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PruneTracy

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Everything posted by PruneTracy

  1. PruneTracy
    I think they are rolling on interior demo of the existing structures on this one. Bunch of workers parked in the Emma's back parking lot with a ro-ro dumpster and demo gear. Also the car-share that was using the Rite-Aid canopy has removed all of its vehicles and equipment.
  2. PruneTracy
    That's in the 500-year floodplain. Maybe not the best location for an ER facility
  3. PruneTracy
    I'm a little confused about the target market here. It's not a good club track; it's too complex, doesn't have enough runoff room, smaller layouts look like an afterthought. It's not a good grand prix circuit; it's still too complex, has a very un-Tilke layout (that might be a good thing), doesn't look like it would produce good racing. They seem to have tried to set it up for motorcycles but missed a couple of corners. It looks good for endurance or sports cars but are you planning on running at night next to the villas? That's also a lot of grandstand space. All that being said since the road course inventory of the state consists of the superspeedway's roval, Memphis' drag strip circuit (which probably has weeds growing on it) and a smattering of private tracks I'll take whatever we can get.
  4. PruneTracy
    The exiting cars have to line up on the exit line at the back of the chicane this year, they are held to pit road speeds to this point (which is 40 MPH this year from 45 last year) and it seems to keep them to a similar speed as cars in the chicane (although still a mess in terms of overlapping paths). You can see it at 4:00 here:
  5. PruneTracy
    Chicago today unveiled a plan to renovate Soldier Field to try to keep the Bears in town: https://footballstadiumdigest.com/2022/07/to-dome-or-not-to-dome-future-of-soldier-field-under-debate/ Notably two of the three options include retrofitting a dome on the open-air stadium (among other upgrades) at a cost of $900 million to $2.2 billion.
  6. PruneTracy
    Problem is that if you live in a downtown urban area your quality of life is highly influenced by your ability to acquire the goods trucks deliver. Particularly considering most freight costs go into first/last-mile delivery. And if you are limited to walking, biking, transit, etc. then you're even more dependent on having access to them closer to home. We talk a lot about affordable living downtown but if goods that would otherwise be delivered in 53' trailers during business hours are instead broken into three single-unit deliveries at night or off-peak hours then the cost of everything you buy increases significantly.
  7. PruneTracy
    I mentioned this previously but the Car Hole is an ideal candidate for a rebuild in place. The two seating towers are structurally independent and could be rebuilt one at a time. Probably not over one off-season but if the Titans were willing to settle for reduced capacity (keeping in mind that the TV contracts are the money-makers) it could be done. Colleges do it all the time with their sports facilities and Miami did it for Hard Rock Stadium (the venue ownership was referencing as a model before the money for a new stadium came into play).
  8. PruneTracy
    Not trying to argue but I'm pretty sure all the ones listed under "Urbanized and Municipal Systems" except for CAC Transit in Knoxville have at least one fixed route. The rural systems (and a large chunk of the municipal systems' ridership) are paratransit though.
  9. PruneTracy
    Just FYI there are many municipal transit agencies in Tennessee (especially in East Tennessee). Cookeville is far from the smallest city with one. You can see the full list here: https://www.tn.gov/tdot/multimodal-transportation-resources/office-of-public-transportation/public-transit-services1.html
  10. PruneTracy
    Knowing little about the Texas airport scene, here is a rough sketch of it from the most cursory of internet research: AUS draws about 60% more emplanements than SAT and has a greater diversity of destinations, so it would seem to work the other way around (AUS numbers are inflated due to the proximity of San Antonio) There are a number of airport shuttles advertising service to/from AUS and downtown San Antonio (as opposed to SAT) supporting the above conclusion Four of SAT's top ten destinations are to the Dallas / Fort Worth and Houston airports* while AUS's numbers to the same are much lower, which with the destinations/airlines implies SAT is functioning more as a connector/commuter airport and San Antonio traffic simply drives to AUS for certain flights/destinations due to the Ron White principle SAT is landlocked and can only use one runway at a time so its capacity is limited in any case * Interestingly the San Antonio - Dallas / Fort Worth airplane traffic is higher than the Dallas / Fort Worth - Houston traffic, which is a major driver behind the purpose/need of the Texas Central high-speed rail line.
