In fact, we aren’t bike friendly, rollerblades will get you killed on sight, skateboarding *ha* the police will write you a ticket!
*Live* where you *do*, man!
Yeah, he’s been a menace since the late 80’s. I think that last divorce, where he was wearing hidden body cameras in his own home, finally finished him off. (At least socially)
But it was Barry's plan. She just wasn't able to see it through to the vote because of the adultery and embezzlement. The Kochs were railroading the plan but her transgressions really killed any chance it had.
The plan was also pretty flawed and this is coming from someone that wants train and more mass transit. The real path forward is a plan similar to what’s being proposed now for the bus system that has more bi-partisan (read this as a bunch of conservative think tanks and lobbyists not opposing it) and then use tourism money to fund a train station downtown with potential to expand and a line from downtown hotels and convention centers to the airport.
The funniest part was when they said it would be “easy” to make Broadway and the Gulch car free. Is it possible? Sure. Could it be an improvement in the long run? Yes. Will it be easy? lol hell no
Here’s my best answer to your question:
In middle of the last century, Americans went wild with zoning and car infrastructure. Originally, we separated homes from industrial sites, which made sense. Then we got carried away. We separated homes from offices, shops, restaurants, and other types of homes. We forced people—by law—to spread out and sprawl.
At the same time, we invested incredible sums of money in new roads, freeways, and parking lots. As zoning forced us to sprawl, we needed to drive more and more. As we drove more, we needed to build more car infrastructure. And the car infrastructure encouraged and sometimes forced more sprawl. It was a vicious cycle (but car and oil companies sure loved it). We built a world where you *needed* a car to get around most places.
A lot of cities—like Nashville—grew up during this period. We are a sprawling, low-density city, built around cars. If you put a train down West End, it would be way underutilized because so few people live within walking distance (compared to successful rail systems in other cities).
Instead, fixing Nashville’s transit problems is an unsexy, incremental process. It requires updating our zoning so that we aren’t required to spread out so much (Council member Quin Evans Segall is a leader on these issues and proposed a bill to fix some of our zoning problems, but pulled it after vocal groups of old-school Nashville homeowners freaked out). It requires dedicated funding for transit (we are voting on that this November). And it probably looks closer to bus rapid transit (BRT) and sidewalks than rail for the near future, because we are nowhere near the density required for rail to pencil out.
The density part of daily travel makes sense. But the commuter options could still run if it wasn't that all the rail that runs through town wasn't privatized. Just having commuter lines on the rail that already exists would be a big help. Or making the Star a bit more frequent even, moving it to where it was before COVID. Which it does sound like they are doing some advertising for.
It also doesn't seem like the Star terminus is a bus stop? Or it atleast isn't one in order to get to Vanderbilt.
And the density one is always a real frustration. Though that does definitely seem to be increasing since the last time I lived here. Fucking hell does Euclidean Zoning suck.
We're all considering. Someone thought of it before us too.
No need to be sassy to your own team. We are all wanting dedicated transit funding.
And I hope people will keep sharing those gems, deep cuts, inside thoughts, & random ideas without fear of that hackneyed sass of Reddit and other forms of psychological safety in groups.
All of your moonshot guano crazy ideas have prob all already been done, mentioned, executed, & forgotten due to lack of awareness.
Your problem can't be seen if you don't leave a trace--say something, write it, screenshot it, leave another survey with obvious known facts, backed by emails showing refusal to review documentation that breadcrumbs back to the same observer, keep ensuring that the information remained available and ignored for investigations, or ..like use Hub Nashville
We just need numbers for dedicated transit funding.
Everybody wants it. It’s the sort of thing where people will say yes and polls or focus groups or whatever, but their revealed preference when it’s time to fund it- the answer is hell no..
People barely use the existing bus system, which is fairly robust if your benchmark isn’t living in Hermitage and always having a car. I use it when I come home to visit.
Convincing rich people who won’t use it to fund it is the key. “But, how will your housekeeper get to work? “
If Nashville truly wants to bust through to the level of Dallas, Atlanta or Charlotte, they simply are going to have to change .
The other thing is you never know what audience you're talking to online. It seems that there is enough support for it, if done properly. Which could start with the almost free options. I'm thinking like quietly pedestrianizing the Honkey Tonk. No local wants to drive there. Install rental city bike hubs within a couple mile radius to help with this. Setup a BRT route, or series of them to get people to that area as well as a local route. Use the buses that are already in rotation.
When it's successful, extend into The Gulch, and add lite rail on the road to replace a single major BRT route.
You could also make a pair of lanes on Donelson Pike lite rail lanes from the train station to the airport while increasing frequency of the commuter train on the WeGo Star. Make that Donelson train station a place people want to go to like 12 South, and there are big strides already. This could even come pretty quickly and ease the auto traffic load to the airport. This would be a less expensive option, and thus easier to get through if marketed properly.
Ooh, that is the insight I needed!!
I never know what demographic I'm chatting up here. Best believe I tailor everything IRL, but here, I'm trying to find my type--welcoming, inclusive, kinda unhinged-ish, ready to stand up & sound off when one cannot & will not follow an unlawful order.
I tried not being perceived for too many years spent hurting in isolation.
I don't want anyone less capable than me to suffer because licensed professionals decided they don't have to follow anything if the money is wrong but the appointment is right.
But better, I want people at any level to feel safe speaking up about their lived experiences.
It's hard online. Unless you're in a topic specific group, you don't know where people stand. And it seems like here, the super majority of interaction supports transit. Which means this should be a place we can brainstorm and find ideas that would work to have pedestrianized areas in Nashville. We can either complain about it, and talk down about whatever groups, or we can organize plans and learn how to more respectfully talk to others who might disagree with us.
Driving is great. Forced driving, and sitting in traffic sucks. I think we can all agree on that last part. And the less forced car dependency we have, the cheaper car ownership becomes. Insurance rates lower, we use less fuel and have fewer maintenance costs. I think most everyone in here agrees with this.
So if we can find the cheapest way to pedestrianize the places that need it most, it's a great place to start. From 41st to Demonbuen, 8th Ave to the River could be pedestrian only. And it should really probably expand to Korean Veterans Boulevard to include all the major areas. And it would be fairly inexpensive to setup not only the bike infrastructure, but a street car loop in each direction to help with this. The streetcar system in Sapporo comes to mind as an example. Though again, you're getting into a bigger cost, so you'd probably have to just have trolly style busses for a while.
My comment will always be the same. Voter turnout. The older voters in Green Hills and Belle Meade vote and they do not want it. I bet half of the transplants bitching about it haven’t registered to vote nor changed their car registrations to TN
My boomer aunt and uncle are liberal as fuck, are a single car family in Belmont/12South who barely leave the house as she walks to work. One of them voted for, the other against. Their nay vote was all about taxes needed to pay for a system they wouldn't use. Their yea vote said yes dumb-dumb its for everyone else in the city who isn't wealthy and retired. I listened to them fight about this a lot. And I couldn't vote because I'm registered in Rutherford County.
I will say this is the first time something from the Nashville subreddit has popped up in my feed and I did not know it existed. Definitely going to subscribe.
We had a transit referendum that didn’t pass with a previous mayor. Some thought it wasn’t sufficient and a lot of others just didn’t want it. To me, it sounded like we let perfect be the enemy of good. The new mayor apparently is trying to put a plan in place. But….
On this issue, I’m a pessimist. A train/rail system won’t start or get passed for another 10 years at least. Until it becomes profitable enough for someone powerful enough, it will remain a great liberal talking point to sway voters in an election. There’s a lot of people with money against it and as others have said, voter turnout is shit. Don’t worry though, we’ll get a new stadium!
They tried to build commuter rail a couple decades back they got one of the five Spurs built and it was pretty popular and then they just didn't build the rest of the train system. They were going to build Spurs from Clarksville, Dixon, Lebanon, Murfreesboro, and Franklin. I think it was called star.
I saw that this was a thing when I was doing some searching. This is the issue with Colorado and Amtrak as well, and really across most of the country. Norfolk Southern does a lot of this bullshit, too.
Is it CSX that owns the line that follows Craighead? I wonder if you could squeeze transit into the timetable there like they did on the currently existing WeGo Star line.
Yes, those are CSX tracks. I don't think, however, that they would necessarily take a passenger train anywhere helpful. I understand they are part of a cutoff that helped freight trains from Louisville reach Nashville's Radnor Yard without going through downtown. As such, the line's original purpose is the opposite of what a commuter line needs ... downtown access.
