PruneTracy

https://maps.nashville.gov/sp/2009/2009SP-001/1_SP_2009SP-001.pdf Don't shoot the messenger!

Once they dropped the Pizza Hut co-branding it wasn't worth saving.

This is not exactly relevant to the transit funding in particular but it's worth noting that every other state on this list has an income tax as well. People notice that even if the sales tax is high.

Someone was on the former Mapco site at 4314 Harding Pike doing geotechnical exploration this morning. Last I heard these parcels were supposed to be developed together (although they are owned separately) along with the former Picnic Cafe building (which is to be demolished).

re: the NEC. Washington, DC to NYC is approximately 225 miles and NYC to Boston is approximately 230 miles. These are roughly analogous to the distances between Memphis, Nashville, and Knoxville, but the NEC has about ten times the population surrounding the corridor. There are not many other corridors in the US, much less the Southeast, which approach this population density.

That greenway behind the development is going to follow Aenon Creek under June Lake Boulevard and all the way out to the subdivisions north of Duplex at full build-out of June Lake. SEV pushes it heavily in their marketing so I would expect it gets built sooner rather than later.

I looked at doing this several years ago for a planning project. The problem with shifting Nashville Terminal Subdivision traffic to the Radnor Cutoff is the interchange lines north of Radnor Yard. Southbound Nashville Terminal traffic can only enter Radnor Yard from the cutoff; any other movement requires reversing on the "J" line to the Bruceton and Chattanooga Subdivisions. This is a very busy area to reverse trains on. Northbound terminal traffic is also forced through the yard instead of using the "B" bypass line that follows I-65. I don't blame CSXT for not wanting to do this, it would mess up their traffic badly. The other option would be building new interchange lines to the "J" line to allow all movements. Even though this area is mostly light industrial, it's hard to see this going through. The biggest issue on my end is that it takes out Tex's BBQ, this is a non-starter for me.

You're thinking too small. We need a six-story Waffle House, like The Diner. Just the same Waffle House footprint on every floor. Billion dollars a year.

The grants (TAP and MMAG) are agnostic as to the agency proposing them. It can be DOTs, public works departments, planning departments, transit agencies, regional development agencies, etc. This is particularly true for municipalities, because as @nashvillain_too said the roles of city departments even of Nashville's size frequently overlap. You just have to show that you have the capacity to manage the administration of the grant (or can hire someone who can manage it).

I'd be more sympathetic to the street vendors if it wasn't 90% CBD and t-shirts being sold to Broadway tourists. Don't care if they sell stuff on the street but not exactly a produce stand either. Wasn't 2nd Avenue originally called Market Street?

This is the intended path for westbound I-40 traffic entering the airport, as well as for overflow traffic from the discrete access (which should not have the present queueing issues once the project is complete). There's just not that much traffic coming in from the east relative to that coming from downtown. The "exits" from the new Terminal Drive onto Fly Nashville Way allow access to parking from this route. It's an overpass and the only access to Fly Nashville Way from northbound Donelson Pike is at the ramp here.

TDOT's ten-year plan is out: Build With Us (tn.gov)

Bizarre that they spend all the time/money they do making their academic and residential buildings look the way they do, then do this to their athletic facilities.

I realize me answering a question directed to @MidTenn1 is much like your server asking "Is Pepsi OK?" The height of the JRP bridge as it crosses the CSX spur on the east bank is about 470 feet ASL. Ground level underneath the bridge is level at about 417 feet ASL. Typically TDOT wants to see a max grade of 8% on this roadway type (multi-lane arterial). That means you need about 660 feet to run out the elevation difference, and we need to add about 240 feet for the vertical curves on each end. So 900 feet to get down to ground level, which puts you at about 100 feet east of what would be the intersection with First Street. So First Street would need to be raised slightly to make that connection. Note also that although the ADA has an exception for sidewalks adjacent to roadways, to be ADA compliant the max grade would have to be 5% or less. This would make the distance needed to come down from bridge level about 1,250 feet, which is right about where Second Street is. This may be why the graphic @Bos2Nashposted mentions Second Street as a connection but not First.