  11. PruneTracy
    In 2021, per the hero who runs this website: https://www.numbertamer.com/ "Nashville drew 436,868, the best total of any Minor League team in 2021, and averaged 6,721 per date, the top average among all MLB-affiliated teams. The Sounds drew over 10,000 at 9 of their home dates." Note that these are covid totals and the Sounds were averaging nearly 9,000 fans per game between 2015 (when First Horizon Park opened) and 2019, but then weren't leading MiLB (although they were consistently in the top 10). This isn't a recent thing, the Sounds led attendance in the Southern League every year they were a member and had today's attendance numbers at Greer stadium in the early 80s as a double-A affiliate of the Yankees (which was the catalyst for Larry Schmittou swapping them out for today's triple-A franchise). The franchise record for attendance was in 1990 as a Reds affiliate. The problem isn't attendance, it's TV market, and why attendance drops aren't hindering MLB expansion to 32 teams. Of course that doesn't dilute an argument for the A's (preferably) or Rays to move to Nashville and fill a massive geographical hole for the American League. But that also means we don't necessarily need a 40,000-seat baseball stadium.
  12. PruneTracy
    This is kind of premature but since it will be a frequent topic for the next couple of weeks I will post anyway. One of my bored-at-work projects over the past year has been working on a layout for a semi-permanent street circuit around the East Bank area. Thing is, I have not been bored at work for the past year, so all I have is a line drawing (although the background homework is done). The idea is to create a semi-permanent circuit that consists of (mostly) public streets but has the geometry and permanent features approximating a permanent circuit. I completely ignored the East Bank study and did what I wanted to do with the PSC Metals site and the spine road (this one uses the existing streets and simply adds curves around Nissan Stadium). The corner complexes within PSC Metals and the parking lot near the Bridge Building are somewhat arbitrary but are based on redevelopments of the areas and some street realignments. It's overall less of an impact to the existing street network than shown in the East Bank study (meaning less money spent on utility relocation and realignments) but achieves the same core goals of recreating the street grid and producing a spine street. But enough about dumb planners. Run clockwise at 2.42 miles and 14 corners / complexes this circuit: Is flat as a pancake and very long/fast for a street circuit; Has two major overtaking opportunities (Bridge Building and under KVB) and three more (first turn, through PSC site, under I-24) that should be pretty good; Can be split into one or two smaller circuits for support races; Provides plenty of areas for temporary and semi-permanent grandstand seating on public land but off ROW, including a race paddock building in front of Nissan Stadium; Does not touch any arterial street (namely KVB), leaving the major street grid intact and open through race weekends; and (most importantly) Provides the same vistas and feel of the existing circuit without being hot garbage for actual racing. It's not NASCAR down Lower Broadway but I guess it will do.
  13. PruneTracy
    It looks like telecom; power would be encased in concrete, not backfilled with bedding. The conduits would also not be touching or crossing over each other. If someone wants to peek over the barriers and read the manhole covers that would settle it. I'm not going, it's too hot outside.
  14. PruneTracy
    Thing is, Kansas City and Arrowhead Stadium made the cut. I haven't been in the stadium (just in the parking lot area) but from what I remember seeing you would have a hard time saying that the Car Hole is substantially worse than it. Arrowhead Stadium can't even accommodate a FIFA pitch, they will need to pull out seats in the corners of the end zones to make it fit.
  15. PruneTracy
    Riverside is downstream of Old Hickory Dam; their property is almost entirely within the FEMA 100-year floodplain. The DuPont property is upstream of the dam and so the flood levels are more or less limited to the lake footprint. The site does sit fairly high above the lake as well.
  16. PruneTracy
    Maybe not an upper deck though.