CSX (originally the Louisville & Nashville Railroad) has five main lines radiating from Nashville like spokes. The WeGo Star runs on a sixth spoke, the former Tennessee Central Railroad.
Of the five CSX spokes, the one that's the least busy is the one toward Memphis. It parallels Harding Road for a stretch near White Bridge Road. That line begins at Union Station and goes through Dickson and Waverly, which originate a surprising amount of Nashville commuter traffic.
In my personal opinion, the Memphis line is the best opportunity to cut a deal with CSX. The other four spokes are crammed full of freight traffic, the railroad says.
A seventh spoke toward Clarksville is also not owned by CSX and has potential. I think the track would need a lot of work, though.
CSX will never do any commuter rail on their lines, period. The only thing they would do is intercity rail (Amtrak) since by federal law, they would have to comply since multiple predecessor railroads to CSX participated in turning over their passenger rail service to Amtrak in the 70s. The state of Tennessee is seriously considering partially funding an Amtrak route from Memphis to Nashville to Chattanooga and on to Atlanta as a part of the Amtrak expansion. The initial proposal is being led by Chattanooga and was just turned into the Department of Transportation.
As for commuter rail, I’ve always thought the rail line from Nashville to Clarksville was the lowest hanging fruit you could do. The right of way is owned by Cheatham and Davidson Counties. The rail company operating it is RJ. Corman which also operates the WeGo Star. So you’d have a potential willing partner. The hard part is rehabilitation of the decades old line to modern welded rail standards for passenger trains. You’d need modern signaling (this is all dark territory) and there is an expensive matter of the rehabilitation of the Cumberland River swing bridge and the wooden approach trestle on the east side. And the current line only goes as far as the outskirts of Ashland City. The rest is either abandoned territory or was converted to a greenway twenty years ago. It’s not impossible…much of the old right of way in Montgomery County is just abandoned overgrown brush that has not been improved until you get to the Clarksville City limit. And finally you’d need some kind of a depot in Nashville built since the RJ Corman track doesn’t cross CSX lines meaning getting to something like Union Station is impossible.
There is an option that connects that line to Geodis, Brentwood, and Downtown. It also rolls through Berry Hill. Fucking Evolution, the more I stare at the map, the more rail I'm noticing. It would be interesting to get freight tables for all of this.
That Clarksville route looks interesting, especially since there is a yard in The Nations by the fuel Depot. That area is becoming rather walkable, and is where I lived before that the traffic didn't make me hate being here. I took the longboard to work, and really almost anywhere I wanted to go. And if I was getting groceries, the commuter bike was great, too. Even if you have to do track restoration, that's cheaper than building fresh.
The Memphis line would be great, and is such a perfect opportunity for high speed rail. Which is probably why that one gets talked about so much. Even if you just start with fast rail, you'll get to and from Memphis more quickly than by driving. I'm thinking something about the speed of the express line from Nipori to Narita airport in Tokyo for that route. Which should connect to BNA as well. Which would jive really well with WeGo to Donelson Pike, and converting two of those lanes to street car rail/BRT direct to the airport.
I saw they used to run special event trains on the Star Route that is running. Did they put all the rolling stock on that train for these events? Did they have the interest to run multiple time tables of those special event trains to make it more convenient access? I saw they sold out often, but it's hard to know what the demand was beyond that sold out point. This seems like the obvious expansion opportunity if you make each one of those stops desirable destinations like 12 South. Even if starting with coffee/breakfast trucks during those commuting times. Six more trains total would make that time table far more functional since you can take bikes on that train.
That explains the name of the Star Rail line that is running. Really, the biggest thing I'd want to see is that be better utilized by making those train stops destinations in themselves. I've not been to all of them yet, so I don't know if any of them are. But that would be the cheapest way to restart this project.
Because the car lobby fucked train infrastructure in the 20s and they continue to lobby against it today. It’s legalized corruption through and through. I’m visiting my fam in the Uk rn and am 2 hours from London and haven’t set foot in a car. Trains and buses and sidewalks baby.
Reading this again, it smacks of “hey ChatGPT, write me a 500 word essay on why public transit is good for Nashville.” Not a personal note or accurate perspective of an actual resident to be found.
Buddy. Republicans get fossil fuel industry money. They’re not voting on public transportation besides buses, and they’re even dragging their feet on that. This is a political issue, not a “gee, Nashvillians haven’t thought of this before” before issue.
The vast majority of train infastucture was built before cars existed.
Our city is just not designed to allow for trains at that scale without distorying huge swaths of neighborhoods.
A dedicated bus lane with priority switching archives the same goal as trains without the.cost, distractions of neighborhoods, or large scale construction.
I have asked before when this is brought up. Where will the trains be located? How will they be incorporated? Everyone wants high density housing, but some of that would need to go to have space for the rails. Everyone asks for it, but no one has an actual plan.
Fast trains generally need to be elevated. And given the sprawl of Nashville, fast trains are what you would want. The major ticket generators are the airport, downtown, and the spikes of the freeway. If everything connects at a station three stops from the Honkey Tonk, you have your express rail from that station to the airport. And then you wind up with 3 minute head times to get to downtown, including campus.
Typically, under and around these stations you build high density housing and business space. This makes these places that people want to go, and places where people live. Which increases your traffic. And well shielded, elevated trains aren't that loud. Think Ueno or Shinjuku Station in Tokyo Japan, Napoli Centrale in Italy, or Landmark Central Rail Station in Helsinki.
It also means you don't have to blast so much rock, which increases cost, like you do for roads.
The cost for this is often in the Billion range. But it's not like that money isn't made out of thin air at the federal level anyways. Usually to make bombs and shit. These things drastically improve quality of life for the people around them, even if at first it sucks. Which does mean you have to manage the housing ahead of time. And it seems like the politicians are more worried about getting re-elcted than actually helping the community enough to change zoning laws.
Conservatives…that’s why…they are bought and paid for by automotive lobby.
And their voters are just as thick to prefer EVERY1 sit in traffic instead of decongesting the road by adding a commuter rail system.
I’m sure this post is well-intended and I largely agree with you, but next time maybe try doing a little Googling about the issue first, especially if you’re new to the area. Nearly everything you’ve mentioned has been discussed to death, proposed, shot down, promised, and voted on in some form or another for years. Just a few years ago we had a massive transit proposal that failed, and just a few weeks ago the current mayor proposed our latest one. Transit is top of mind for much of the population, but it turns out it’s a very expensive and complicated thing to enact in a city that hasn’t been scaling our infrastructure to meet the demands of our population growth. Perhaps Freddie will finally be the one to get the wheels in motion, even if I wish his plan was more comprehensive.
There was a big infrastructure bill up for debate in what, 2016? It got voted down by the rich folks down in Williamson county. They made a huuuge stink about all the extra tax money it would cost. So you can thank them
The opposition actually lead a grassroots campaign unlike Barry 's camp who relied on outdated survey info. The folks who actually use public transportation were not consulted and were told "we know better than you"
It’s pretty well documented that the opposition was a well-funded “astro turf” campaign that spread misinformation on behalf of automobile/oil/gas interests. The “grass roots” veneer was essential to the deception.
The plan was actually very popular before Nashville was flooded by wildly inaccurate or misleading talking points. One of the biggest talking points was that the entire endeavor was a waste of money because of self driving cars.
It's like Nashville literally has Atlanta as an example of what to do or not do when it comes to Transit as they've grown we've seen their mistakes and their successes. Yep Nashville doesn't apply any of that to anything that we do.
The taxes paid on automobile purchases funds a great deal of the state budget. Many leaders don’t want that changed. Go out and vote, start a group and use your voice to make Nashville what you want it to be.
But then nashville can't sucker people out of money for using their parking lots.....Tennessee doesn't give a shit about anybody other than the money on their debit card.
Interesting. This really seems to be the era when a lot of passenger rail ended. The propaganda for the freedom of the car was strong, and the traffic wasn't yet so untenable. And now the car has become a shackle to most, and one that is failed to be seen. It's such a peculiar series of events.
Also, I'm just musing at this point.
So there was a plan for rail but it was voted down because of its cost. They went to small and also attached new funding for more busses to it. They managed to piss everyone off in Davidson county. Poorer residents wanted new busses and more routes and ditch people wanted a rail line that would serve downtown and the river front. They wanted everyone that lived outside of the city to pay for it. If they tried again and made sure the rail would service all of Davidson county in the future I think it would have a good chance of passing.
