrastructure. I can never understand why more people are not outraged at our governments utter neglect of our major throughfairs as well as our neighborhood streets. We are so incredibly behind other cities our size, it is hard to express in words. No curb, sidewalk, drainage, turn lanes to be found on most city roads. I swear sometimes I feel I have entered a time warp when driving in this town.

http://nashvillecity...ngerous-streets

Good article and good points. I brought this up on another forum in regards to our national infrastructure. I cited a television program on it and I was called everything from an eco-facist to an Obama clone to a big government spending liberal because I mentioned what government can do with our tax dollars to fix the problem. Apparently some people want all roads, bridges, dams, sidewalks, waterways, drainage ditches etc... all privatized.

Thats fine if they want private industry to do everything. Getting them to do it without an exhorbitant profit is another thing! There have been numerous articles published on water and rain capture systems that would seize the water and bring it to holding tanks to be used for irrigation, toilet flushing etc...but the general public thinks that is too liberal for the state to consider doing. Now, if a private company wants to take that on, they agree with it and they don't care about large corporate salries and large profit margins to make it happen.

So goes the water running off of our many surface parking lots and the issue with what William Williams discussed in the article.

SEC

[CandyAisles]

I swear sometimes I feel I have entered a time warp when driving in this town.

That's all a part of the city's "historic" charm.

[RON-E]

That's all a part of the city's "historic" charm.

lol unfortunatley some people would actually use that to avoid fixing the issues

[East Side Urbanite]

Thanks, deninnash, for the kind words.

I have spent countless hours on Google Street View and driving the various districts of at least 50 U.S. cities. As such, I can say from experience, we've got a mess on our hands.

WW

[Velo_Editor]

TDOT just doesn't have the funds to keep up with all of the repaving and rehab demands that are out there and I imagine the city is in similar shape. The condition of 24 on the East loop is terrible in places and for some reason has yet to be included in the repaving plans that has seen almost all other sections of the inner loop repaved. The on ramp from James Robertson to go on to 24 East is full of potholes and has been this way for years and no repairs have come. It literally looks like someone micro-bombed the pavement. Ironically I heard that both Metro and TDOT thought the other was responsible for repairing that stretch, and I believe it has finally been determined that TDOT is indeed responsible. However all monies for this year have been committed, so it'll probably be next year before that's repaired.

And there are intersections and roads in this city that are completely broken with no hope in site of them being fixed. While it's nice they added a center turn lane to Hillsboro, traffic getting to Green Hills only seems to have gotten worse. How do you possibly fix that? The Harding Rd & Woodmont/White Bridge Rd. interchange is horrible as well. The White Bridge Road side is a bridge which makes it infinitely more expansive to expand and the Woodmont side has businesses almost literally on the shoulder of that road. How do you widen this? I could go on... so many areas that are horrible but with no obvious signs to fix. And don't get me started about the horrible signal lighting system we have in this city.

[MTSUBlueraider86]

TDOT just doesn't have the funds to keep up with all of the repaving and rehab demands that are out there and I imagine the city is in similar shape. The condition of 24 on the East loop is terrible in places and for some reason has yet to be included in the repaving plans that has seen almost all other sections of the inner loop repaved. The on ramp from James Robertson to go on to 24 East is full of potholes and has been this way for years and no repairs have come. It literally looks like someone micro-bombed the pavement. Ironically I heard that both Metro and TDOT thought the other was responsible for repairing that stretch, and I believe it has finally been determined that TDOT is indeed responsible. However all monies for this year have been committed, so it'll probably be next year before that's repaired.

And there are intersections and roads in this city that are completely broken with no hope in site of them being fixed. While it's nice they added a center turn lane to Hillsboro, traffic getting to Green Hills only seems to have gotten worse. How do you possibly fix that? The Harding Rd & Woodmont/White Bridge Rd. interchange is horrible as well. The White Bridge Road side is a bridge which makes it infinitely more expansive to expand and the Woodmont side has businesses almost literally on the shoulder of that road. How do you widen this? I could go on... so many areas that are horrible but with no obvious signs to fix. And don't get me started about the horrible signal lighting system we have in this city.