  17. PruneTracy
    LST-325 from Evansville was downtown in September 2012 at least, I think it has been back since then. USS LST-325 | WWII Landing Ship | Evansville, IN (lstmemorial.org)
  18. PruneTracy
    Hard shoulder running in the US typically takes the form of transit vehicles using the shoulders (BOS/BOSS or bus on shoulder), not general traffic (there are some HSR schemes that allow all vehicles). TDOT/GNRC studied BOS for RTA buses on Interstate 24 and the problem was that all the areas where BOS provided a travel time benefit were located in areas with shoulders too narrow for buses to navigate. Part of the problem with BOS is the narrow range of operating speeds. Most existing BOS systems limit transit vehicles to a maximum speed of 35 miles per hour during BOS operations and the maximum speed differential between transit vehicles in BOS operation and traffic in the general-purpose lanes is 15 miles per hour. So in effect peak period traffic speeds on the Interstate have to be below 35 miles per hour and generally much less to see a travel time benefit in BOS operation. As far as HSR for all vehicles these are typically seen as a congestion relief measure in urban areas, not for long distances on rural Interstates.
  19. PruneTracy
  20. PruneTracy
    Which park?
  21. PruneTracy
    It's not exactly the same, the three stacked lines shown in the photo are 69 kV transmission lines that NES uses to pull from TVA/Corps drops. They are more expensive to bury than the distribution lines but not quite to the same scale as the 230kV transmission lines that you see on the larger pylons. In any case it would be difficult to put the developer of one parcel on the hook for burying transmission or even distribution lines; there's a lot of work that has to go into making a transfer from aerial to underground and not something you can do on a piecemeal basis.
  22. PruneTracy
    That's a pretty spot-on description of the current stadium, but it didn't stop the Titans from wanting a new one. The only question is the "bones" of the Car Hole and as noted previously that's far from settled. To be fair the jump from an open stadium to a dome would probably make an impact. But calculating that impact should be easy as well, just cancel out all the current events the stadium attracts and only count the ones that need a roof.
  23. PruneTracy
    DDIs were designed to fit within the existing ROW for diamond interchanges (they were actually developed as a retrofit option that keeps the ramps and over/underpass) but they also only work well with a specific traffic pattern. In the context of I-24 on the East Bank the interchanges would also have to be fully split out without C-D roads as there's no provision for a through movement on the ramps in a DDI. Maybe one at Spring/Jefferson and one at Shelby but both of these already have plenty of ROW.
  24. PruneTracy
    Typically covered stadiums that pimp out their space for conventions do so to augment space for a connected convention center. Think America's Center in St. Louis or (formerly) the Georgia Dome / Georgia World Congress Center. If the space is intended as an add-on to existing convention space you'd obviously want it right next to the convention center; otherwise, it's more like a competing venue than an opportunity for synergy, which would make it difficult to convince the MCC to fund it. Just to put this in perspective, the floor area of a typical covered stadium is on the order of 100,000 to 125,000 square feet. The MCC's exhibit hall is 350,000 square feet. There's some niche uses where a stadium might be more suitable for certain conventions, such as having higher ceilings or a larger clear/unsupported area, but most don't need this and for the available space in a stadium could be better accommodated not only at the MCC but other venues such as Opryland (175,000 square feet) or the Renaissance Hotel (100,000 square feet). The other convention-related use would be for events like speeches, concerts, etc.; Bridgestone Arena has been used in this capacity several times. I'm not sure how many conventions want or need to get more than 17,000 attendees in a single space at once, however.
  25. PruneTracy
    Problem is if you don't include a parking pedestal (and it would be difficult to make it cost-effective due to how narrow the parcel is) you're limited to glazing on the front/rear street frontages for the first six/seven stories (and all the way up on the 3rd Avenue side). These are high-rise land prices on a site with low-rise opportunity, barring some NYC-style shoehorning. It would be a good location for one of Nashville's signature six-story bar/restaurants. How about a six-level Kenny Rogers Roasters?
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