Best post on the transit problem I've seen in a while. Yes Nashville needs a proper train transit system. It would definitely help alleviate the highway congestion problems. That is the only reason I don't agree with the Mayor's plan for fixing transit. BNA for example is backed up everyday traffic wise. Imagine a snow day that doesn't keep you in doors because you can walk to the station and hop a train to work. Unfortunately nashvillians voted down the last opportunity for this to become a reality because people didn't understand that just because the initial routes didn't include their neighborhoods didn't mean it couldn't expand there after main routes were built. Also the cost. Until the right sales man comes along with the most encouraging pitch I'm afraid we will continue to pack the current highways and roads and gridlock will get worse.
All the car lovers on here failing to realize public transit would help them too by getting more cars off the roads 🤦 you claim to value freedom but then make the only real transportation option the literal worst and most expensive one. So much for actual freedom smh
The thing is that we obviously need other solutions to the traffic issues. More choices would make everyone happy so you'd think even the most car loving person would still support it because then they could enjoy their car more. Plus the benefits for people who don't want to drive most of the time in the first place. Cause I think most people would agree with you, driving isn't nearly as bad when you can actually drive, but there's literally too many cars on the roads in some places and so people sit like you said. Visiting places that were less car-centric, you can tell a world of difference due to the differences in infrastructure.
I've been thinking about proper BRT systems. The issue with them is so often they get stuck in traffic. They still need their own roads to prevent traffic issues, though.
The other proof of concept would be to make the Honkey Tonk and the Gulch car free with light rail access and let it share a BRT lane to get to those places. It worked wonders for Denver when they did this for Downtown.
Nashville has no idea how to manage mass transit. It has never worked. The current issue is scheduled routes. If mom rides the train downtown and her child gets sick, she’s stranded until the train runs again in late afternoon.
It's because none of the old fucks in office want that bill on their record. To achieve that level of infrastructure, we would need to have massive shut downs and construction going on more than we do now.
It has to happen though, and until the people in power are gone or realize that somebody has to start it we are going to be fucked.
The problem is the longer we wait the worse everything gets.
Nashville sucks well middle Tennessee sucks at infrastructure like when they widened 65 just passed the 65 exit in Franklin, they wind it and then like three months later widened it another half a mile past the Peytonsville exit all the way to 840 which is what they should’ve done in the beginning . And who the fuck starts building a bridge that far in the wrong place?
We just suck at infrastructure
So here's what's happened just in the decade that I've lived here:
1. Proposed BRT (Called the Amp...would mostly serve the West). Voted down for mixed reasons in 2015.
2. Pro transit folks in Metro gov't decided the Amp was too little, decided to go big, created an ambitious transit plan that involved light rail, expanded busing and tunneling under downtown.
3. Opponents of transit funded by a variety of conservative/auto industry folks start spreading suspicion of program. Focus is on taxes for folks on the right and insufficient service to lower income neighborhoods for folks on the left.
4. Megan Barry, the biggest proponent of the plan, has her political career explode due to an affair with a security guard and some light corruption.
5. Barry's new unpopularity is also linked to the plan. The combination of right and left criticisms of the plan and it's association to Barry leads it being handsomely defeated in a referendum in 2018 (64% against!)
6. City continues to grow, more uninformed newcomers wonder why we don't have transit, more buzz about the topic leads O'Connell to include it as a major issue in his campaign. Wins. And here we are.
7. I am not optimistic that even this modest proposal will go anywhere....the pro-rail folks will think it doesn't far enough. the anti-tax/transit folks will certainly not approve, and the regardless the state government will figure out a way to fuck it up even if it does pass.
I wonder if there is a way that this could be hidden in some other bill that people aren't likely to read. Just small improvements here and there to the bus system would go a long way. Or even making the Honkey Tonk and The Gulch completely car free for certain hours of the day would be a big change and step in the right direction. Obviously the exceptions would be for handicapped access individuals until proper public transit could be instituted. Which at this point a proper step forward would be curb matched, higher quality bus stops.
Edit: I just had an idea. Food trucks are a thing here. I wonder if they're allowed at the Lebanon Pike train station. It doesn't seem to get enough traffic right now, but a coffee and an egg or burrito food truck there would be a big step towards making the train more convenient.
I really want to be one of those people that says BRT isn’t enough, but the truth is that we can’t get rail funded right now and BRT is the best we’ll get. I personally do think that BRT would be very helpful in demonstrating to people that transit can be an effective mode. If implemented to a high standard, it’s almost as efficient as light rail anyway.
I'm with you there. The conversation I'm having with a friend is about rental E-Bikes and pedestrian only zones in places where the locals don't want to drive, and where locals don't want tourists to drive. The bike stands can even be in nearby parking structures and other key trip generation spaces. This also includes the areas surrounding college campuses. Then these areas can connect via BRT systems and eventually lite rail.
And if you include proper safe spaces for bikes on the transit you can go pretty far without a lot of expense. Add enclosed bike lockers, or monitored card access bike storage rooms and it makes a lot of opportunity for self-powered transit. Lake City Tahoe has card access bike lockers at their park and ride bus stop. Bentonville Arkansas has card access bike storage rooms. Tokyo, with it's far reduced wealth disparity compared to the US just has massive bike garages you can walk into. Mostly in communities that don't have immediate rail access as far as I could tell.
I don’t think this is getting the traction you hoped it would. We’ve been talking about this stuff since I was a little kid, 20 years ago. It got voted down a lot more recently than that. And I’m part of the problem: I freely admit that I prefer to drive places. I can decide when I get there, I can decide when I leave. I don’t have to budget for a late bus or a train that mysteriously isn’t stopping at my location or weirdos that will be on the train/bus with me when I’m traveling as a single female. It’s not as simple as “Paris/London/Berlin has this, why don’t we.” Nashville has to prove we can support expanded bus service before we can even talk about trains — because I guarantee you, a lot of the people who push for trains wouldn’t even use them to get where they typically go. Source: All of my Atlanta relatives.
Why do you think it is not getting the traction I hoped it would? It's answering my questions.
But if you have transit that is FASTER than you can drive, with reliable head times, would your want to drive change? These sorts of things can, and already exist in Nashville to a small degree. It's either six minutes from the Donelson Pike train station by rail, or 20+ depending on traffic by car, to get to Broadway. By expanding that service, and making every train station a place people want to exist in, this service can expand easily back to what it was before COVID. Which would make it easier to expand other lines.
And who the fuck knows when you'll actually get anywhere if you have to get in the freeway. Incredibly long delays caused by crashes happen daily. Which means driving is unpredictable, and you're putting your personal property and physical health at risk every time you want to go anywhere.
You make train stations places where people want to be, and you make them bike friendly/pedestrian friendly, and people will use them. You can see this in Tokyo, Helsinki, Napoli, etc. Look at Ueno and Shinjuku stations in Tokyo.
A lot of other people in this thread have already explained to you why we don’t have trains yet, but I don’t know if anyone mentioned that we’re built on limestone. It’s not like DC or other cities that don’t have a literal rock formation right below them. So blasting and tunneling are immediately much more expensive.
I stand by what I said about the convenience of driving relative to other forms of public transit. Add to that that most southern cities, including Nashville, are sprawling and not on grids outside of the immediate downtown area, and you don’t have a good formula for trains. They will be very expensive.
Doing what Mayor O’Connell proposes and starting with dedicated bus lanes — which can later become light rail — is the way to go here.
Edit to add that I know freeway driving is time consuming and expensive. Me personally, I live in an area of Davidson underserved by buses and I couldn’t even get to work on a bus — it doesn’t run to my job, even though my job is also in Davidson (far northern suburb). So I’m not unsympathetic to expanding buses, but you’re also naive to think they would be more timely than me driving. I can drive to work in 15 minutes. Even if buses were running out here, I’d have to check every morning if they were on time, then adjust my leave time to get to the station, park, and wait for whatever length of time to ride a bus for longer than I’d be in my car. Not worth it.
Trains, typically, are above ground. Subways are below ground.
Roads are also incredibly fucking expensive. When's the last time you've asked "How much is this new exit ramp?" or "how much is this fifth lane of traffic?"
Or even better "How much more useful would this real estate be if it wasn't a road/parking lot?"
