The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread

[nashvillwill]

6 hours ago, nashwatcher said:

Why wouldn't politicians allow HOT lanes as a partial revenue source for mass transit? I would use it all day long, as would many people I know to avoid traffic.

Answer;

"They are going to take away traffic lanes! It will make things worse! It's liberal b.s. It's socialism. It's elitism. It's racism. It's big city nonsense. Freedom! Take my roads from my cold dead hands! It 's the immigrants fault. No one will use it."

[dmillsphoto]

13 minutes ago, nashvillwill said:

Answer;

"They are going to take away traffic lanes! It will make things worse! It's liberal b.s. It's socialism. It's elitism. It's racism. It's big city nonsense. Freedom! Take my roads from my cold dead hands! It 's the immigrants fault. No one will use it."

I unliked this just for the satisfaction of liking it again.

[Guest]

SF,

You bring up a great point. At the next assessment my property taxes will probably double - without a rate increase - .... there is no doubt that most properties in Davidson Co. have appreciated by substantial amounts...maybe that is where the Mayor and the Mass-Transit 'Lobby' are looking. Good news is it would not require a referendum...bad news is that it is a general fund and not a dedicated revenue source.

I do believe there is a role for mass-transit in Nashville, but I hope that due-diligence is paid to both the cost and the new technologies that are occurring simultaneously.

[Hey_Hey]

13 hours ago, nashville_bound said:

SF,

You bring up a great point. At the next assessment my property taxes will probably double - without a rate increase - .... there is no doubt that most properties in Davidson Co. have appreciated by substantial amounts...maybe that is where the Mayor and the Mass-Transit 'Lobby' are looking. Good news is it would not require a referendum...bad news is that it is a general fund and not a dedicated revenue source.

Your property tax assessment won't double unless your rate of appreciation was double the county as a whole. Per state law, total property tax collections by city/county government cannot increase or decrease because of appreciation or depreciation in the housing market. Individual properties can increase or decrease, but the total must remain the same unless there is an increase in the rate. This prevents wild swings in tax collections if the housing market goes gangbusters and then crashes like we saw in the 2000s.  It also protects against under- or over-valuation for political purposes. 

Your tax requirement will change in comparison to the rest of the county. As a hypothetical, let's say Metro's average property value went up 20% since the last assessment. If your individual property went up 20% in value you will see no change in taxes. If it went up 30% you will see a tax increase.  If your value went up 10% then you will actually see a property tax decrease. 

The big property tax increases will go to neighborhoods who have seen tremendous price appreciation in the last three years.....The Nations, Wedgewood-Houston, Inglewood, Salemtown, etc. These are places that you could get a lot for $50,000 three years ago. Now, those same lots are probably $150,000.  Some of the priciest neighborhoods may actually see their property taxes not change much. For example, it wouldn't surprise me if Forest Hills and Oak Hill don't see much of a change at all.  There hasn't been much of a change in property values in those areas (as compared to the hot areas) in recent years. 

Edited March 24, 2016 by Hey_Hey

[nashvylle]

On 3/23/2016 at 0:39 PM, nashville_bound said:

I already pay a steep property tax...and as you alluded to earlier still have to pay for private school for two boys because the educational system in Metro is not very good. Personally, I would vote against any property tax increase in the referendum that is required by law.

 

 

off topic question-

If metro were to enforce an affordable component for new developments within the downtown area, could they not enforce developers to have a parking spot for each affordable unit, thereby reducing costs for the developers and indirectly causing those who want an affordable unit to use mass transit?

[Guest]

This Economist article details the 'bait-and-switch' approach taken by so many mass-transit projects. The modern-day triumvirate of politicians, big-business, and lobbyists/fanboys, parrots facts and figures they know to be false in order to pass initial approval. During the actual build cycle they fight off lawsuits that arise since the initial numbers were fabricated and the money continues to flow into the abyss...

The suit brought by Kings County Board of Supervisors and two Central Valley farmers accused the rail authority of violating restrictions imposed by a ballot held in November 2008 (Proposition 1A) that approved a $9.95 billion bond issue to help pay for the high-speed railway. Voters were told at the time that the project would cost no more than $33 billion, with the federal government stumping up $3.2 billion and private investors chipping in the balance. So far, such private investors have been conspicuous by their absence.