I live in Bellevue which is the red headed stepchild of Nashville! It is nearly impossible to get metro to do anything in Bellevue, especially on the Highway 70 south side. On the middle class, Highway 70 south side , its almost completely abandonded. We never see any paving or street repair. The upper middle class, and wealthy side of Bellevue is Highway 100. People from Temple Hills, Trace Side etc...frequent the Highway 100 businesses. Streets are clean and paved and any time repair is needed, they get what they want. This area is the "Green Hills" side of Bellevue. I don't know if it is the councilman over there or a wealthier tax base, but they get whatever the hell they want. The Highway 70 south side has become like Nolensville Road. Fast food joints, rental apartments, gas stations, empty surface parking lots, payday lenders, title loan companies, etc...have now polluted Bellevue and it is a shame. Most of the houses along Highway 70 are becoming rentals and nothing has ever been done with a mall that closed over five years ago. Obviously Charlie Tygard and Eric Crafton could give a damn. This unregulated development with no consquences was started by Vic Lineweaver many years ago when he made sure Bellevue would become a trash dump. He was successful. Now, Applebees is moving over to Highway 100 from Highway 70 South. What does that tell you? Now all we have on the southwest side of Bellevue is a revamped Shoneys! Thanks for nothing.

SEC

[The Rabbi]

I live in Bellevue which is the red headed stepchild of Nashville! It is nearly impossible to get metro to do anything in Bellevue, especially on the Highway 70 south side. On the middle class, Highway 70 south side , its almost completely abandonded. We never see any paving or street repair. The upper middle class, and wealthy side of Bellevue is Highway 100. People from Temple Hills, Trace Side etc...frequent the Highway 100 businesses. Streets are clean and paved and any time repair is needed, they get what they want. This area is the "Green Hills" side of Bellevue. I don't know if it is the councilman over there or a wealthier tax base, but they get whatever the hell they want. The Highway 70 south side has become like Nolensville Road. Fast food joints, rental apartments, gas stations, empty surface parking lots, payday lenders, title loan companies, etc...have now polluted Bellevue and it is a shame. Most of the houses along Highway 70 are becoming rentals and nothing has ever been done with a mall that closed over five years ago. Obviously Charlie Tygard and Eric Crafton could give a damn. This unregulated development with no consquences was started by Vic Lineweaver many years ago when he made sure Bellevue would become a trash dump. He was successful. Now, Applebees is moving over to Highway 100 from Highway 70 South. What does that tell you? Now all we have on the southwest side of Bellevue is a revamped Shoneys! Thanks for nothing.

SEC

I also live in Bellevue (along Hwy 70) and have no idea what you are talking about. WHat streets are in disrepair?

Bellevue Mall? That's private property. WHoever owns it is losing money on it daily. BUt that's their problem.

I agree the city is probably not keeping up infrastructure. Hard to when you are spending millions of dollars subsidizing the Sommet Center.

[MTSUBlueraider86]

Drive through some of the suburbs around highway 70 and you will see what I am talking about. Sidewalks lead to nowhere and are disconnected. Potholes are everywhere, and some streets have not been touched since the flood. Regarding the Bellevue Mall, it was originally part of the metro redevelopment plan but some in the mayors office and the metro council argued Bellevue was not part of the urban services district and thus did not quality for redevelopment as part of the cities redevelopment plans for areas outside the central business district. That is one reason why we cannot have a wine and liquor store in Bellevue. We are out of the urban services district and thus we cannot have a wine and liquor store and we cannot get some city services. Although the mall is private property, the city has had financial interest in the property with at one time $40,000,000 in TIF money was to be allocated early in Karl Dean's term.

The fact is Bellevue has always been the forgotten suburb and people like Jon Crisp with the Bellevue Citizens For Planned Growth helped to keep good development out and let bad development flourish under the poor leadership of then councilman Vic Lineweaver and he passed it on to Eric Crafton and Charlie Tygard.

Bellevue, especially on the highway 70 south side has been one bad cluster**** after another. Do you mean to tell me the only restaurants Bellevue can keep on the northwest side is Shoneys and Sir Pizza? With Applebees moving to highway 100 it just shows there is no potential for highway 70 south any longer and it is shameful our councilmen have done nothing about it.

SEC