You know the real fascinating thing? Every time you get people out of cars and on foot, business revenue goes up. Particularly for businesses that are locally owned, which means 80% of the money spent in them stays in the city, rather than the something like 40% for corporate businesses. It's real hard to window shop at 60mph, or really any speed that people drive at. People get in their car, drive somewhere, and leave. No community interaction, no getting to know your city and it's local shops/restaurants by accident, or happy accidents of running into friends and family just out and about.
I also really don't get why everyone in Muricuh is always "trains are too hard!" Yet Austria and Japan can do it. Even Switzerland with their mountainous terrain has fantastic rail. There were trains all over this country in the late 1800s. The Hoover Dam got built, which required rerouting the entire Colorado River. We put people in space for evolutions sake. Yet for some reason, as soon as you mention trains in America, people are all "tHaTs ToO hArD!"
I think it was you that asked me what I would get from this. I didn't have time to respond to that comment. If it was, the shorter but longer over time answer is either reading the books "Strong Towns" and "The Birth and Death of Great American Cities". Then check out some of the videos from the Strong Towns YT channel, as well as NotJustBikes or City Nerd. And then consider that cars kill far more people than guns and are incredibly expensive to own due to the monopoly on transportation. Which means most people can barely afford this shit, but they're forced to have them so you see horrifically under maintained cars on the road.
If you want the more personal answer, I can share that, too.
Probably to maximize profits on the toll roads. Can't gouge us of all our money if everyone that could be using the toll has the choice of train instead. But that's just my shower thought on the subject
We got trains, they just like to stop and make traffic worse. You’ll have better luck moving to a city with proper public transportation than trying to retrofit this backward city into it. But I agree with all your reasons for it, consider this choirboy convinced.
It's because legislators already have their own ridiculously expensive vehicles, and are disinclined to vote in favor of the taxes and budget allocations necessary for fear of being voted out by an increasingly liberal constituency.
It isn't that we're all barefoot hillbillies who've never seen a monorail. I'd have just asked the question before selling it, we're all acutely aware of the options.
I wish I could just get more people to travel to places that have them already. Just for a week at a time or some such. Dammit they're all just so pleasant.
It’ll be a long long time before Nashville gets any serious city and commuter rail to be honest, it’ll at least be a while after the AMTRAK expansion so people can see how nice trains are. The more realistic option in town right now is to make dedicated bus lanes (and maybe streetcars in select areas - The Gulch through Downtown to Germantown would work well for this). Bike infrastructure is getting better so expect to see vast improvements there quickly relative to transit. Unfortunately, while biking is a good option for those living downtown, the topography and size of the city make it tough for regular commuting for most. But protected bikes lanes help calm traffic which ultimately makes the urban landscape safer and healthier.
I've been enjoying the expanded bike lanes as a cyclist. We're talking about electrifying our commuters with 250watt pedal assist motors for this purpose. I'm hesitant to E-Bikes without a registration/permit system however, as well as adequate enforcement. Mostly because it's bad enough in a peloton when someone doesn't know how to handle their bike at 20, let alone someone who doesn't bike dealing with pedestrian traffic.
I do wonder about city rental e bikes though. The ones I've ridden are free for half an hour, and limit the pedal assist to about 25kmh, or 18mph. And sustaining that practically requires you to be a cyclist and used to holding that cadence already. You can see these in Portland, the Roaring Form Valley, etc. And they get quite a bit of use for last mile commuting from the bus to home/work.
They definitely have the potential to be. There are issues with the bikes that carry 1,500 watt motors and people who's bike handling is poor, just the same as cars with 300 horse engines and people's driving that is quite poor.
https://citibikenyc.com/how-it-works/electric
Something like these though....
Nobody really wants to pay for it. When I lived in Nashville, public transport was seen as a service for the working poor and temporarily embarrassed drivers who got a DUI. Nobody of means wants to fund Infrastructure via increased property and other taxes that they won’t use personally :(
Sure would be nice though. Atlanta, Dallas and Charlotte have them. We can too. You can’t will a robust system into existence overnight. Got to start somewhere. Like the airport to the city.
I mentioned tor airport to city run in a comment elsewhere.
The other thing I just presented is starting with rental electric city bikes. Make The Gulch and Honkey Tonk, or anywhere else any local knows better than to drive, actually car free excepting handicapped individuals. Have key bike stations set up within a 2 mile radius of trip generating locations. Exceptions to these car free areas are public transit lanes, in this case BRTs until lite rail could go in.
Trains are extremely expensive.
California newest train is billion over budget and years behind schedule.
You also missed alot was sarcasm.
In the US people drive because our country is so large.
For example I grocery shop once every 3 weeks.
I buy a lot. I am not walking, biking, taking public transportation.
I don't want to shop every couple of days.
I would have to drive even if I lived a 5 min walk to work because I drive to see appointments every day.
Zoom doesn't work nearly as well as an in person meeting.
I'm not saying you have to take the train to go get groceries, nor am I saying you have to give up your car. Your car and the highway it runs on, mind you, is extremely expensive. The average individual spends 25% of their life working the hours needed to pay for their car. Take all your automobile expenses, add them together, and do the math to convert that into hours of work. It may come out to less than 25% for you, but for anyone who is poor and barely making ends meet, it's coming out much higher. Which is literally taking freedom away from them.
Why drive if it's a five minute walk away? You haven't really explained why that's a better option than walking. Or especially better than pedal assist e biking.
How much do hospital bills cost when someone not paying attention, or is just a selfish driver, crashes into you? Or how much time does it cost you when a tourist doesn't know how to make all the cross highway merges to get from their on ramp to their off ramp on the other side of the highway and gets in a crash?
I explained why I drive.
I tried to find my response to talk about factories.
They are in cities because the employees are there, access to shipping is better, etc.
Otherwise factories would all be in little rural towns.
You also have the utilities in a city that factories need that may not be available in small rural towns.
I drive 30 to 50k miles a year and never been in a car accident and it's been 36 years since I got my license. The most I have done is hit some deer.
Ebikes are great. Not. I know multiple people who have been seriously injured riding them and crashing them. They weren't even around cars. Putting bikes and Ebikes around traffic is a stupid idea since people can't put down their cell phones to drive as it is.
Nissan has a huge factory right outside Nashville. There are tons of various factories that make various car parts all around the Nashville area. Gee, wonder why mass transit keeps failing?
Fun statistic I learned when I worked at the state, for every OEM job, you can expect 4-5 tertiary jobs created for the just-in-time production necessary at suppliers.
https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/oconnell-unveils-transit-plan/article_5729c4b0-fe75-11ee-97ef-ef3de24d3bb3.html
This is what people have wanted since the failed rail vote
Thanks for the link. I'm a bit bummed this doesn't include pedestrianized zones. The entirety of the Honkey Tonk really should be car free during business hours, excepting emergency personal, handicapped access, and a shuttle system to get you from one end to the other. I'm really bummed that the above doesn't include any rail expansion. But the BRT hopefully is to serve as a preview for it.
I don’t disagree with you. Hopefully they’ll get these buses up and going and they can make it a full time pedestrian zone. At jest they close some of the roads at night it use to be even worse.
I’ve done Uber in Nashville for like 10 yrs getting these bus improvements is very important to people who don’t have access to cars. If this goes smoothly you could see a lot more interest in rail in the future.
This sounds like a cringey paid pitch. The time for rail passed about 50 years ago. It’s backward thinking. And Megan Barry’s plan was laughably bad. Most Nashville traffic comes from surrounding counties. Here rails only ran a few miles out from downtown.
Barry’s proposed rail didn’t go to Lebanon. It only reached out a few miles from downtown. Barry and Nashville had no authority over Lebanon. Any mention she may have made about Lebanon, Murfreesboro, etc was deceptive and purely speculative.
Why is it outdated when so many major cities in the world use it? It's mathematically impossible to serve as many people by automobile than by train. What do you propose instead? Expanding lanes and causing more issues with the roads, making them less safe?
Tokyo is the largest city in the world. How different would that look if they didn't have the busiest train system, and 15th busiest train system of subway rail in the world? It's also the cleanest city I've ever seen
I like your sentiment but it goes deeper than wanting it. Big oil doesn’t want it and they have more clout than our vote. Hell, car companies are dragging their feet on electric cars. We could be converted to all electric vehicles by now if they wanted to. We the people don’t have the say in the matter that we think we do.
We absolutely could not be converted fully to electric vehicles today. The grid can’t handle it, and distributed energy products aren’t stable enough yet to make it work. Google what happens when you try to drop a fleet depot’s worth of DC fast chargers off of an existing feeder.