Taxpayers could pay dearly for CA's high-speed-train dreams

Taxpayers could pay dearly for California’s high-speed-train dreams

 

A high-speed train is at least more realistic than Elon Musk's Hyperloop

Mar 27th 2016 | LOS ANGELES | Science and technology

CALIFORNIA’S high-speed railway—the largest public-works programme currently underway in America—overcame a serious challenge on March 25th, which would have taken bonds issued to help pay for the railway and reallocated the money to water projects. Unable to collect enough signatures to put the proposition on next November's ballot, the backers have now postponed the measure for two years. Had it been successful, the proposal would have dealt a death blow to the high-speed rail project by deleting its biggest single source of funding.

 

That is the second time in recent weeks that the $64 billion high-speed rail project linking Los Angeles to San Francisco has come close to being stopped in its tracks. What promised to be the most serious of a number of law suits threatening to derail the project was thrown out by a superior court in Sacramento on March 8th. There was no evidence, the judge concluded, that the California High-Speed Rail Authority had failed to meet its statutory obligations, as the plaintiffs alleged. The court, nevertheless, left the door open for the case to be reheard at some future date.

The suit brought by Kings County Board of Supervisors and two Central Valley farmers accused the rail authority of violating restrictions imposed by a ballot held in November 2008 (Proposition 1A) that approved a $9.95 billion bond issue to help pay for the high-speed railway. Voters were told at the time that the project would cost no more than $33 billion, with the federal government stumping up $3.2 billion and private investors chipping in the balance. So far, such private investors have been conspicuous by their absence.

 

According to the Proposition 1A Bond Act, the high-speed rail project has to be  financially viable; trains have to operate (without subsidy) every five minutes in either direction during the day; and funds for each segment of the route need to be identified before work on the leg in question can commence. Above all, trains have to make the 520-mile (840-km) journey between the Los Angeles basin and the San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes, reaching speeds of 220 mph (350 kph). As for ridership, the rail authority reckoned some 65m to 96m passengers per year would be travelling the route by 2020. The basic fare was to be $55 one way.

 

That was all pie in the sky, a way of selling the deal to voters in 2008. A review in 2011 put ridership at a more realistic 30m passengers a year, with an end-to-end ticket price of $89. Meanwhile, the overall cost of the project had soared to $98 billion. And instead of going into service by the end of the decade, the high-speed railway would not be ready until 2033.

 

The uproar that ensued prompted a shakeup along with some hurried rethinking. The cost was subsequently pegged at around $68 billion for the first phase of the network, with an opening date in 2029—almost a decade later than originally promised. A second phase, involving track extensions to Sacramento in the north and San Diego in the south, would follow if and when money became available. The draft 2016 business plan has now trimmed the cost of the first phase to $64 billion.

 

While private funds have shown little interest, at least the project’s finances are no longer quite as gloomy as they were a year or so ago. Jerry Brown, California's govenor and a stalwart supporter of the high-speed train, strong-armed the legislature in Sacramento into allocating it 25% of the state’s annual “cap and trade” proceeds from auctioning off carbon credits to big polluters, which are currently worth around $1 billion a year. As a result, the rail authority has now identified the $21 billion required for building the project’s initial leg (San Jose to the Central Valley). It still needs a further $43 billion before it can start work on extending the line north to San Francisco and south towards Los Angeles.

 

With the rail authority’s finances resolved for the time being, opponents have focused instead on the project’s legal requirement to cover the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco in two hours and 40 minutes. The rail authority claims (optimistically) that such a time remains doable, though cost-saving measures have forced the high-speed train to share tracks with slower-moving freight and commuter services in the Los Angeles basin and the Bay Area.

 

What also remains in doubt is just how many people will actually ride the high-speed network. In revising its revenue model, the rail authority has incorporated findings from surveys on rider preferences, along with forecasts of California’s likely population, housing and employment growth. The data were then crunched using Monte Carlo simulations to minimise the risks of being wrong. The analysis suggests that, based on a confidence level of 50%, the service will have some 28m passengers by 2029, generating $1.3 billion of revenue. However, as thorough as this analysis is, unanswered questions remain.

