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rookzie

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Posts posted by rookzie

  1. 23 hours ago, donNdonelson2 said:

    The Charlotte area is home to Carowinds, a theme park that boosts over two million visitors per year. Some of those folks must be coming from out of the immediate area. The NASCAR Hall of Fame would draw some out of towners as well, but the city could use more arrows in their quiver when it comes to tourism.

    ....

    15 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

    Carowinds has been a popular attraction for a long time. I remember seeing ads for it when I was a kid as the Charlotte TV stations would be picked up in area of E TN. It is one of the top amusement parks on the east coast, so they do get a lot of visitors. It is sort of like when Nashville had Opryland and folks came to Nashville to visit Opryland only. All amusement parks draw locals as did Opryland.

    It is owned by Cedar Fair as well.

    ....

    13 hours ago, Nathan_in_DC said:

    Even after 5 years living in Knoxville I've never heard of Carowinds! Come to think of it, the only North Carolina theme park I ever heard of was the Tweetsie Railroad... 

    Yes, as Smeags said, Carowinds has been a major amusement player in the Central Mid-Atlantic.

    It's a 50-year-old venue that opened 1973, the year after Opryland, and it seems to do well to fill the geographical niche-gap between Kings Dominion (Doswell, Va.) and Busch Gardens (Williamsburg, Va.) and Six Flags over Ga.  With it located at the confluence of I-85/I-77, it gets a lot of intermediate patronage from the Eastern Midwest (Cleveland, Akron-Canton, Charleston (WV), in addition to that of the main corridor from the Northeast and the Mid-Coastal Southeast.  As The Charlotte Motor Speedway and, as donNdonelson2 noted, NASCAR Hall of Fame also fuel the popularity of Carowinds.

    Carowinds made national news this past June, after it had been discovered that the "Fury 325", the world's tallest chain-hoisted coaster (5th tallest in the world), had developed a crack in its steel-tube track-support structure.  The coaster was shut down, of course, and a new support column was delivered for repair, in mid-July before a second crack was discovered soon thereafter.  That coaster was reopened early mid-August.

    As much as the monster coasters were my favorite amusement-park attractions for nearly 60 years ─ almost exclusively ─ I no longer can handle them at my age, and the last time I rode them was at Kentucky Kingdom, May 2000, then still a Six Flags theme park.  Because it had been on a weekday with short waiting lines before public schools had let out for the summer, I must have ridden one coaster (The Chang) some half dozen or more times in 3 hours, while screaming like a whore under cover (or rather, under "the" cover).

    Second structural issue discovered on Carowinds roller coaster after  massive crack forces ride to shut down | Fox News

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  2. 5 hours ago, MorganRehnberg said:

    It’s an approach that worked pretty well for Seattle… flood the city with busses to build ridership and then convert the peak routes to rail. 

    It worked as well in Twin Cities MN, but both King Cnty and Twin Cities also had a huge head start in proactive staging for light-rail.  Then too, both are of population centers ranking 15 and 16 of the largest MSAs (as of 2021).  Metro Nashville with M'boro, Franklin ranked only 35.

    Yet Metro Nashville (MSA) ranked slightly with or above those of Santa Clara Cnty (San Jose, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Palo Alto) and Norfolk-Va. Beach-Chesapeake-Portsmouth ─ the latter two MSA's of which have built start-up systems (as opposed to legacy or existing systems) of one or more forms of fixed-guideway transit with at least some dedicated RoW segments.  In all fairness, Va. Beach has been a strong hold-out against participation, and the flood of buses in that water-locked region has long been saturated. 

    The point is, those other regions undertook progressions of preparation long before start-ups of scalable advance-capacity transit (non-bus) might have became prohibitive costly and unforeseeably untenable.   Both Seattle and Twin Cities regions received significant funding support from their respective state legislatures during inception of the advance stages of development of light rail.  Despite Nashville MSA region in 2020 having reached a level of only about 2/3 of those for the Seattle and Twin Cities MSAs of census year 2000 ─ when both these latter regions had begun physical construction of their start-ups ─ vehicular traffic patterns have tended to have a magnifier-index effect in congestion-level density and duration over a span of 20+ years.  That effect tends to be higher for medium-large regions which have limited mobility/accessibility options to roadway vehicular travel.

