Neigeville2

I prefer this image of "Leoni on 5th" although I imagine the facade depends on the tenant, but I'm disappointed about the balconies on the apartment building. The old configuration looked terrifying!

Then we're neighbors. I've had mornings when it took me 10 minutes to get 4 blocks from my house, I could literally walk faster and I'm old. There must be something that could be done timing wise or something with the intersection at OHB and Gallatin Pike, coming from the East on SR45 it can take a number of cycles to get through the light, and then over the hill and you're in a school zone.

There is no law on the state level that prohibits bicycles from being ridden on sidewalks. There are certain local municipalities that place restrictions on bicycles being used on sidewalks. Some may forbid bike riding in their business districts. Other places require a bicyclist to give an audible signal when they pass a person walking on the sidewalk. If a municipality does have restrictions on where bicycles can be ridden on sidewalks, they will provide signs about it that are clearly visible. Some places require a cyclist to dismount and walk their bike through certain areas. Does anyone know where such signs are posted? On another matter (tried to make this a separate post but it combines them automatically now, which is irritating): Remarkably, though, Seattle has not gained more cars in its most congested areas. The number of commuters driving private vehicles downtown has declined by 10 percent since 2010, even as new residents and workers have spiked. By and large, new arrivals are instead choosing to ride the bus. So it can be done with sufficient investment. Bus service would have to be enormously more frequent in Nashville to get more people riding.

Wow, I love Seattle. It's nice to know there's at least one city in America with some kind of political consciousness beyond the latest Facebook outrage.

I'm not too versed in convention centers, but I imagine ours is unusual in having an intensely activated area literally right out the front door. The ones I've seen are mostly off to the side somewhere. One of the benefits of having a somewhat-gutted-but-not-dead-in-fact-feeling-much-better downtown at a time of low interest rates and rising city visibility. What other city has a contiguous block of land that size one block from the very epicenter?

Wow. I'm totally floored by this place. It's all stylish and stuff!

I'm excited that gondolas are being at least suggested, I've always thought this was a very practical idea and they would look cool as well and be pleasant to ride, with great views, unlike a bus or a subway. I'd start with a line from Opryland with a couple of stops in East Nashville before downtown. I really don't get the resistance to this; they are used very practically in a number of cities.

Interesting article in the Seattle PI about Amazon and its demand for subsidies. I'm surprised nobody's out there screaming Amazon means higher taxes. Not on most people's radar I guess. "There's no such thing as free growth," LeRoy said. "You're going to have to educate kids and pick up trash and widen lanes. All those things are expensive. If Amazon's not paying for any of that growth, you're going to have a lot of upward pressure on everybody else's tax rates, unless people want really crowded classrooms and really crowded streets."

^that's not a Japanese garden. It's nice, but it's not remotely Japanese.

Sad to lose the transit vote, but if it shelters us a bit from Amazon and the new feudalism it represents, it's not all bad. Here's hoping Seattle keeps fighting the power.

As I understand it, it's actually that Austin's suburbs are among the fastest growing in the nation Actually I think MARTA has pretty high ridership considering its limited scope, does anyone have any knowledge about this? One of the commonest complaints from people looking to buy houses in the US is the lack of smaller homes. As someone who lives alone, I think anything over 1000 sq ft is tedious to live in and while apartments in that range exist, no one is building single family homes nowadays that aren't large compared to "starter" homes of the past. Even apartment builders are building "luxury" apartments with high vacancies even though most people don't want all that crap. Like lots of people, all I want is a little roof over my head and a little space to garden, and the stupid market in its vast wisdom does not provide that. Are you nuts? I lived in Chicago for 5 years using mass transit for all my needs and I LOVED it. Driving is the most boring f-ing thing in the world.

No kidding. The debate and the man-in-the-street interviews stunned me with how many people didn't seem to understand what a tunnel or a train was. They literally argued that boring a tunnel under downtown would be dangerous. You would have thought we were trying to invent rapid transit instead of building a modest example of something that's been around for 150 years.

You could also get buy-in from large players like Vanderbilt, River North, Nashville Yards, etc. to build the stations in their areas. Developers have paid for transit stations in other cities.