 

Above all, what is it that California’s railway planners know that their Japanese counterparts do not? The former state-owned Japanese National Railways and its partially privatised regional replacements have struggled for decades to make their high-speed Shinkansen (“bullet train”) routes profitable. Japan’s eight Shinkansen lines have little in the way of competition, thanks to over-crowded roads, expressways that charge exorbitant tolls and limited air services. Even so, only one Shinkansen service—JR Central’s 550-km line between Tokyo and Osaka—makes anything like a decent enough operating surplus to cover its costs, make necessary investments and pay a modest dividend.

It does so for one simple reason: the volume of traffic it carries—some 140m passengers a year. The Tokyo plain (Kanto) is home to 42m people, while greater Osaka (Kansai) has 23m. Between these two huge population centres reside a further 10m people in conurbations like Hamamatsu, Nagoya and Kyoto, all served by the Tokaido Shinkansen. At peak hours, trains leave Tokyo Station bound for Shin-Osaka and beyond on average every four to five minutes, and every seven to eight minutes for the rest of the day. The latest Nozomi (limited stop) service whisks passengers between Tokyo and Osaka in two hours and 22 minutes.

 

Compare that with California. As sprawling as it is, the Los Angeles basin has a population of just 18m. The nine counties surrounding the Bay Area have a little over 7m residents between them. The farming communities astride the proposed high-speed rail line through the Central Valley have a combined population of around 1m. In short, California’s high-speed railway is attempting to do what the Tokaido Shinkansen does, but with a third of the number of potential passengers, on a route that is half as long again. California’s taxpayers will pay dearly for Mr Brown’s high-speed legacy.

 

If there are serious doubts hanging over a conventional high-speed train operating at speeds up to 220mph between Los Angeles and San Francisco on conventional electrified track, what then are the prospects for Elon Musk’s proposed 760mph Hyperloop between the two cities? The short answer is probably none. Even so, Mr Musk’s flare for publicity has done much to capture the imagination.

 

Back in 2013, the billionaire boss of the Tesla electric-car company and the SpaceX rocket developer hit the headlines with a fresh take on the “transplanetary subway” proposed in the 1970s by visionaries at Rand Corporation, a think tank in Santa Monica, California. However, instead of being under the ground, the Hyperloop proposed using a steel tube containing a near-vacuum that would sit on stilts above it. Passenger pods, riding on air-bearings or magnetic fields instead of wheels, would travel inside this air-tight tube, to be laid alongside the Interstate-5 highway between Los Angeles and the Bay Area, at close to the speed of sound, completing the 400-mile journey in little over half an hour. Mr Musk reckoned the Hyperloop could be built for no more than $6 billion—a tenth the cost of the California high-speed train.

 

Two separate groups have taken him seriously. Hyperloop Technologies (HT), in central Los Angeles, is a typical startup venture, with 30 or so full-time employees and $10m of seed money. By contrast, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), based on the west side of the same city, is a crowd-sourced community of 450 volunteers scattered around the country, who devote ten hours a week to the project in exchange for stock options.

 

They are not the only ones mesmerised by the Hyperloop idea. Some 116 student engineering teams, from across America and elsewhere, gathered at Texas A&M University late in January to show off their Hyperloop pod designs in a competition organised by SpaceX. Finalists have been invited to test prototypes this summer on a five-mile test track being built by HTT at Quay Valley, California.

 

Everyone involved now accepts that Mr Musk seriously under-estimated the cost of building a Hyperloop between Los Angeles and San Francisco—probably by a factor of ten or more. There are few illusions, too, about the engineering difficulties involved. Fabricating an air-tight steel tube hundreds of miles long, with solar-powered linear motors providing propulsion while supporting passenger pods on air-bearings or by magnetic levitation is challenging enough. A bigger hurdle is overcoming the “pistoning” effect, caused by air in the tube (even though it would be at only a thousandth the pressure of that outside) piling up in front of the pod and slowing it down. Calculations done by NASA suggest the tube would have to be at least four times wider than the pod to prevent even the tiny amount of residual air within it blocking the pod's passage. Mr Musk budgeted for tubes only twice as wide.

 

But perhaps the most intractable problem facing Hyperloop designers is how to deal with not just the jostling, vibration and noise bombarding passengers as the compressed air screamed around the pod, but also the g-forces involved. These could easily exceed a queasy 0.5g as a result of slight variations in alignment caused by the tube’s supports flexing and settling. At the speed it is designed to travel, the Hyperloop could be a veritable “vomit comet”. A far better case could be made for it as a means for funneling freight to market (fresh produce from the Central Valley?) than as a fairground ride for churning the stomach.