    It's unquestionable that the region is rife with its share of "transit deserts" ─ some major and numerous ones, which exist in all American cities.  Nashville's growth evolved more as "outward" than "upward" (vertical), so it's no wonder its has had major bottlenecks, given that it has sizable surrounding suburbs and exurbs.  And just as with any other medium-sized and large American city, the cost of urban living typically has resulting in more disparity between the haves and the have-nots, as far as affordable urban living is concerned. Since employment centers have tended to shift away from the innermost urban core, and since those who must access those employment centers in order to sustain their employment have tended to relocate away from the core, commuting patterns began to change long before the pandemic of 2020 modified the workplace and workforce paradigm for those jobs amenable to such change.

    Seattle and Twin Cities didn't just flood their respective regions with buses.  They also formed consortial entities for oversight and governance of transit initiatives, a concept that current leaders seem to concur with.  They didn't just infuse buses to increase frequency and to shorten headways.  Rather, they were concurrently busy planning and gearing up in the background for advanced-capacity transit options on these already established peak routes with the buses as stop-gap.

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  3. 9 hours ago, nashvylle said:

    If you are a mass transit enthusiast- buckle up (#dadjoke). Freddie has been keeping no secrets that he will be aggressively pursuing a mass transit system and have a referendum on his first term. 

     

    Well, if this is any "harbinger" of what to expect for the next 4-8 year (hopefully no less than half or even a third of my supposedly remaining time before the bell tolls), then I wouldn't hold my breath.   A referendum with a properly structured agenda which also focuses on significantly more than a single issue ─ one best bundled with  similarly weighted concerns ─ perhaps would stand a better chance of being passed, than the one in May 2018, particularly if proponents can build a broader coalition of supporters than in the past.

    It very well could be another "from-the-frying-pan-into-the-fire" scenario, based on what WSMV reported:

    "O'Connell said his plan will cost a fraction of the one that failed in 2018 and one major difference is they will focus on buses, not lightrail."
    (:stop:)

    I'm not trying to be conclusive, though ─ just watching how the canary flies.

    • Like 2
  4. On 7/17/2023 at 7:28 AM, Nashville Cliff said:

    Mostly accurate synopsis. The one application submitted in Tennessee was by Chattanooga, endorsed by the state and by the cities of Memphis, Nashville, and Atlanta; it was for a route from Memphis to Nashville and then on to Chattanooga and Atlanta. So, the tier 1 route we identified in our study and one of the tier 2 routes.

    Thanks, Cliff for the clarification.  If there's any one someone who would be well informed of such granular details, then it would just HAVE to be you.

    I ain't trying to be patronizing and whatnot ─  that is, unless I was about to be pushed over a "Cliff", but I have to say you're one of the primary Liaison Kingpins who make this forum such an authoritative resource "reference" (my former academic librarianship oozing out).

    • Like 3
  5. On 6/16/2023 at 8:09 AM, Nathan_in_DC said:

    Fascinating article on the impacts of the temporary closure of I-95 in Philadelphia due to the overpass collapse.  Turns out, shutting down a major interstate highway within a city doesn't have the impact on traffic many were predicting, mainly due to the reversal of the effects of induced demand. 

    So Much for ‘Carmageddon’ (Philadelphia Edition) — Streetsblog USA

    From the beginning, I had "what-if" reservations about the impact of that I-95 collapse.

    I always supposed that relatively little of New York/NJ traffic to Philly takes that I-95 segment, unless they're headed somewhere close to I-95-proper in Pa.   I'd wager that the majority of regionals on the NJ side of the Delaware River and who commute *to* Philly generally take the NJ Turnpike or I-295 or Burlington Pike (US-130) and navigate to Philly via the Betsy Ross Bridge, although many also take the Palmyra Bridge.   So, most non-regional through traffic will bypass that segment of 95 and Philly altogether, with northbound traffic exiting I-95 proper at Wilmington and then taking I-295 over the twin spans (DE Memorial) to the interchange to join the NJ Tpk.

    Of course, the local movements on the affected segment of the -95 corridor north of Betsy Ross would be affected the most.  Most drivers from the Trenton area tend to take Rt. (US) 1 at Morrisville or take the more northerly I-295 across the Delaware River, although some do take I-95 across the river.  Closure of I-95 likely added to traffic on other arterials and slowed down traffic to some extent, but the redundancy of the roadway infrastructure likely helped diffuse much of the projected impact of the closure.  With all this said, had the closure occurred south of the 95/295 split south of Wilmington, then the repercussions might have been more collateral and disruptive.

