PruneTracy

I worked on the TPR for this project. It's located here: tn.gov/content/dam/tn/tdot/documents/government-how-do-i-documents/Studies/StatewidePlanning/studies-TPR-Perry-SR13FromSR-20toI-40-PIN111109.pdf The main driver of this project stems from the recession; Perry County in particular was hurting (the report mentions that, at the time, it had the highest unemployment rate in the state). It also qualifies for the county seat connector program. As noted in the report, at the time TDOT recommended localized safety/operations improvements rather than a full widening or relocation. But this was before the IMPROVE Act and the origins of the job point to it being included strictly for political reasons.

They have a new-ish video too.

Many commercial contractors wouldn't use wood forms to, for example, pour a basement wall either. Maybe they are getting a deal on it somewhere.

Well, let's take this out to its logical conclusion. The 2023 Ram ProMaster 1500 with the high roof and 136" wheelbase has about 300 cubic feet of cargo area if you leave some room for circulation (although if you've ever seen the inside of some of these delivery trucks, they pack the aisle with boxes too). The consumer cargo e-bikes have about 7 or 8 cubic feet depending on model. UPS has limited numbers of cargo e-bikes with 95 cubic feet of cargo space, but not sure this is what most people have in mind: All the same, I'm not sure that three of these e-bikes take up less space than one delivery truck. It's either that, or they are parked and taking up space three or six times as often (more on this in a second). Maybe this is not a big deal depending on the area available to park. The other side of this is that these e-bikes max out at about 20 miles per hour. If you are hauling from the various distribution centers located around Nashville's periphery, you have increased the transit time of these goods fairly significantly. Just to pick an example, it takes approximately 15 minutes by car/truck to get from the UPS distribution center on Briley Parkway to downtown Nashville. It takes 35 minutes by bike. (I know these guys aren't rolling in the bike lane, but the speed estimation is similar to that of unpowered bikes.) Of course, this is far from the closest distribution center to downtown (there are plenty in MetroCenter and near the airport, for example), but I don't think the 15-minute city crowd is too wild about having a bunch of warehouses scattered around downtown either. In any case, as I'm sure many of you have seen during excavation operations for the various high-rises downtown, cycle time is a huge component of how much material you can move in and out in a day, whether that material is waste dirt/rock, Amazon packages, or groceries. Productivity in construction engineering is the product of the number of haul units and their capacity divided by their cycle time. If I double the cycle time, I have to double the number of haul units to maintain the same productivity. And, if I cut the haul unit capacity by two-thirds, I have to triple them on top of that. So now I have six of the UPS e-bikes rolling at any given time to match one ProMaster. Or... 38 of the consumer e-bikes. (By the way, I'm using the ProMaster as an example because Stellantis is rolling out an all-electric Fiat delivery truck rebadged as a Ram later this year.) Your other option is to cut the volume of goods moving into the city, which is what I was driving at the other day. I have a lot of planners in my professional network, who spend a lot of time talking about concepts like car-free (or truck-free) cities, 15-minute cities, etc. I also see or hear a lot of tidbits about their daily lifestyle. Hot take warning: I don't think a lot of the people who push these types of developments are really prepared for the price increases, product scarcities, etc. that would accompany them. I don't think they are interested in sacrificing creature comforts or luxuries to make this happen. I think, to the extent they have considered their effects (not a given at all), they believe they can have their cake and eat it too. It's either that, or they think that the changes won't impact them much financially, which leads to hot take/observation #2: a lot of the guys pushing this are very well-paid young professionals. They might do OK, the people living in the low-income areas on the outskirts of downtown might not. You can, but that also introduces an extra loading/unloading cycle into the delivery process, and creates a need for low-density warehousing space in areas with very high property values. We have a hard enough time getting grocery stores to lease space downtown; there is a reason companies involved in logistics prefer cheap structures on low-value land. The only company really building distribution space for density is Amazon, but they are diversified with business lines much more high-profit than shipping.

I'm personally 100% in favor of dropping all groceries, goods, and Amazon deliveries off at the county line and having people ride bikes back and forth to get the stuff they want.