 

If the ride quality alone did not render the Hyperloop a non-starter, the cost of building it certainly would. Michael Anderson, a resource economist at the University of California, Berkeley, reckons it would cost around $100 billion to complete. While Governor Brown’s legacy may now be safe, albeit at considerable public expense, there is no way that the Hyperloop would ever work out, says Dan Sperling, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis. It would make even the high-speed train look a bargain.

[Will]

With the weather turning lovely, I'd like to offer a friendly challenge to folks on this board to commute by bike. Any able-bodied person can propel his or her bodyweight + the necessities for a workday using muscle power alone. No need for a gas-powered wheelchair just to get your own self to work and back. I bike to work daily year-round and essentially I get to opt-out of traffic jams through creative routing, use of sidewalks, turn lanes, etc. The benefits are numerous:

-Reduced cost of commuting - by one estimate, every mile you live from work and drive by car costs you ~$800 per year, factoring in lost time and actual driving costs
-Free unlimited parking outside the front door of (almost) wherever you're going
-Better cardiovascular health
-Less air pollution and dependence on fossil fuels
-Potential to downsize to 1 car from a 2-car household, saving tens of thousands of dollars over the long term 
-Every time you travel by bike, you get stronger and more self-sufficient while everyone else around you gets weaker and more dependent!

I would consider anything under 15 miles to be a very bikeable commute, though road conditions and topography can change that figure. Do you get hot/cold/sweaty/rained-on? Yes, yes, yes, and yes, but you are a grown-up American and none of those things is worse than being a slave to your car. Give it a try! 
 

[dmillsphoto]

I like the idea, but I don't trust Nashville drivers enough to take it on considering I have an 8 mile commute with approximately 1 mile of bike lane.

[markhollin]

Some more "out of the box" thinking that might yield some good results.  Metro Bus system thinking of partnering with Uber and Lyft:

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2016/03/28/metro-explores-linking-uber-lyft-bus-system/82336598/

[VSRJ]

^ Interesting. It's a start, I suppose. I think the first/last mile rideshare concept would help me. Living in the 8th Ave./Franklin Pike corridor and working near the airport means that taking the bus means a 50-90 minute long trip (with a transfer) for what is typically a 10-minute drive. The hub/spoke system really only works if you commuting to/from the core.

[nashvillwill]

2 hours ago, Will said:

With the weather turning lovely, I'd like to offer a friendly challenge to folks on this board to commute by bike.

 

Oh man, how I wish I could accept this challenge. Unfortunately, with a 22 mile one way commute, on high speed roads with zero shoulder, and no MTA service for assistance, I'm not able to do so at my current job. 

But I will extend your challenge to others by saying this. The 4 or 5 years I was able to bike commute was the best I ever felt. Not only was I in the best physical shape of my life, I was downright happier about daily life. Going to work wasn't something I dreaded. I woke up refreshed and excited for the day ahead. On the way home, I got to work off all that job stress by pushing myself to be faster. And despite the (believe it or not) very rare unpleasantries with an a-hole driver, I never dreaded or feared the commute. And I slept like a baby.

Hopefully, someday, I'll be able to get back on it. In the meantime, I'll try to meet this challenge with an evening ride when I get home. 

[grilled_cheese]

Is it safe to say that nashville_bound is against public transit all together?  All I am hearing are the negatives.

[rookzie]

14 hours ago, grilled_cheese said:

Is it safe to say that nashville_bound is against public transit all together?  All I am hearing are the negatives.

I won't assume that conviction ─ not just yet anyway.  nashville_bound does pose some valid auguable points.  It's easy to not care for mass transit when one has lived in a CBD setting for a number of years, and as not frequented the use of any form of mass transit on a regular basis.

In all fairness to the posted reference to the California High-speed rail initiative, that undertaking, which I consider quite questionable myself and as a boondoggle with thousands of tons of cash money overruns, is not a typical transit development, and therefore is not a reasonable comparison to urban and suburban transit goals.  Every transit operation in North America has had to be supported by municipal and usually with county and state funding, but then, so do highways and airports.