    So as usual, nearly all the national media coverage had spun the incident into a melodrama of north-south gridlock.

    • Like 4
  6. On 2/1/2023 at 2:39 PM, smeagolsfree said:

    By the time this is done, if it is done, I will be dead and gone or too old to enjoy it. I will just continue to drive my rear end to wherever and contribute to global warming.

    ...Just as I've said in at least one previous post, with respect to rapid transit in Metro.   With the necessary lead time in planning and and engineering, it just about would be time for me to meet the "Deep-Six", before any sizable segment would be up and running.

    There have been even much more start-up projects in other regions much more robust than any single portion of previously proposed LRT (light rail transit) lines for Nashville.  WMATA's (DC-MD-VA) first opening (start-up) was a portion of its current Red Line Metro (Heavy Rail - HRT) was constructed and opened in just over 6 years spanning just over 4-1/2 miles.  In all fairness, the Washington Metro was the result of political will mustered on the federal (congressional) level, in part to get rid of the pre-existing privately owned DC Transit streetcar network.  LRT start-ups typically have taken from nearly 3 years (~9.5 miles) to 5-6 years (~14 miles) from initial ground-breaking to opening, so I have a running chance to still be around, if Metro Nashville stops  kicking the can down the road within ─ say ─ 5 years.  But there's still the development stage that takes a while before any construction is undertaken.

    On 2/1/2023 at 3:33 PM, MontanaGuy said:

    I'm in the same situation, I'll be 74 in April and all of these transportation projects will take many years to complete.

    Finally, yet another somebody on this thread, who's actually older than me (than "I" ─ 72 next Sept.)...😆

    • Like 2
  7. 9 hours ago, markhollin said:

    Metro Government has purchased the former CVS Pharmacy site at 3801 Hillsboro Pike for $7.35 million.  It will be razed in order to create a single intersection instead of two between Crestmoor Rd. and Glen Echo Rd. at Hillsboro Pike. No word on when work will get started.  CVS has relocated to a new site to the north of the intersection which has just opened. 

    ...
    ...

    Screen Shot 2022-12-20 at 3.34.02 PM.png

    ...Probably around 2030 or so, about the same amount of elapsed time as it took for conception and approval...

    • Haha 4
  8. On 12/9/2022 at 12:07 PM, smeagolsfree said:

     

    Come on guys, how short is your memory????? Half of this crap has been tried before.  I do not know who came up with this survey, but they must have just moved here.

    This has been influenced by the mayor's office I am sure that has always pushed buses as a last and final resort. The buses do not run often, and they eliminated the downtown circulator which was free. That was the best thing they had going downtown. Why they eliminated it is beyond me. They should have expanded it. That would have solved a lot of the problems they are having issues with downtown. The only issue they had with the circulator was they had it running up and down Demonbreun which ended up being closed half of the time due to events.

    ….

     

    Just wanted to add to this, in total agreement BTW.

    As I recall, the Free Ride circulator Blue and Green routes were introduced during the Karl Dean administration, when Paul Ballard headed the MTA.  The effort to rebrand the MTA as WeGo Transit, including the Music City Star, began back around early-mid 2018 or so.  That coincided with the failed Transit Referendum, which followed soon after the exposure of then-Mayor Megan Barry’s unsurprising resignation.

    Without much notice, WeGo announced that it would be instituting major service cutbacks, with one of the most notable being the elimination of the Free Ride circulators.   Suddenly, it was announced that the city’s financial state had been revealed as “untenable”, and that funding cuts meant undoing much of what little perceived progress that had transpired during the previous 10 years.

    That affected not only downtown riders, but also those drivers of the  N° 29 Jefferson St. route, which had become an extension of the Free Ride Green Route in 2016.  IMO that had been one of the most outreaching of transit efforts by extending the fare-free privilege to a core sector community which needed it the most — along the entire Jefferson St. Corridor, including John Merritt Blvd.

    It’s not to discount the potential for providing such privileges to other routes serving similar demographics.  Mayor Barry also had proposed such service ailing the 12-South route (N° 17 12 th Ave S), particularly for those riders between Edgehill and downtown.  Some routes were realigned and combined with others (N° 8 8th Ave S with N° 1 Vine Hill [via Bransford Ave]), while some were eliminated altogether (N° 2 Belmont).  