The biggest issue is the distance between 16th and 17th Avenues (and, to a lesser extent, the "median" width of Magnolia Boulevard). If you constrain the roundabout diameter to typical for a multilane roadway, it will easily fit within existing right-of-way, but realigning 16th and 17th Avenues to meet it at appropriate angles becomes difficult. If you expand the roundabout diameter to try to help these approaches, it cuts into Belmont and other adjacent properties, and circulating speeds within the roundabout become unacceptably high. For reference I was able to fit a 350' diameter circle in the intersection without getting into existing structures, if Belmont will donate a little land (the yellow circle). The maximum recommended diameter for a roundabout is 200', which is the orange circle. But you can see even with the larger circle that the 16th Avenue exit is poorly aligned without much room to fix it. The positioning is also troublesome as pushing the roundabout to the east (right) improves the 16th Avenue exit but makes the 17th Avenue entrance much worse, and in either case there is a lot of unused space. On the other hand both Wedgewood Avenue and Magnolia Boulevard are well-aligned for roundabout approaches (it's desirable to have the centerline hit a little to the left of the center of the roundabout as it allows for more deflection and speed reduction on entrances). A second issue, mostly for the larger diameters, is the grades within the site. It's about a fifteen-foot change in elevation from the top of Wedgewood to 17th Avenue. Roundabouts generally need no more than a 2% cross-slope on the circulating roadway and max 4% grade longitudinally (circumferentially?); if you go higher drivers start to have a harder time navigating the traffic conflict points while turning and trying to maintain speed across varying grades. On the other hand, if we are thumbing our nose at the FHWA and AASHTO by building a big-ass roundabout we can probably do the same by making it go up and down hills. There are also several properties that only have access to streets within this area which would be cut off by a roundabout. Maybe not an issue since they all seem to have alley access. All said maybe we can take a lunch break one day to fix it.

The City's bonds for the Titans stadium would pay for 21.4 million Uber rides between downtown and the airport, or about 400,000 rides per year for 55 years.

That's the WSMV-TV transmitter (among other TV and FM stations); it is 1,370 feet in height at a ground level of 680 feet. It's also five miles away from downtown and the 13/31 flightpath.

The reason all of these teams are threatening relocation is because they are not getting enough public money for new/renovated stadiums in their current locations. Whether or not they have the money to do so themselves is irrelevant; they want to be subsidized and believe they can negotiate their way into subsidies by putting relocation on the table. If at any point they become serious about making the move, it will be because Metro and/or the state are offering them significant incentives to relocate. So the question that settles the possibility of a current team relocating to Nashville is: should Metro and/or the state provide these incentives and are they in a position to after providing the same for MLS, the NFL, et al.?

I was thinking more like: 6th: locals lounge 5th: buffer floor 4th: transplant dining area 3rd: kitchen 2nd: tourists ground: ride-share pickup and baggage check sub-basement 15: bachelorettes squealing over how hot their mild chicken is

They should tear it down and cover up the Fallyn wall (or the Wallyn) with a six-story hot chicken emporium. Then maybe there finally won't be a line!

I'll tell them it's Concept 2 for $35,000. Make the check out to Prune J. Tracy, Esq. Consulting, please. Do they really think they can support a terminal's worth of taxiing traffic on the crossing over Donelson Pike? Then across or down 2R/20L? This would actually work pretty well if they could tunnel the APM under the airfield. Ditch the measly international gates and eliminate the at-grade intersections on Briley and you have room for another 20 million passengers in an airside layout not much less efficient than ATL. Only problem is that the second terminal traffic has to cross the whole airfield to get to the eastern runways.

I always wondered why the surviving building was curved; I assumed that there was a road/rail/utility ROW adjacent to it. I didn't think about it being part of a larger circular building

Bring back Paradise Park!

Rarely; this doesn't look good from a political perspective. There are liquidated damages for finishing late, however, in practice most contractors get time extensions to avoid paying LDs because there are many factors outside of their control that will hold up a government project. On most projects of this size or greater contractors have plenty of incentive on their own to finish the job as quickly as possible. They are paid lump sum and equipment, laborers, etc. sitting idle on a site costs them money. Bottom line is, it takes a while to build things! Even more so when you wait around for inspectors, have to coordinate with utility companies and railroads, and other third-party responsibilities.

Oh, I thought the grate was so you didn't have to scoop the poop. It was supposed to be a new epoch in dog park technology

I wonder if there would be a market for a statewide league, similar to the Appalachian League or Texas/Florida/California/Arizona (with the understanding those markets are not comparable to ours). We seem to have a lot of A-sized markets, or those that could support summer collegiate or short-season teams, and also seems it would be more interesting for potential fans if Clarksville was playing Jackson or Cookeville or whomever instead of another team out of state. Would cut down on travel costs for teams and fans also.