[smeagolsfree]

Its Californication...could we expect anything less than that.

[markhollin]

Since this thread always has a lot of input, I thought folks would like to know that besides the normal Meet-Up happening this Saturday at Provence Bakery in the Downtown Library at 10 AM, there will be a second group of us meeting at 9 AM in the lobby of the One C1ty building on Charlotte for the final public meeting of the MTA/RTA to see and discuss their new plans. There are already a handful of us Forum folks planning on being there, and more are welcome. I am 6' 4" tall and will be wearing a black Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap with a gold "P" on the front.  Afterwards, some of us may adjourn to a local eatery for coffee or an early lunch to visit further. Let me know if you'd like to join us so we can be on the lookout for you.  : )   

 

• Saturday, April 2, 9 to 10:30 a.m., OneC1TY: 8 City Blvd. (near Charlotte Pike)
  
  http://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/contributors/2016/03/10/nashville-cant-delay-developing-transit-plan/81459504/

[PruneTracy]

6 minutes ago, rookzie said:

Every transit operation in North America has had to be supported by municipal and usually with county and state funding, but then, so do highways and airports.

Thing is, all of these ventures could support themselves given the latitude to do so. Highway authorities can charge user fees, such as tolls, gas taxes, or VMT taxes. Airports can charge gate fees to airlines, surcharge passengers, etc. Freight rail is privatized, it can take care of itself. That's the nice thing about these services, it's not like, say, police or fire protection, there's a clear delineation between use and non-use and gateways to charge every user appropriately at the time of use.

There's no reason mass transit, passenger rail, etc. couldn't do the same, other than that I think many transit agencies would be in for a rude awakening when they have to justify building or expanding services with revenue generation. That's not to say that all of the costs for alternatives to transit are internalized, e.g., air pollution, etc., but on the other hand, externalizing transit costs doesn't fix that problem, it just muddies the water even more.

The only way we can make informed decisions is to know the true cost of the alternatives at hand. Until we stop obfuscating them with grants and subsidies and such we're going to continue to get proposals for transit that are based on the ways agencies can get their hands on that money rather than whether or not the proposal would actually provide a useful service to a large number of  customers. In the meantime I can't fault people like @nashville_bound who are concerned about the amount of money we spend on such things without regard to whether the cost/benefit ratio is worth it.

[titanhog]

Ever since I moved to Nashville 20+ years ago, I've heard people say "you can never build a subway system in Nashville because of the limestone."  Is this true?  Surely there are other cities with subways built in limestone, right?  Is Atlanta's in limestone or granite?

Just wondering.

[rookzie]

20 minutes ago, PruneTracy said:

Thing is, all of these ventures could support themselves given the latitude to do so. Highway authorities can charge user fees, such as tolls, gas taxes, or VMT taxes. Airports can charge gate fees to airlines, surcharge passengers, etc. Freight rail is privatized, it can take care of itself. That's the nice thing about these services, it's not like, say, police or fire protection, there's a clear delineation between use and non-use and gateways to charge every user appropriately at the time of use.

.... In the meantime I can't fault people like @nashville_bound who are concerned about the amount of money we spend on such things without regard to whether the cost/benefit ratio is worth it.

I wasn't faulting @nashville_bound for his views concerning the mass infusions of funding and non-sustainability, but rather was referring to the example he quoted as not being a true comparison.  Even for intercity passenger rail, that was not a typical parallel to establishing far more modest service, say, from Chicago to ATL-JAX.  Like Phoenix  and Columbus, Nashville is far too "major" to not have even marginal once-daily service as an alternative, which I agree doesn't have to be a totally subsidized operation, although it would be costly if not currently feasible, given the current sentiment and mixtures of political climate among the states of IN, KY, TN, and GA, compounded with the issue with the private carrier's RoW. -==-

Edited March 31, 2016 by rookzie

[Guest]

Most know that I do live downtown, and I would not be out of line in stating that our family utilizes the available MTA transit more than 90% of the posters on this board. It is easy to use, cheap (due to being subsidized), and meets all of our needs. Since we do live downtown most of our trips are straight shots (no transfers) so I can not speak to the transfer efficiencies. A large reason to my opposition to the failed BRT proposal was the cost vs. the benefit....it seemed to do more damage than good compared to the existing bus service that runs down West End/Harding.

