AronG

This is such a mistake. It just perpetuates the car dependency. The best parts of downtown, such as Church St, are the way they are because they had to figure out how to grow up in an environment where it wasn't taken for granted that we would pay anything to remove as much friction as possible for car commuters.

Wow, Walk Bike Nashville, which has been running a petition in support of the new bike lanes (https://www.walkbikenashville.org/core_bike_lane_petition) is warning that the mayor's support for the downtown plan is already wavering, and he's considering delaying/neutering it. They're asking supporters to email the mayor and CM O'Connell ([email protected], [email protected]) immediately to try to stop this from getting derailed before it even gets off the ground.

I agree. (Although I'm scared to admit it in public.) Watching a bunch of flushed tourists who are usually smiling and having a good time is more pleasant than another road packed with single-occupant commuter cars engrossed by the need to get in and out to the interstate as quickly as possible so they can jet home to Rutherford county. They make downtown festive and interesting, and the bizarre variety has become something pretty unique to Nashville. We also still have quite a few streets downtown where people are prone to speeding, and all the party wagons and scooters and golf carts and dune buggies and whatever all have the side effect of making people slow down and acknowledge that the roads are public right of way and aren't there exclusively for cars. This is one of many, many reasons I would be a terrible political candidate. Can you imagine the scandal if a council member came out in favor of these? That would be like acknowledging in public that widening 440 is a waste of time and money...

Incredible. So the NIMBYs that showed up to agitate against the proposed redevelopment have presumably succeeded in sticking 5 points with a car-oriented strip mall/parking lot for another decade or three instead of replacing it with a 3-5 story mixed-use building with street retail and residential units above that would have provided pedestrian traffic. That's fantastic. 5 points has to be one of the most preposterously mismanaged areas in Nashville when it comes to development. It has all the right ingredients to become the nucleus of an amazing pedestrian district, and there's so much market demand that developers are actively pushing for it. But between the ridiculous under-zoning, the requirement for the historic commission to sign off on everything, and the small but motivated pitchfork mob that shows up to rant about any possible development, it looks like it's going to be stuck in it's current form for the rest of my lifetime. Brilliant. Gotta make sure we preserve this: Or we might end up evolving into some ungodly awful situation like this:

Sad to see Fond Object go. But I'm excited to see riverside village evolving into a really cool neighborhood center. Speaking of neighborhood centers, whatever happened to all the future phases of the Walden development (Jeni's, Two Ten Jack, etc.)? I was looking forward to seeing that getting built out, but it's been years now. Has Egerton ever said anything about why he hasn't moved forward on it? Is he going to leave that gravel parking lot there forever?

Looks like all of it.

Saw they're fenced off now. Demolition must be coming soon...

This building looks nice, but I can't understand for the life of me what they're thinking with the way it addresses the sidewalk/neighborhood around it. Zooming in on their render, it looks like they actually worked hard to de-emphasize the sidewalk along Hermitage, like it turns into a grassy path beside some trees, not a sidewalk in a busy city with lots of buildings filled with people all around it. And along Peabody it's hard to even see the sidewalk. Why would you even do this? Most renders try to overplay their urban-ness by putting lots of pedestrian activity around the building. This seems like they're going to extra trouble to make their building less attractive. The office buildings in Cool Springs pay better lip service to urban design than this. And I'm sorry, but trying to market based on the "unique park space" is just sad. Look at those people. "Hi, yes, let's meet in the middle of this featureless patch of grass and chat." If you're going to go to the trouble to keep that space empty, why wouldn't you put like a minute into thinking about what might make it attractive. Like, I don't know, a bench for starters.

Finally got a chance to look through all the new plans this weekend and they look awesome. Between the downtown updates, Belmont, 12th S, 10th S, Chestnut St, and the East Nashville "neighborways", it looks like they're finally ready to start making a serious effort at building out a network. The Walk Bike Nashville map (https://www.walkbikenashville.org/maps) is going to look pretty different in a year or two. It's really exciting, and it's only going to get more attractive as all the new towers open up and draw more traffic into downtown. One thing I wish they'd add at some point is an effort to fix up the riverside greenway. It's a great way to get between downtown and Germantown without risking your life. But it's in pretty awful shape along some of the route. A little money would go a long way. And it's an amenity that will pay off, as pointed out by the Neuhoff developer.

Thanks, wow, this looks amazing. Gonna be fascinating to see how they work in a protected lane on 3rd, which doesn't have a lot of extra width to work with (unlike, say, Commerce). I'm sure they're gonna get some pushback on this, but if they stick with it and get through the demonstration project without watering it down this could be the first dedicated roadway that somebody on a scooter would actually want to use to get around to interesting spots. Toss in a little scooter parking area on each block and we'll have a backbone to work off of. Now if we could just get the long-delayed Woodland St bike lane going so we could get over there from the east side without risking our lives...

Big fan of this. It's definitely going to put Nashville on the national forefront of innovative and ambitious city policy around affordable & public housing. It's ironic that the state legislature closed off the normal outlets for political pressure on this topic (inclusionary zoning) and now Nashville is basically dabbling in european-style social housing, as practiced at a much greater scale in cities like Vienna with great success.

Jealous of everything that's happening in the Nations. The developers are outrunning the NIMBYs over there, and it's glorious. With 400 apartments going in here maybe metro will finally do something with the insane intersection at 51st/Centennial. I vote for a roundabout, but really anything would be an improvement.

