it's just dave

Glad to see you, storm. In ALL my years of being a Tennessean, I've never been to Bristol. I think I need a road trip. Pop in on us in Nashville, too, storm. Get yourself one of those warm Middle Tennessee welcomes.

lol, jice. I feel busted. lol I just felt wordy one minute, and not the next. It's all in the timing sometimes. Sorry 'bout that.

It'll be tough, but I'm hoping people will at least give it a chance to see for themselves is it works for them.

Education is going to be very important is making the commuter rail work. People often think the cost of commuting by personal vehicle is the cost of gas and oil. That's only the beginning. Many studies have been done on this and after all is said and done, $6 roundtrip is a real bargain. It's all in how one tallies the true costs. It would cost more than that to park, then the gas, then the maintenance, tires, vastly accelerated depreciation, stress, possible accidents and such. Here's a tidbit from Texas which might explain some of this. I'm sure there are other examples with a good Google, but this should provide some light. http://www.tceq.state.tx.us/assistance/edu...commutesol.html Here's one from AAA for the year 2003. It's bound to be much higher now with gas prices as they are. http://www.aaanewsroom.net/Main/Default.as...4&ArticleID=196

I was born in Glasgow, KY but was moved to Nashville when I was only a year old. My mother is matron of old Nashville, a historian, and just full of stories. I drive her around and we compete...with what's GOING somewhere and her telling me was WAS there. It's funny...a bit frustrating. lol. Dad was from Oklahoma, but maternally, the family goes way, way back to the late 1800s in the Clarksville area. ... and I'm not leaving.

I've seen the station sites under construction in Hermitage and Donelson. They're bigger than I thought. This will be a fun experiment to watch.

Welcome to our group, Will. Don't worry about having anything to say. It's all worthwhile. I put my foot in my mouth many times and forgiveness comes easy around here. Glad to have you.

Not yet, but yesterday, I noticed the cedar beams and other components were onsite...and that was new. It looks like most the infrastructure is nearly complete and they're ready to start on the builidng now. I want to get some shots of the process. For a simple structure, I think it's going to be a fine looking building.

The new Manson Pike interchange (which looks remarkably like a big city interchange) leads directly into the Gateway area. With the double road, medians, nice street lighting, and underground ulitilies, this area will be really nice. The developer stated he wanted I-24 visibility...and boy, he'll get it there.

Shuttles are in place. This is the link to the Star and will give you lots of information and has a gallery to show the stations. Downtown terminal looks great for the limited budget. http://www.musiccitystar.org/index.html

Let me chime in too and say that I like looking around the various forums. I've been quite impressed with what I've seen, especially in the Little Rock postings. I haven't been to LR in a long time, but it sure looks like it's time for another visit. Congrats from this Nashville guy on the success of your forum.

That is good news. It seems, from the Sat. a.m. Tennessean, that the money won't come until early summer, but Bank of America was encouraging about a loan. Can't blame them, this project is not going to be a money maker, aren't in business to lose money, but the vote of confidence from the government will help them decided to loan or not. Going forward, I certainly hope this experiment will provide positive results for getting the projects going along other lines. It's still up in the air, but I'd sure like to see this one succeed in the face of many doubters. This is a tough one to predict; it could go either way in our little car-centric society.

I don't see how you missed it. I was dead center front page today. Actually, it wasn't in the list of headlines, but a clickable photo to the right of the headline section. Here ya go. http://www.tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/ar...EWS09/509270339 The article gives a positive spin on the outcome, imo.

I drove down the parkway the other day for the first time. Amazing stuff. I graduated from MTSU in 78 and besides the Parthenon, the Huddle House and maybe, just maybe a Shoney's .... there was nothing. It's a true growth success story. I certainly hope they're doing it right. Downtown, as always, is beginning to give Franklin a run for it's money. Looks great.

According to my neighborhood gas station manager, he expects to be putting up a "3" before the end of the week. He said to expect $3.10 for regular by Friday...he seemed serious, but who knows. I filled up both cars anyway to save a few bucks. Today, I'm trying to recruit and additional person for my carpool. That's about all I can do. I hope the gas station was wrong. Of course, adjusted for inflation, this will be about the same as the price of gas in 1980 when it hit its record highs then. It still just stinks.

I agree, let's not spend hundreds of millions of dollars just quite yet. This is an automobile society and will always be. So let's not throw money into the wind until we know the acceptance rate. This will take time. If somebody gets sick, somebody will take them home. There's lots of compassionate people around here. I know someone would take me home if needed. Don't worry satalac, time will tell.

There's a shuttle plan in place for the arrival times. Each rider under a certain plan will have so many days with transportation home in the event they miss the train due of overtime working or other schedule conflicts.

I think the tracks will end directly under the Shelby Bridge. That's where the old dinner train stopped. It can't really go any further. But if you're on the Shelby Bridge, you can see the tracks clearly. I don't imagine there'll be much rail work here, just the station house. It'll be nice to see something under that bridge that's not peeing on something.