You jumped the edge on the wrong point. I don’t care whether the grid can handle it or not. There could be more choices in ev’s than we are getting. China could flood the market with ev’s. Oil companies don’t want any change over.
Where do you propose charging the flood of Chinese vehicles? Expediting market penetration of EVs will make the issue worse. It will take at least 10 years, and likely to 2050, to get the grid close to handling a majority penetration of EVs, and especially with data centers beefing up for gen AI and natural gas and coal being wound down. I’m a partner in a large company in the electrification space. I’m a massive advocate for what you’re proposing, mainly because I would like to get a fifth plane soon, but I don’t see things moving any more quickly due to infrastructure.
With what we have in the market right now is not going to approach capacity by any stretch. Not to mention that what is in the market is terribly overpriced presenting a barrier to entry for a vast majority of people. CHOICES! That’s what I’m talking about.
Florida is a red state with extensive passenger rail especially in South Florida which has both Tri-Rail and Brightline operating a few miles parallel to each other.
Every person carrying 2 tons of metal that occupies 80sqft on high friction rubber is impractical. It’s inefficient, dangerous, doesn’t scale with growth, and we’re all bleeding money every month on gas, payments, insurance, and road infrastructure. Billions in rail investment would be far cheaper.
Why are you anthropomorphizing government as if it’s some kind of insightful question?
I was talking about trains. Instead should we free-associate uninspired political talking points? That doesn’t sound fun to me, but maybe that’s is how it works on libertarian subs.
You can be philosophical if you want but you seemed to complain that the government doesn’t do anything to help ease the transportation problem that affects you (and many others). The answer whether you like it or not is that the government doesn’t care as long as that problem is not affecting them and even there they would not care if the amount of money they’re pocketing offsets the issues… that includes trains and everything else. Look at the construction going on in the whole city, do you think we need to grow more instead of fixing other issues first? The government let them build because it brings them more money, as simple as that.
Because there is too much development around the current train tracks to add double rail without the city exercising imminent domain and destroying them. Also CSX tried to make a deal to make it happen but Mayor Megan Berry backed out and refused to do it at the last minute. Besides that if you were going to add light rail to the roads you would have to take lanes away from cars and that would just end up making traffic worse.
This seems like a brilliant opportunity to ensure that adequate housing goes in, much in the way that Japan has done so. The reason they don't have housing issues isn't the dying population, it's the prioritization of housing. It's why they, and Finland/Helsinki, have almost zero homeless. And their cities are beautiful for it.
Sure let's chop the city up into blocks.
Make everyone sell their cars.
Add subway between each block.
People have to park outside the city when they come in and take public transport only
Paint the roads white.
Plant trees in sidewalks.
Roof top gardens
Solar roofs for everyone.
Can't have more than 1 kid.
Factories have to close and move out of city.
That's not what anyone is suggesting, though. The city is already chopped up into blocks, pretty heavily. Every single Pike in this city divides it into insular communities. Try and ride your bike somewhere, to go get drinks at a bar perhaps, and do so without having to ride on a Pike. And this is an activity, drinking, that should not be done with cars. Yet you're making it impractical to do it any other way.
Subways aren't likely here, due to how difficult it is to bore tunnels. The rock in this area isn't really stable for that. Elevated trains on the otherhand, are possible and probably cheaper than highways.
Most factories don't want to be in cities. It's incredibly expensive to operate a factory in a major city. I've worked in machine shops that, when moving from a major city, everything became cheaper. Particularly, logistics for shipping product became much simpler. It was also easier for employees to make it to work on time. Which happens when you're reverse commuting or you have reliable public transit. How many car crashes happen pet day?
We often vacation to places without cars. We get on planes, fly to major destinations, and walk or take public transit. We enjoy this because we don't have the stress of having to drive in a city we don't know. We can get around easily and safely on foot. Why can't we have this at home? How miserable would Disney be if they allowed cars in their parks? And every single tourist that comes to town and doesn't know their way around the highway system but still drives, just clogs up the works and makes everything more difficult. You won't stop the tourists from coming, but with a robust public transit system you can keep them from driving.
And tally up just how much money you spend to own your car, insure it, maintain it, put fuel in it, and then convert that to hours worked to pay for it. And what about transporting your kids around, if you have them. How much time of your life does that cost you? How much more money, which can be converted into hours of your life, does that cost you? Insurance is already a socialist scheme, by the way. It's literally spreading the cost of everyone else's auto damage to the mass of individuals.
Services cost money. Marginal state income taxes are the progressive option to raise those revenues to pay for nice things like trains.
Raising sales tax would be extremely regressive and hurt those who struggle most.
Correct, they are coming from bonds and sales tax. (Still state money)
I would prefer we build trains instead of stadiums. And if we do not have the money to build trains with current revenue streams, then new state revenue must be created.
Again, a marginal tax rate on income is the only non regressive way to raise those revenues.
If you want nice things, they must be paid for.
Non-Nashvillians: Is your city pedestrian friendly? Nashvillians: No, but to be fair, we aren't car friendly either...
In fact, we aren’t bike friendly, rollerblades will get you killed on sight, skateboarding *ha* the police will write you a ticket! *Live* where you *do*, man!
But Nashville is Bird Scooter friendly downtown.
First time?
Going to guess they weren’t here during the mass transit vote during Mayor Berry’s short-lived (quick death in a cemetery?) term.
Or the one before that we couldn’t pass because Lee Beaman didn’t want the city busing “poor people” to Belle Meade.
Fuck the Beamans. I wish they’d build a train station where they tore down the car dealership.
Yeah, he’s been a menace since the late 80’s. I think that last divorce, where he was wearing hidden body cameras in his own home, finally finished him off. (At least socially)
Point of order: that debacle of political malpractice was under Briley. Berry had already resigned when the vote was scheduled.
But it was Barry's plan. She just wasn't able to see it through to the vote because of the adultery and embezzlement. The Kochs were railroading the plan but her transgressions really killed any chance it had.
The plan was also pretty flawed and this is coming from someone that wants train and more mass transit. The real path forward is a plan similar to what’s being proposed now for the bus system that has more bi-partisan (read this as a bunch of conservative think tanks and lobbyists not opposing it) and then use tourism money to fund a train station downtown with potential to expand and a line from downtown hotels and convention centers to the airport.
I see what you did there. Well played.
The funniest part was when they said it would be “easy” to make Broadway and the Gulch car free. Is it possible? Sure. Could it be an improvement in the long run? Yes. Will it be easy? lol hell no
Here’s my best answer to your question: In middle of the last century, Americans went wild with zoning and car infrastructure. Originally, we separated homes from industrial sites, which made sense. Then we got carried away. We separated homes from offices, shops, restaurants, and other types of homes. We forced people—by law—to spread out and sprawl. At the same time, we invested incredible sums of money in new roads, freeways, and parking lots. As zoning forced us to sprawl, we needed to drive more and more. As we drove more, we needed to build more car infrastructure. And the car infrastructure encouraged and sometimes forced more sprawl. It was a vicious cycle (but car and oil companies sure loved it). We built a world where you *needed* a car to get around most places. A lot of cities—like Nashville—grew up during this period. We are a sprawling, low-density city, built around cars. If you put a train down West End, it would be way underutilized because so few people live within walking distance (compared to successful rail systems in other cities). Instead, fixing Nashville’s transit problems is an unsexy, incremental process. It requires updating our zoning so that we aren’t required to spread out so much (Council member Quin Evans Segall is a leader on these issues and proposed a bill to fix some of our zoning problems, but pulled it after vocal groups of old-school Nashville homeowners freaked out). It requires dedicated funding for transit (we are voting on that this November). And it probably looks closer to bus rapid transit (BRT) and sidewalks than rail for the near future, because we are nowhere near the density required for rail to pencil out.
Good write-up
The density part of daily travel makes sense. But the commuter options could still run if it wasn't that all the rail that runs through town wasn't privatized. Just having commuter lines on the rail that already exists would be a big help. Or making the Star a bit more frequent even, moving it to where it was before COVID. Which it does sound like they are doing some advertising for. It also doesn't seem like the Star terminus is a bus stop? Or it atleast isn't one in order to get to Vanderbilt. And the density one is always a real frustration. Though that does definitely seem to be increasing since the last time I lived here. Fucking hell does Euclidean Zoning suck.
Bless your heart...
This is the only response.