^It is one of the bizarre things about our current system, how can putting more people in a smaller space make it more expensive? Part of the issue is that sprawl is subsidized in various ways and costs like loss of farmland, loss of wild animal habitat, etc. are not charged to those who cause them, but still, it's hard to believe it costs more to build a stack of tiny apartments than hundreds of acres of unreasonably large single family homes. And even in the sprawl zone, housing isn't cheap. In the 50s the average household spent 11 percent of their income on housing. Thanks for your kind words btw.

I don't understand the parking then. How many cars will fit on each level within that footprint?

In exactly what circles is he "venerable"? As someone said about Andrew Sullivan, he's just further proof that the wingnut welfare system is America's most durable infrastructure. He does put a more polished and respectable face on it than the average Koch-paid shill, but that's the Manhattan Institute's specialty. Where did he say Nashville isn't "ready"? It reads to me as if he's saying we should never aspire to anything other than car-centric sprawl, and that transit is only for coastal cities.

I don't think the responses I'm seeing are nearly cynical enough. Will the state allow BRT in dedicated lanes? One of the main arguments against The AMP was there wasn't enough room for it, and that street's about 100 yards wide. Most of the anti LRT people would feel the same about BRT. No tunnel? Downtown businesses will fight to the death against trains in the street or elevated trains, and a system that doesn't take people close to where they need to be will only be used by the poor and desperate. They (DT businesses) don't want more buses clogging the streets and a system that makes crosstown riders traverse DT in traffic is a problem time-wise. And any talk of too-ambitious, not ambitious enough overlooks the fact that certain spoiled brat trust fund babies will spend vast sums to muddy the waters and rile up the anti-everything crowd at the first whiff of the teensiest little improvement to transit, much less a funding source for it. The state will oppose anything that benefits Nashville in any way. The black community/leadership got a free NMAAM space out of the 5th and Broadway deal and were enraged because an entrance directly across from the Ryman wasn't prestigious enough. They killed the baseball stadium proposal where the amphitheater is now because they didn't like the minority contractor provisions. They didn't like this transit plan because the money should be spent on affordable housing, when this plan would have provided tens of millions for affordable housing versus no vote=$0. I think they are pretty much out of the loop as far as reaching a consensus on transit or frankly anything else. The absence of a real transit network means our future is more sprawl which will make a transit network even more unworkable, Short of dissolving metro and establishing a Nashville a little closer to pre-1963 boundaries I don't see any way to pass any dedicated funding source or anything that makes a serious improvement. Sorry for all the various people I may have offended with this rant, but if I were younger, I'd be looking to move.

Problem with this: people won't take 10 minutes to understand one plan, much less 4. The confusion would be unimaginable. I guess you're kidding, but it really is part of the problem that there's no obvious negative consequence for selfishness and laziness. Someone like Chicago's Mayor Daley would have said, "It appears North Nashville doesn't believe in transit, so I've decided to close down all their bus lines," Brutal, but it worked. Chicago had great infrastructure, although if your precinct didn't vote right, the snowplows came there last if at all...

That's what I meant

I think it had more to do with not being on the coast. All the national news folks tend to ignore "flyover country".

This is a recipe for failure. LRT will only succeed if it goes close to where large numbers of people need to go. It seems easier to build it where it's not needed. but if the ridership is not there it will be viewed as a failed experiment and they'll say, "see, people in Nashville like their cars". A more reasonable approach would be to build starter lines in East Nashville and on Charlotte where people want it-perhaps have a referendum where only the people in those neighborhoods can vote. Experience has shown that if it's at all successful, other neighborhoods will be clamoring for it soon enough.

But I will still vote for Briley because apparently he is the only pro-transit one out of the whole bunch. This is a non-negotiable issue for me.

I was just being flippant. You're taking it more seriously than I meant it.

As a vegetarian, I'm glad. It was a meat restaurant.

Only sad thing is losing Church St park, perfect location for a nice urban park, but it's been unusable for years now, so... Hopefully this can get some needed services to people and create 2 very cool, densifying buildings. This homeless housing building is in a spot I hadn't even noticed, I literally never conceived of a building there.