I remember hearing about that and seeing drawings years ago. I believe that is yet to be re-visited, but I bet it we'll see the proposal again in the not too distant future. I just takes money.

Norff, your reports of this are most appreciated. Thanks for doing the research. The future could definately show promise for all of us who are oriented to downtown and beyond. The skyline shot is from the Titans stadium. That view is what the west side people see if there in the top rows of the cheap seats. Pretty cool shot.

It'll be interesting to see what it turns out to look like. I agree with monsoon, it's a crude rendering. I'm sure it will look fine. It appears they tend to use timbers and such reminiscent of the old train stations and that will give it, hopefully, a quaint, timeless appearance. It is in a district dominated by Victorian warehouses so something slick and glassy will look out of place there. Now, we wait. The details on the stations will be out soon, I'm told.

I read that one, monsoon, and it made feel pretty good about the way they're going about things. Thanks for the link.

You might have hit the nail on the head Expat. The non-believers should give it a shot. This will be the tough part. When I started carpooling to La Vergne every day, I hestitated. I didn't know what it would be like to possibly not have my precious personal transportaton outside waiting for me at my beck and call. After a couple of months, those hesitations disappeared. It's been a year now, all is going well, I'm saving money and wear and tear and I'm really enjoying the morning discussions as opposed to just sharing the ride with myself. A quick stop at Bongo Java, a quick grab of the CityPaper and I can just sit back and enjoy the ride. I like it. We're all planning on riding the rails when )and if) it becomes available. Whn people stop seeing their automobiles deteriorating only because they drive them to work, when they discover those expensive tires last twice as long or more, and the other positives (not to mention rapidly escalating gasoline prices), they must give it that shot.

I hope the plans are successful. If I'm still working in LaVergne when the Rutherford County line is up and running, I plan to use it most of the time, especially if my plans to sell my house and move into Rolling Mill Hill, SoBro or downtown proper materialize. Downtown's still too much a work in progress and I'm still too much into my landscaping passion to make the transition before 3-5 years. But, I can imagine the future, and it just might find me on a train twice a day.

I've had some outspoken ambivalence on this topic. I'm familiar with the Brookings studies and understand fully their honest and practical approach to the facts. I'm still on the fence about this. The fact is that we don't have only a smaller downtown convention facility and that's it. We have a smaller downtown convention facility backed up with a huge convention facility and the enormous Gaylord Resort a few short miles from downtown. What's the Gaylord got, and I'm guessing, 500,000 square feet and a 3,000 room hotel....and we're sneezing at that? Please. Do we NEED a new convention center? I don't know. I think we could get along just fine without a new building, or even a generous expansion of the downtown facility. The 400,000 sq ft number was from the extensive study on the city's "needs" wherever the thing was built. I don't think the thermal site has been considered lately at all. The Gulch is pretty much spoken for and a convention center is not in the picture. Construction should start soon on a $100 million retail center there, new residential, new office, the new mid-rise mixed use tower which will ultimately rise at 12th and Demonbreun, and all the components to turn this area in to an urban and LOCAL neighborhood, as it should. There's plenty of land south of Broadway between the Gateway Boulevard positioning and the south loop which are underutilized and exist in a manner which would create connectivity between the newly revitalized areas surrounding the CDB and the site of a new convention center. The Hampton Suites is going up there, and Mr. Peabody is still salivating over downtown Nashville. I'm certainly not against a new convention center, but as the new property assements are mailed soon and my property surely escalates in value as my "trendy" neighborhood always does, coupled with the increase in the Metro School's submitted budget, I study this with caution, especially when I know where the money to pay for it will partially come from. We don't "need" to commit huge amounts of money to "compete" with other places who are already seeing the red ink and feeling the ache in the pits of their fiscally growling stomachs. Nashville is fortunate almost beyond fairness in the amount of press we get. Sure there's the country music windfalls, now, it's Paris Hilton and that nonsense, and to dispel the ridiculous assumptions that Nashville "doesn't even have a zoo," we're featured on the Animal Planet March 10th and 18th because we not only have a zoo, but we have a world class, Ultimate Zoo in the works. But that's only part of the point. I believe Nashville could do itself a favor if it could just ignore the pressures of having a new slick convention facility to bleed us all year long, and just do it's best to fill the one(s) we have. We've got the goods kids, we don't have to prove ourselves, we just have to be fiscally responsible and carefully fill out deposit slips for the billions we generate every year from the millions of people who come here and do so with WHAT WE HAVE. (at least for the time being) People will come, whether we build anything else or not. So, if a center is in our future and its doable without breaking a bank (especially mine), that's fine and wonderful. If we land a Six Flags type of thing somewhere, sometime, fine and wonderful. But with what's going on around here right now, people won't know the place in as little as two years. Brace yourselves.