Wow, that's awesome. Looks like they kind of gave up after Hawkins, but this would be a huge, huge upgrade for the mile and a half stretch going south. What's the status of this? Is it actually gonna happen or is this just a proposal that will get neutered?

As a Nashville resident, here's hoping TDOT does not widen interstates and dump more traffic from surrounding counties into the city.

Admit to having this same vague hope, but it's getting harder to believe. Based on the way sympathetic council members talk about this, it seems like our system relies on the mayor to provide initiative. If he doesn't announce a significant new effort we're apparently just going to keep doing what we've been doing, which is to throw a few hundred thousand dollars every year towards painting pretend death-trap bike lanes that everyone will ignore, then spend a bazillion $ widening some more interstates so we can solicit a few hundred more commuters from Spring Hill. We need someone to map out a viable network downtown that would actually allow people to get from A to B, then start tackling it piece by piece. It will probably require giving up some on-street parking in places, but it will be worth it. We've managed to put together a few decent north-south routes over the years (1st Ave/riverfront greenway, 11th Ave, 16th/17th, etc.). If we just spruce them up and put in a protected east-west corridor to connect them, then put signs everywhere telling tourists where they lead ("---> POINT YOUR SCOOTER THIS WAY FOR GIANT WING MURAL SELFIES --->"), we could get at least a skeleton network up and running, then build from it based on ridership.

Speaking for myself personally, having enough nearby bars & restaurants to go hang out before the game (i.e. Von Elrods at the Sounds stadium) is much preferable to trying to give everybody space to bring their RV and set out their own grill. They tried to do that for Titans stadium, and IMO it's been a huge mistake. It's surrounded by almost 100 acres of asphalt (!) and it's all a bunch of dead space 98% of the time. This is across the river from where land is going for $1,000 per sqft or whatever. Stadiums in cities should build enough parking for a small fraction of people to drive and it should be expensive. Everyone else can get acquainted with Nashville's real mass transit system: Lyft Line, Uber Pool, and 16 different types of electric scooters.

I was about to forward this to the wife, but good lord, $15 tickets? Do a lot of people pay that? I'm gonna set up a projector in a parking lot and charge $10.

The central idea of all of them is to keep the current number of low-income units, but add a similar number of less subsidized "workforce" units (typically reserved for people with income between 60 and 120% of the median income), and also add a bunch of market-rate units that sell on the open market. When it works this is both an economical way to develop a lot of affordable units, and it alleviates the concentrated poverty that results when you isolate a thousand public-housing units in one neighborhood with no other income levels.

Super jealous of the street transformations they're proposing: We have so many streets that look like the before picture in every neighborhood in Nashville. The road is 50 or 60 feet wide when it's intended for one traffic lane and one parking lane on each side. It's wide open, straight shot with no obstacles in sight, basically begging for a drag race. They're a huge waste of space, an invitation to speed, and they're blatantly pedestrian hostile. Traffic lanes in neighborhoods should be 10 feet wide, and parking lanes should be 8 or 9 feet. Less space to cross, cue drivers to maintain an appropriate speed, and drastically safer for Nashville's awful pedestrian injury and death toll. Meaning we only need 36 feet of that space, and the rest of it can be used for more sidewalks, trees, bike lanes, medians that make it easier to cross, etc. It's gonna be sad in 20 years when the only appropriately designed streets in Nashville are here and in Cayce, because NIMBYs block this scale of development everywhere except on major arterials.

Counterpoint: Seems like a good idea to me to not waste a bunch of money and real estate on parking facilities that will sit empty and unused for 340+ days of the year. And on gameday scarce parking is part of the fun that spreads economic impact around the area. Ride hailing is a great option that is only getting more popular (https://usa.streetsblog.org/2019/03/13/study-uber-and-lyft-reduce-the-need-for-parking/). Also we have tons of surplus parking spread around the city that we can provide shuttles to and from. Cities with our development pattern typically have 10 parking spots for every car, which is massively inefficient. More amenities at the fairgrounds > more parking lots.

You know what it looks perfect for? Scooters.

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tallest_buildings_in_Nashville:

Me? Totally not my intention, just literally confused by Brett describing his efforts to actively convince people to keep these old structures that are detrimental to the neighborhood. Maybe there's an explanation I don't know about. Appreciate your efforts in other areas @bwithers1, no intention to blast.

This whole thing where we obsess about parking & safety for scooters while pricing in the ridiculous mess that cars make of the city drives me crazy. Thousands killed or maimed every year, half the downtown land area reserved for vehicle movement or storage, interstates jammed with traffic every morning and evening, and our priority is to start fining scooter riders? The Tennessean article says there have been more than a million rides since they started. That is a significant amount of people being moved around the city with almost no dedicated infrastructure. Let's invest just a tiny fraction of what we put into giant road projects and see if we can move even more people that way. Lord knows it's insanely more cost effective. And I love how they're going to restrict scooters to 18 and up. Like yeah, it makes perfect sense to allow 16 year olds to drive giant trucks and SUVs but we're definitely not going to let them on a motorized version of the little toy they were riding when they were 8. Let's actively force them to drive a car everywhere they go, so we can make sure they're endangering themselves and others.

Driver safety meaning the people running into them? I never understood why we have to worry more about them than the pedestrians on the other side of the bollard...