We know when a vehicular lane is fully utilized; it's when there's congestion. In fact, a traffic jam is demand exceeding capacity, which is partly why the I-24 SMART corridor, for example, includes variable speed limits: lane density and therefore capacity is maximized at 30-40 miles per hour. You will be hard-pressed to find a non-congested roadway along an existing or proposed transit corridor at peak periods, especially considering that reducing traffic congestion is often one of the purported benefits of a new transit project. As for the duration of service, the highest annual ridership of the New York City Subway, the oldest and perhaps most well-known transit system in the country, occurred in 1946. It almost returned to the post-WWII high in the 2010s but halved during covid and has not much recovered. (On the other hand, the city is looking at congestion pricing for downtown Manhattan roadways starting next spring, with the proceeds adding to the $9 billion MTA already receives from government funding annually, so there is hope yet.) I worked on the Amp and it was a vanity project, particularly when it came to the light rail and streetcar options operating in dedicated lanes. The BRT-lite option had similar ridership projections to the other options for far cheaper; this is a common issue in transit planning and I would bet came up in Tempe as well. (The motive behind the push for streetcars or LRT-style vehicles, even buses that mimic the look of either, is the perception by planners and citizens alike that only poor people ride the bus, which is, if not the textbook definition of vanity, at least the same for a self-fulfilling prophecy.) And I'd like to point out again that the roads aren't "free", much like public schools aren't "free". You and I are paying for both with taxes; gas taxes in the former case and property taxes in the latter. The use of choice lanes or similar models to supplement/replace the tax income shouldn't change the fact that you and I are paying into the system and want our money's worth any more so than people who send their kids to private school (among corporations, childless people, and others who pay property taxes) aren't also paying for a public school system they don't personally use. And if you want to say it's a public good then that ought to make their stake in it that much more important, but if they are fed up with it to the point where they are willing to not only pay for it but pay not to use it, I'm not sure the answer is just to make them use it even when they don't want to just to prove a point. Let's suppose it costs TDOT $10 million per year, annualized, to maintain, for example, the four-lane stretch of I-65 between US 412 and I-840 south of town. We'll say this is currently funded through the gas tax. A private corporation or JV shows up at TDOT's door, says that they will build two reversible lanes with dynamic tolling in the median on this stretch of I-65. It's going to cost them $100 million to build, but they believe they can generate $10 million in revenue each year from the tolls. They want to build it on their own dime, then operate it themselves and collect the tolls for 15 years. TDOT contracts with them to do it. Gets built, the corporation/JV gets their money back in tolling as projected, turns the facility over to TDOT when the contract period is up. At this point TDOT has two extra managed lanes on I-65, that they didn't pay for, that they can generate $10 million in revenue from each year. In other words the toll revenue from the managed lanes is functionally paying for maintenance for all of I-65 in this area, which means that you get to drive in the GP lanes for free, real free and not "free", and the gas tax that would have gone to maintain it can now be used for capital improvements elsewhere or, inconceivably in any state but this one, be reduced. Or, let's say the corporation/JV says they will build two managed lanes and two GP lanes for 25 years of tolls. Now you have an extra free lane that you didn't have before, and the tolls in the other lanes that you don't have to use are paying for it, meaning your level of service went up for, again, real free. That was my point: you can argue that utility customers, who are in certain cases equal stakeholders in a partnership, shouldn't get unequal service even if one party is willing to pay a little extra, but the game changes if said party is covering the service altogether. I am positive that most people wouldn't appreciate not getting their power reconnected in a timely fashion because others paid a little extra to get theirs, yet I'm also positive this contingent would dramatically shrink if they weren't paying anything at all for their power in the first place. Actually, they'd probably still complain, but their moral advantage would be reduced. You can call them whatever you want, but they aren't a utility in the sense that your electricity, gas, telephone, or cable/Internet provider is a utility. DOTs don't control their own revenue streams, gas taxes and the like aren't user fees, and their capital improvement plans are based on political considerations rather than maximizing their user base and level of service. There was a guy named Phillip Tarnoff who wrote a book a few years back called The Road Ahead where he advocated turning DOTs into privately-operated corporations. They issue their own licenses to drive on their roadways, they police their own roads with their own highway patrol, they collect fees from users in the form of a VMT or tolls, and they control their own revenue and capital expenditures. The problem with this approach is that it's too large of a leap from what we have; it's far too easy for those with skin in the game (i.e., politicians and government planners) to convince the public this is not in their best interest. It would also kill transit options on these roadways in the same manner that CSX et al. impose prohibitive conditions for passenger service on their privately-owned rail lines. You can argue the social, environmental, etc. benefits of transit, but a profitable venture it is not.