    It didn’t help that the city’s liberal policy to developers to permit random and frequent closures of downtown streets, often led to unpredictable reliability of the Free Rides —  never showing up for uninformed riders — and the MTA rarely ever posted sufficient (if any at all) notices of detours in clear view at the stops.  At this point time, it may appear that past “progress” (as it were) never happened at all, and that long-range plans for more ambitious, high-capacity transit have all but languished.

    • Like 2
  9. 2 minutes ago, MLBrumby said:

    @rookzie, utilizing the rail r-o-w seems like such a natural for LRT, but for some reason the powers running Metro don't want to even mention it as a first step to transit. Do you think it's even remotely likely to happen, notwithstanding the tough negotiations that would have to happen between metro and CSX.  Am I wrong to see their removing tracks as an open door for Metro to approach them for that purpose?  Where would the possible routes go from there north/south?  Those tracks have not been removed and are unlikely to be. 

    No, I don't foresee any of that happening, because in part it requires a collaborative exchange and resolution proposals among members of the administration.  As yet, none of that even shows a sign of having been a concept, much less a subject of forum discussion.  Almost every trace of that prospect petered out in late spring 2018, with no momentum regained since then.   Then the pandemic came, and for all practical purposes that sealed the coffin.

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  10. 19 hours ago, Nash_12South said:

    I’m really curious as to how soon the road realignment will occur after the new CVS opens. Hopefully soon. 

    Good concern.

    I wouldn't in the least be surprised if it (the realignment) has yet to become prioritized for funding, much less as next in line.  Wishing and hoping I'm wrong, but we've all "been there, done seen that" ─ how projects of that nature and proposed some 8 years ago seem to evolve toward the back of the line.  I concede that I've become too much of a pessimist with lost confidence in Metro, as I've aged, and that's just me.  One thing we probably can be safely assured of is that no new structure will be built at the old CVS, which many years ago had been SuperX Drugs.

  11. 5 hours ago, GregH said:

    A huge dropoff queue for cars seems like an incredibly wasteful process for a school right in the middle of the city.

    In a way, I understand the rationale for that queuing loop, although at glance it seems rather tight for both teachers' parking and drop-off scrunched into such a confined space.

    If Metro already owns that property (I'm assuming that it acquired it a while ago), then the site's location probably precludes the use of the property for construction of an occupied structure, without some kind of aerial bridge access.  The fact that Metro reopened W-B relatively recently as a school has brought along the issue of drop-off and pick-up that plagues so many other schools.  Reopening Waverly-Belmont has helped to address the needs for primary education within a historically dense inner-city district, but the same issue with traffic flow would have occurred regardless of whether or not the school had been shuttered around 1974, as the city undertook accelerated efforts to reorganize its school district, to meet court-ordered integration.  In retrospect, some of these measures arguably may have been misguided and short-sighted, while at the same time, the demand often could not be answered with funding to achieve goals with a reduced physical plant.  This was not limited to Waverly-Belmont, and sadly some structures in other inner-core districts were razed altogether ─ Ford Greene ES and Washington JH School in the Hadley neighborhood, both schools of which were razed in the mid-1980s ─ are prime examples that come to mind.

    The neighborhood had experienced a cycle of generational flourishing, followed with a downturn a decay and underserving, during early post-war decades, in part as of result of "White flight".  The resurgence of the community in recent decades, along with infill development and demographic evolution, has only exacerbated the congestion that returned to the school almost instantly beginning August 2015, and it only has become worse since then.   The booming 12South corridor only has added to the problem, as 12th Ave no longer affords uninterrupted passage through the district, resulting in spill-over cut-through traffic along 10th.  

    So without former Mayor Barry's ill-fated downtown transit tunnel (cough-cough) reincarnated and adapted into use as a widened parallel-lane underground tube below the surface of 10th Ave., I foresee no ready solution to that ongoing problem, other than the proposal as presented.  To be clear, I for one certainly am not advocating that use of the property.  The school is land-locked in part because it was allowed to close almost a half century ago, when land-acquisition was not so expensive and invasive as it is now.

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  12. 1 hour ago, MontanaGuy said:

    If it's going to be a big blank grey wall it's really going to be ugly.  I hope they do something to spice it up!

    It might even become a local tourist attraction, if they do what they did one of the old concrete elevator silos in the Nations some 6+ years ago.

    Hire Guido Van Helten to paint a mural of our Ron on each face of that thing and shine spotlights on it at night.

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