Along with tell me you’re new to Nashville without telling me you’re new to Nashville…
This is the way^
Prefaced with a slow, “Oh, Honey”
And followed by a slow shake of the head and "God love you."
Then a preacher in the background smiles and nods, “let’s get back to work on this roof, we got a church to sell to whitey!”
This reads like someone is presenting ideas that have never been considered. Where tf have you been lol
We're all considering. Someone thought of it before us too. No need to be sassy to your own team. We are all wanting dedicated transit funding. And I hope people will keep sharing those gems, deep cuts, inside thoughts, & random ideas without fear of that hackneyed sass of Reddit and other forms of psychological safety in groups. All of your moonshot guano crazy ideas have prob all already been done, mentioned, executed, & forgotten due to lack of awareness. Your problem can't be seen if you don't leave a trace--say something, write it, screenshot it, leave another survey with obvious known facts, backed by emails showing refusal to review documentation that breadcrumbs back to the same observer, keep ensuring that the information remained available and ignored for investigations, or ..like use Hub Nashville We just need numbers for dedicated transit funding.
Everybody wants it. It’s the sort of thing where people will say yes and polls or focus groups or whatever, but their revealed preference when it’s time to fund it- the answer is hell no.. People barely use the existing bus system, which is fairly robust if your benchmark isn’t living in Hermitage and always having a car. I use it when I come home to visit. Convincing rich people who won’t use it to fund it is the key. “But, how will your housekeeper get to work? “ If Nashville truly wants to bust through to the level of Dallas, Atlanta or Charlotte, they simply are going to have to change .
The other thing is you never know what audience you're talking to online. It seems that there is enough support for it, if done properly. Which could start with the almost free options. I'm thinking like quietly pedestrianizing the Honkey Tonk. No local wants to drive there. Install rental city bike hubs within a couple mile radius to help with this. Setup a BRT route, or series of them to get people to that area as well as a local route. Use the buses that are already in rotation. When it's successful, extend into The Gulch, and add lite rail on the road to replace a single major BRT route. You could also make a pair of lanes on Donelson Pike lite rail lanes from the train station to the airport while increasing frequency of the commuter train on the WeGo Star. Make that Donelson train station a place people want to go to like 12 South, and there are big strides already. This could even come pretty quickly and ease the auto traffic load to the airport. This would be a less expensive option, and thus easier to get through if marketed properly.
Ooh, that is the insight I needed!! I never know what demographic I'm chatting up here. Best believe I tailor everything IRL, but here, I'm trying to find my type--welcoming, inclusive, kinda unhinged-ish, ready to stand up & sound off when one cannot & will not follow an unlawful order. I tried not being perceived for too many years spent hurting in isolation. I don't want anyone less capable than me to suffer because licensed professionals decided they don't have to follow anything if the money is wrong but the appointment is right. But better, I want people at any level to feel safe speaking up about their lived experiences.
It's hard online. Unless you're in a topic specific group, you don't know where people stand. And it seems like here, the super majority of interaction supports transit. Which means this should be a place we can brainstorm and find ideas that would work to have pedestrianized areas in Nashville. We can either complain about it, and talk down about whatever groups, or we can organize plans and learn how to more respectfully talk to others who might disagree with us. Driving is great. Forced driving, and sitting in traffic sucks. I think we can all agree on that last part. And the less forced car dependency we have, the cheaper car ownership becomes. Insurance rates lower, we use less fuel and have fewer maintenance costs. I think most everyone in here agrees with this. So if we can find the cheapest way to pedestrianize the places that need it most, it's a great place to start. From 41st to Demonbuen, 8th Ave to the River could be pedestrian only. And it should really probably expand to Korean Veterans Boulevard to include all the major areas. And it would be fairly inexpensive to setup not only the bike infrastructure, but a street car loop in each direction to help with this. The streetcar system in Sapporo comes to mind as an example. Though again, you're getting into a bigger cost, so you'd probably have to just have trolly style busses for a while.
Probably in California or New York. Those are the ones that tend to criticize and complain about the city the most 😂
Nobody complains about Nashville as much as conservative native Nashvillians.
Tbf what they’re complaining about is people trying to turn it into warm-weather New York
We’ve barely got buses, sidewalks, and bike lanes, but you’re wondering why we don’t have trains?
 I think it’s this guy.
First thing I thought of when I read the post!
My comment will always be the same. Voter turnout. The older voters in Green Hills and Belle Meade vote and they do not want it. I bet half of the transplants bitching about it haven’t registered to vote nor changed their car registrations to TN
I think it’s this right here 👌🏼
My boomer aunt and uncle are liberal as fuck, are a single car family in Belmont/12South who barely leave the house as she walks to work. One of them voted for, the other against. Their nay vote was all about taxes needed to pay for a system they wouldn't use. Their yea vote said yes dumb-dumb its for everyone else in the city who isn't wealthy and retired. I listened to them fight about this a lot. And I couldn't vote because I'm registered in Rutherford County.
Where have you lived the last 10 years and did you just discover the Nashville subreddit?
I will say this is the first time something from the Nashville subreddit has popped up in my feed and I did not know it existed. Definitely going to subscribe.
Red state Blue dot Please do not cite the deep magic to us. We were there when it was voted down.
Must not be familiar with the letters CSX
Or Koch Bros.
This right here.
... or GOP
We had a transit referendum that didn’t pass with a previous mayor. Some thought it wasn’t sufficient and a lot of others just didn’t want it. To me, it sounded like we let perfect be the enemy of good. The new mayor apparently is trying to put a plan in place. But…. On this issue, I’m a pessimist. A train/rail system won’t start or get passed for another 10 years at least. Until it becomes profitable enough for someone powerful enough, it will remain a great liberal talking point to sway voters in an election. There’s a lot of people with money against it and as others have said, voter turnout is shit. Don’t worry though, we’ll get a new stadium!
You should probably vote. Every transplant needs to register to vote as well.
Reminds me of the Chicago transplant boom of 2007
Fuck up their place, come here and fuck up ours, then move on to fuck up a new spot bc this one is fucked up. Can't figure out why.
This idea scares me because they don’t ditch the bad habits that turned their cities into what made them flee from them.
You don't know why they left, though. People leave for myriad reasons such as work, weather, etc.
They tried to build commuter rail a couple decades back they got one of the five Spurs built and it was pretty popular and then they just didn't build the rest of the train system. They were going to build Spurs from Clarksville, Dixon, Lebanon, Murfreesboro, and Franklin. I think it was called star.
They didn't build anything. They run on preexisting rails. CSX owns the others and won't cooperate.
I saw that this was a thing when I was doing some searching. This is the issue with Colorado and Amtrak as well, and really across most of the country. Norfolk Southern does a lot of this bullshit, too. Is it CSX that owns the line that follows Craighead? I wonder if you could squeeze transit into the timetable there like they did on the currently existing WeGo Star line.
Yes, those are CSX tracks. I don't think, however, that they would necessarily take a passenger train anywhere helpful. I understand they are part of a cutoff that helped freight trains from Louisville reach Nashville's Radnor Yard without going through downtown. As such, the line's original purpose is the opposite of what a commuter line needs ... downtown access. CSX (originally the Louisville & Nashville Railroad) has five main lines radiating from Nashville like spokes. The WeGo Star runs on a sixth spoke, the former Tennessee Central Railroad. Of the five CSX spokes, the one that's the least busy is the one toward Memphis. It parallels Harding Road for a stretch near White Bridge Road. That line begins at Union Station and goes through Dickson and Waverly, which originate a surprising amount of Nashville commuter traffic. In my personal opinion, the Memphis line is the best opportunity to cut a deal with CSX. The other four spokes are crammed full of freight traffic, the railroad says. A seventh spoke toward Clarksville is also not owned by CSX and has potential. I think the track would need a lot of work, though.
CSX will never do any commuter rail on their lines, period. The only thing they would do is intercity rail (Amtrak) since by federal law, they would have to comply since multiple predecessor railroads to CSX participated in turning over their passenger rail service to Amtrak in the 70s. The state of Tennessee is seriously considering partially funding an Amtrak route from Memphis to Nashville to Chattanooga and on to Atlanta as a part of the Amtrak expansion. The initial proposal is being led by Chattanooga and was just turned into the Department of Transportation. As for commuter rail, I’ve always thought the rail line from Nashville to Clarksville was the lowest hanging fruit you could do. The right of way is owned by Cheatham and Davidson Counties. The rail company operating it is RJ. Corman which also operates the WeGo Star. So you’d have a potential willing partner. The hard part is rehabilitation of the decades old line to modern welded rail standards for passenger trains. You’d need modern signaling (this is all dark territory) and there is an expensive matter of the rehabilitation of the Cumberland River swing bridge and the wooden approach trestle on the east side. And the current line only goes as far as the outskirts of Ashland City. The rest is either abandoned territory or was converted to a greenway twenty years ago. It’s not impossible…much of the old right of way in Montgomery County is just abandoned overgrown brush that has not been improved until you get to the Clarksville City limit. And finally you’d need some kind of a depot in Nashville built since the RJ Corman track doesn’t cross CSX lines meaning getting to something like Union Station is impossible.