It's temporary and a response to vehicles queueing onto Interstate 40. In the current ultimate buildout, all terminal traffic enters via the discrete access from I-40 (216A, the exit with the monument signage). However, this exit will be two lanes with one each for departures and arrivals; there will also be access to all lots from this exit without going through the terminal area (as opposed to existing conditions, which requires drivers to pass through the terminal to reach the economy lots from discrete access). Exit 216B in the ultimate buildout does not provide ready access to the terminal; it would require a lap around the elongated Terminal Drive. However, it will improve access from eastbound (into downtown) traffic as well as from Donelson Pike in either direction. tl;dr once construction is complete you will enter at 216A from downtown for virtually all airport destinations.

The ROW of the historical Tennessee Central Railway (which closed in 1968) is largely still intact between Monterrey (the terminus of the Nashville and Eastern Railroad) and Crab Orchard (private spur to Norfolk Southern). This railway was operational as late as 1992 and likely still has much of the railbed intact.

Just leaving this here again. The Chicago street circuit turned out better than I expected, but perhaps the weather played into that. I still don't understand NASCAR's insistence on bringing the sport to markets where there is little interest in it and will never be. They take dates/locations with consistently high attendance (this weekend would have been the second Daytona race) and go to places like Los Angeles and Chicago, then wonder why ratings are declining.

The curb at least of the circulating island should be painted yellow per MUTCD. As a design point, not strictly safety-related, the whole island should be paved to allow trucks and other large vehicles to traverse it; I assume Metro learned a lesson on this as older mini-roundabouts in the city have signs in the island. I personally don't care for Metro's use of them without changing the traffic controls of the intersection as it takes left-turning vehicles from the side streets much longer to clear the intersection and accelerate to the travel speed of the main road. This can be an issue where intersection sight distance is limited, as it is in several locations where they have already been installed. This is setting aside the violation of expectations especially in a region/country where roundabouts are still relatively new. To solve the sight distance issue, I usually turn left the "wrong" way across the mini-roundabout, much to the irritation of Mrs. Tracy. That's right, ladies... I'm trouble.

Pretty sure it is just a combination of the local terrain and TDOT's efforts to keep their ROW clear of brush. When I-40 was originally constructed they cut into the hill on both sides (the slopes being similar to that of ramps being a coincidence), and since then maintenance forces have cut the brush back to near the ROW line. As far as an exit goes, it would be too close to the adjacent exits (Exit 201 / Charlotte Pike in particular) and there isn't a large roadway nearby that would warrant access.

My understanding of the SMI deal is that the number of test days, race events, etc. would stay largely the same and the sound barriers would help to reduce noise*. Are they lying? Don't know. But the notion that the neighborhood can't handle a change in use when there's a brand-new soccer stadium literally next door doesn't make a lot of sense. We get 30,000 people showing up for 17 matches, that didn't exist three years ago, on top of concerts, friendlies, etc. occurring at the stadium every chance the management gets. I think at one point SMI said straight up they are looking for a deal similar to that for the soccer stadium, which may be good or bad depending on how you look at it. But when the soccer stadium was up for debate the same people who are now complaining about the racetrack were in favor of the stadium, while also dismissing the concerns of, for example, the flea market folks. I'll be a little more honest than I need to be, I think the root of the problem is that MLS is fine and NASCAR is not because the people on this board and residents nearby and in Metro as a whole are more approving of MLS image/demographics than they are of NASCAR image/demographics. That's fine, that's your opinion. I'm not anti-soccer or pro-NASCAR, I go to NSC matches all the time and I'll be out in Lebanon this weekend, to me they are both fun activities where you can put 25% of your attention towards what's going on and 75% towards having an excuse to party. If you said to me you opposed the speedway deal because you perceive NASCAR as a dying sport (or "sport") frequented primarily by boomer yokels I'd largely agree with you. But put it out there, because many of these arguments don't hold a lot of water when we just went through all this for soccer a few years ago. * A word on sound barriers. They do work to some degree, we do fairly detailed studies on noise mitigation for highway projects that include before/after comparisons on them. The reason you don't see more of them is that they are fairly expensive for what the federal government considers to be a lesser environmental impact. Don't know if those are the same proposed here or if they are as effective for races as they are for typical highway traffic. It would, but that's been the case for most all decisions for the past two decades. We built a convention center, we built a minor-league ballpark. We built the soccer stadium and are about to build a domed football stadium and once that's done we'll more likely than not have to build a new hockey arena. God willing we'll be either gutting and rebuilding the ballpark or (much more likely) be building a brand-new major-league ballpark in the near future. You would be challenged to find a deal that Metro has said no to for this, so I assume since we are putting our foot down here we'll also be telling the Predators and Stars/A's/Diamondbacks/Rays/O's/whoever no as well, right?