I did list a particularly obscene article about the 'hi-speed' project in CA because (1) it is a perfect example of the bureaucratic bait-and-switch tactics that I wish to avoid in Nashville. This is by no means the only tragic tale of governmental smoke-and-mirrors (or outright incompetence) I could easily have posted about the DC light-rail to nowhere, or the the lack of promised development dollars on the Jacksonville and Little Rock lines. (2) I have been accused several times of using sources that trended anti-mass-transit and wanted to alleviate those concerns that I was being myopic in my choice of source material. 

I did have a long 3rd paragraph but PruneTracy did an excellent job of identifying my concerns.
 

46 minutes ago, PruneTracy said:

The only way we can make informed decisions is to know the true cost of the alternatives at hand. Until we stop obfuscating them with grants and subsidies and such we're going to continue to get proposals for transit that are based on the ways agencies can get their hands on that money rather than whether or not the proposal would actually provide a useful service to a large number of  customers. In the meantime I can't fault people like @nashville_bound who are concerned about the amount of money we spend on such things without regard to whether the cost/benefit ratio is worth it.

 

[dmillsphoto]

1 hour ago, markhollin said:

...and will be wearing a black Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap with a gold "P" on the front.  

I'm disappointed.

[Rockatansky]

39 minutes ago, titanhog said:

Ever since I moved to Nashville 20+ years ago, I've heard people say "you can never build a subway system in Nashville because of the limestone."  Is this true?  Surely there are other cities with subways built in limestone, right?  Is Atlanta's in limestone or granite?

Just wondering.

Yep. Bedrock + lack of density = no subway in Nashville.

[rookzie]

13 minutes ago, nashville_bound said:

Most know that I do live downtown, and I would not be out of line in stating that our family utilizes the available MTA transit more than 90% of the posters on this board. It is easy to use, cheap (due to being subsidized), and meets all of our needs. Since we do live downtown most of our trips are straight shots (no transfers) so I can not speak to the transfer efficiencies. A large reason to my opposition to the failed BRT proposal was the cost vs. the benefit....it seemed to do more damage than good compared to the existing bus service that runs down West End/Harding.

I did list a particularly obscene article about the 'hi-speed' project in CA because (1) it is a perfect example of the bureaucratic bait-and-switch tactics that I wish to avoid in Nashville. This is by no means the only tragic tale of governmental smoke-and-mirrors (or outright incompetence) I could easily have posted about the DC light-rail to nowhere, or the the lack of promised development dollars on the Jacksonville and Little Rock lines. (2) I have been accused several times of using sources that trended anti-mass-transit and wanted to alleviate those concerns that I was being myopic in my choice of source material. 

I did have a long 3rd paragraph but PruneTracy did an excellent job of identifying my concerns.
 

 

 I stand corrected in your use of current mass transit.  It was incorrect to assume and not know.  You do have by far an advantage over most, in that you live in the CBD and therefore can avoid the archaic plague of having to transfer to get somewhere decent.  That's the primary peeve I have with the freakin' bus around Nashville, because it provides some degree of accessibility, but at the expense of senseless use of mobility.

That you have clarified your views leads me to be in full accord in concert with all those concerns.  Although I "want" to be upbeat and optimistic about any so-called "advanced-capacity" transit provision for the commonweal of the region, honestly I'm only deluding myself, because closed-interest and disjointed decision-makers rarely seem to become properly aligned in their forgings of such conclusions, in spite of these published egregious miscarriages that you point out. So while it can happen, I almost seriously doubt that it will happen (even if it could) ─ not in my remaining twilight years anyway.  There just is far too insufficient accountability in checks and balances for me to have faith. (yes even li'l me)

[titanhog]

1 hour ago, Rockatansky said:

Yep. Bedrock + lack of density = no subway in Nashville.

Yeah...but surely Atlanta has bedrock, too...right?  Density will eventually come, just like Atlanta...and their subway is the 8th most used in the nation. (of course, maybe there are only 8 subway systems in America  )

[volsfanwill]

I believe the only way to do rail properly in the cbd is underground. Under Broadway until about 5th or 4th then at an angle until near the courthouse, under the river and above ground everywhere else.  All lines converging into a single tunnel. This increases frequency  in the cbd. 

[nashvylle]

much cheaper to do streetcars like Portland.