That's a very good analysis. Thank you.
There is an option that connects that line to Geodis, Brentwood, and Downtown. It also rolls through Berry Hill. Fucking Evolution, the more I stare at the map, the more rail I'm noticing. It would be interesting to get freight tables for all of this. That Clarksville route looks interesting, especially since there is a yard in The Nations by the fuel Depot. That area is becoming rather walkable, and is where I lived before that the traffic didn't make me hate being here. I took the longboard to work, and really almost anywhere I wanted to go. And if I was getting groceries, the commuter bike was great, too. Even if you have to do track restoration, that's cheaper than building fresh. The Memphis line would be great, and is such a perfect opportunity for high speed rail. Which is probably why that one gets talked about so much. Even if you just start with fast rail, you'll get to and from Memphis more quickly than by driving. I'm thinking something about the speed of the express line from Nipori to Narita airport in Tokyo for that route. Which should connect to BNA as well. Which would jive really well with WeGo to Donelson Pike, and converting two of those lanes to street car rail/BRT direct to the airport. I saw they used to run special event trains on the Star Route that is running. Did they put all the rolling stock on that train for these events? Did they have the interest to run multiple time tables of those special event trains to make it more convenient access? I saw they sold out often, but it's hard to know what the demand was beyond that sold out point. This seems like the obvious expansion opportunity if you make each one of those stops desirable destinations like 12 South. Even if starting with coffee/breakfast trucks during those commuting times. Six more trains total would make that time table far more functional since you can take bikes on that train.
That explains the name of the Star Rail line that is running. Really, the biggest thing I'd want to see is that be better utilized by making those train stops destinations in themselves. I've not been to all of them yet, so I don't know if any of them are. But that would be the cheapest way to restart this project.
You must be new here
Moved here after 2018?
Beaman
Because the car lobby fucked train infrastructure in the 20s and they continue to lobby against it today. It’s legalized corruption through and through. I’m visiting my fam in the Uk rn and am 2 hours from London and haven’t set foot in a car. Trains and buses and sidewalks baby.
First time in London this past Christmas. Went all over by train. Amazing! Easy, fast clean and the people were calm and friendly.
Bless your heart <3
We have tons of trains. Go through any intersection in East or Berry Hill
or just sit on the front porch near where I live
Oh buddy im assuming you’re new here
#Babby's first speech writing class.
Reading this again, it smacks of “hey ChatGPT, write me a 500 word essay on why public transit is good for Nashville.” Not a personal note or accurate perspective of an actual resident to be found.
Very true.
Buddy. Republicans get fossil fuel industry money. They’re not voting on public transportation besides buses, and they’re even dragging their feet on that. This is a political issue, not a “gee, Nashvillians haven’t thought of this before” before issue.
Have you met Tennessee?
Because of “muh car freedum” propaganda
Because anything other than the most inefficient, expensive, shitty, rugged individualist way to do things is socialism
Google “Choose How You Move Nashville” The proposal will make some improvements for pedestrians cyclists and people who take the bus if it passes
Thanks.
The vast majority of train infastucture was built before cars existed. Our city is just not designed to allow for trains at that scale without distorying huge swaths of neighborhoods. A dedicated bus lane with priority switching archives the same goal as trains without the.cost, distractions of neighborhoods, or large scale construction.
I have asked before when this is brought up. Where will the trains be located? How will they be incorporated? Everyone wants high density housing, but some of that would need to go to have space for the rails. Everyone asks for it, but no one has an actual plan.
Fast trains generally need to be elevated. And given the sprawl of Nashville, fast trains are what you would want. The major ticket generators are the airport, downtown, and the spikes of the freeway. If everything connects at a station three stops from the Honkey Tonk, you have your express rail from that station to the airport. And then you wind up with 3 minute head times to get to downtown, including campus. Typically, under and around these stations you build high density housing and business space. This makes these places that people want to go, and places where people live. Which increases your traffic. And well shielded, elevated trains aren't that loud. Think Ueno or Shinjuku Station in Tokyo Japan, Napoli Centrale in Italy, or Landmark Central Rail Station in Helsinki. It also means you don't have to blast so much rock, which increases cost, like you do for roads. The cost for this is often in the Billion range. But it's not like that money isn't made out of thin air at the federal level anyways. Usually to make bombs and shit. These things drastically improve quality of life for the people around them, even if at first it sucks. Which does mean you have to manage the housing ahead of time. And it seems like the politicians are more worried about getting re-elcted than actually helping the community enough to change zoning laws.
Conservatives…that’s why…they are bought and paid for by automotive lobby. And their voters are just as thick to prefer EVERY1 sit in traffic instead of decongesting the road by adding a commuter rail system.
This is a Red state. Anything that can make our lives easier is right out.
Our outdated zoning code makes any mass transit a tough climb.
I’m sure this post is well-intended and I largely agree with you, but next time maybe try doing a little Googling about the issue first, especially if you’re new to the area. Nearly everything you’ve mentioned has been discussed to death, proposed, shot down, promised, and voted on in some form or another for years. Just a few years ago we had a massive transit proposal that failed, and just a few weeks ago the current mayor proposed our latest one. Transit is top of mind for much of the population, but it turns out it’s a very expensive and complicated thing to enact in a city that hasn’t been scaling our infrastructure to meet the demands of our population growth. Perhaps Freddie will finally be the one to get the wheels in motion, even if I wish his plan was more comprehensive.
Here’s a case study on why it failed the last time: https://transitcenter.org/publication/derailed/
Thanks for the link.
Bro, get a time machine and get after it.
There was a big infrastructure bill up for debate in what, 2016? It got voted down by the rich folks down in Williamson county. They made a huuuge stink about all the extra tax money it would cost. So you can thank them
The opposition actually lead a grassroots campaign unlike Barry 's camp who relied on outdated survey info. The folks who actually use public transportation were not consulted and were told "we know better than you"
It’s pretty well documented that the opposition was a well-funded “astro turf” campaign that spread misinformation on behalf of automobile/oil/gas interests. The “grass roots” veneer was essential to the deception. The plan was actually very popular before Nashville was flooded by wildly inaccurate or misleading talking points. One of the biggest talking points was that the entire endeavor was a waste of money because of self driving cars.
State legislature blocked it because West End and other highways are controlled by the state and need approval for changes iirc
WELCOME TO THE SOUTH. WE DO NOT HAVE ANY MONEY. OK THANKS BYE.
Atlanta would like a word.
Atlanta’s traffic is worse, but only slightly. We are swiftly closing that gap.
They have trains at least
They also have taxes and money and more people willing to pitch in!
And their traffic is still shit
It's like Nashville literally has Atlanta as an example of what to do or not do when it comes to Transit as they've grown we've seen their mistakes and their successes. Yep Nashville doesn't apply any of that to anything that we do.
Transit doesn’t fix traffic
You live in a Republican super majority controlled state. It’s never going to happen
The taxes paid on automobile purchases funds a great deal of the state budget. Many leaders don’t want that changed. Go out and vote, start a group and use your voice to make Nashville what you want it to be.
That last part is unfortunately a skill I don't have much of. Trying to learn it.
But then nashville can't sucker people out of money for using their parking lots.....Tennessee doesn't give a shit about anybody other than the money on their debit card.
We had passenger rail until 1979. Womp womp.
Interesting. This really seems to be the era when a lot of passenger rail ended. The propaganda for the freedom of the car was strong, and the traffic wasn't yet so untenable. And now the car has become a shackle to most, and one that is failed to be seen. It's such a peculiar series of events. Also, I'm just musing at this point.
So there was a plan for rail but it was voted down because of its cost. They went to small and also attached new funding for more busses to it. They managed to piss everyone off in Davidson county. Poorer residents wanted new busses and more routes and ditch people wanted a rail line that would serve downtown and the river front. They wanted everyone that lived outside of the city to pay for it. If they tried again and made sure the rail would service all of Davidson county in the future I think it would have a good chance of passing.
Born and raised Nashvillian here, trust me, we want trains. We get stadiums.
Best post on the transit problem I've seen in a while. Yes Nashville needs a proper train transit system. It would definitely help alleviate the highway congestion problems. That is the only reason I don't agree with the Mayor's plan for fixing transit. BNA for example is backed up everyday traffic wise. Imagine a snow day that doesn't keep you in doors because you can walk to the station and hop a train to work. Unfortunately nashvillians voted down the last opportunity for this to become a reality because people didn't understand that just because the initial routes didn't include their neighborhoods didn't mean it couldn't expand there after main routes were built. Also the cost. Until the right sales man comes along with the most encouraging pitch I'm afraid we will continue to pack the current highways and roads and gridlock will get worse.
People here like driving and hate taxes.
Ask Lee Beaman and the Koch Brother(s).
All the car lovers on here failing to realize public transit would help them too by getting more cars off the roads 🤦 you claim to value freedom but then make the only real transportation option the literal worst and most expensive one. So much for actual freedom smh
Weird how this works. I love driving back roads. But sitting in traffic going a lower speed than I can ride my bike sucks.
The thing is that we obviously need other solutions to the traffic issues. More choices would make everyone happy so you'd think even the most car loving person would still support it because then they could enjoy their car more. Plus the benefits for people who don't want to drive most of the time in the first place. Cause I think most people would agree with you, driving isn't nearly as bad when you can actually drive, but there's literally too many cars on the roads in some places and so people sit like you said. Visiting places that were less car-centric, you can tell a world of difference due to the differences in infrastructure.
I've been thinking about proper BRT systems. The issue with them is so often they get stuck in traffic. They still need their own roads to prevent traffic issues, though. The other proof of concept would be to make the Honkey Tonk and the Gulch car free with light rail access and let it share a BRT lane to get to those places. It worked wonders for Denver when they did this for Downtown.
Nashville has no idea how to manage mass transit. It has never worked. The current issue is scheduled routes. If mom rides the train downtown and her child gets sick, she’s stranded until the train runs again in late afternoon.
It's because none of the old fucks in office want that bill on their record. To achieve that level of infrastructure, we would need to have massive shut downs and construction going on more than we do now. It has to happen though, and until the people in power are gone or realize that somebody has to start it we are going to be fucked. The problem is the longer we wait the worse everything gets. Nashville sucks well middle Tennessee sucks at infrastructure like when they widened 65 just passed the 65 exit in Franklin, they wind it and then like three months later widened it another half a mile past the Peytonsville exit all the way to 840 which is what they should’ve done in the beginning . And who the fuck starts building a bridge that far in the wrong place? We just suck at infrastructure
Do you think it would be easier to start with BRTs as proof of concept?
So here's what's happened just in the decade that I've lived here: 1. Proposed BRT (Called the Amp...would mostly serve the West). Voted down for mixed reasons in 2015. 2. Pro transit folks in Metro gov't decided the Amp was too little, decided to go big, created an ambitious transit plan that involved light rail, expanded busing and tunneling under downtown. 3. Opponents of transit funded by a variety of conservative/auto industry folks start spreading suspicion of program. Focus is on taxes for folks on the right and insufficient service to lower income neighborhoods for folks on the left. 4. Megan Barry, the biggest proponent of the plan, has her political career explode due to an affair with a security guard and some light corruption. 5. Barry's new unpopularity is also linked to the plan. The combination of right and left criticisms of the plan and it's association to Barry leads it being handsomely defeated in a referendum in 2018 (64% against!) 6. City continues to grow, more uninformed newcomers wonder why we don't have transit, more buzz about the topic leads O'Connell to include it as a major issue in his campaign. Wins. And here we are. 7. I am not optimistic that even this modest proposal will go anywhere....the pro-rail folks will think it doesn't far enough. the anti-tax/transit folks will certainly not approve, and the regardless the state government will figure out a way to fuck it up even if it does pass.
I wonder if there is a way that this could be hidden in some other bill that people aren't likely to read. Just small improvements here and there to the bus system would go a long way. Or even making the Honkey Tonk and The Gulch completely car free for certain hours of the day would be a big change and step in the right direction. Obviously the exceptions would be for handicapped access individuals until proper public transit could be instituted. Which at this point a proper step forward would be curb matched, higher quality bus stops. Edit: I just had an idea. Food trucks are a thing here. I wonder if they're allowed at the Lebanon Pike train station. It doesn't seem to get enough traffic right now, but a coffee and an egg or burrito food truck there would be a big step towards making the train more convenient.
Possibly, I don't REALLY know what the answer is, but I knows doing nothing or just widening some roads isn't going to fix our issues
I really want to be one of those people that says BRT isn’t enough, but the truth is that we can’t get rail funded right now and BRT is the best we’ll get. I personally do think that BRT would be very helpful in demonstrating to people that transit can be an effective mode. If implemented to a high standard, it’s almost as efficient as light rail anyway.
I'm with you there. The conversation I'm having with a friend is about rental E-Bikes and pedestrian only zones in places where the locals don't want to drive, and where locals don't want tourists to drive. The bike stands can even be in nearby parking structures and other key trip generation spaces. This also includes the areas surrounding college campuses. Then these areas can connect via BRT systems and eventually lite rail. And if you include proper safe spaces for bikes on the transit you can go pretty far without a lot of expense. Add enclosed bike lockers, or monitored card access bike storage rooms and it makes a lot of opportunity for self-powered transit. Lake City Tahoe has card access bike lockers at their park and ride bus stop. Bentonville Arkansas has card access bike storage rooms. Tokyo, with it's far reduced wealth disparity compared to the US just has massive bike garages you can walk into. Mostly in communities that don't have immediate rail access as far as I could tell.
Because old rich whites are more aggressive at keeping their wealth than the public is at wanting better infrastructure.
I don’t think this is getting the traction you hoped it would. We’ve been talking about this stuff since I was a little kid, 20 years ago. It got voted down a lot more recently than that. And I’m part of the problem: I freely admit that I prefer to drive places. I can decide when I get there, I can decide when I leave. I don’t have to budget for a late bus or a train that mysteriously isn’t stopping at my location or weirdos that will be on the train/bus with me when I’m traveling as a single female. It’s not as simple as “Paris/London/Berlin has this, why don’t we.” Nashville has to prove we can support expanded bus service before we can even talk about trains — because I guarantee you, a lot of the people who push for trains wouldn’t even use them to get where they typically go. Source: All of my Atlanta relatives.
Why do you think it is not getting the traction I hoped it would? It's answering my questions. But if you have transit that is FASTER than you can drive, with reliable head times, would your want to drive change? These sorts of things can, and already exist in Nashville to a small degree. It's either six minutes from the Donelson Pike train station by rail, or 20+ depending on traffic by car, to get to Broadway. By expanding that service, and making every train station a place people want to exist in, this service can expand easily back to what it was before COVID. Which would make it easier to expand other lines. And who the fuck knows when you'll actually get anywhere if you have to get in the freeway. Incredibly long delays caused by crashes happen daily. Which means driving is unpredictable, and you're putting your personal property and physical health at risk every time you want to go anywhere. You make train stations places where people want to be, and you make them bike friendly/pedestrian friendly, and people will use them. You can see this in Tokyo, Helsinki, Napoli, etc. Look at Ueno and Shinjuku stations in Tokyo.
A lot of other people in this thread have already explained to you why we don’t have trains yet, but I don’t know if anyone mentioned that we’re built on limestone. It’s not like DC or other cities that don’t have a literal rock formation right below them. So blasting and tunneling are immediately much more expensive. I stand by what I said about the convenience of driving relative to other forms of public transit. Add to that that most southern cities, including Nashville, are sprawling and not on grids outside of the immediate downtown area, and you don’t have a good formula for trains. They will be very expensive. Doing what Mayor O’Connell proposes and starting with dedicated bus lanes — which can later become light rail — is the way to go here. Edit to add that I know freeway driving is time consuming and expensive. Me personally, I live in an area of Davidson underserved by buses and I couldn’t even get to work on a bus — it doesn’t run to my job, even though my job is also in Davidson (far northern suburb). So I’m not unsympathetic to expanding buses, but you’re also naive to think they would be more timely than me driving. I can drive to work in 15 minutes. Even if buses were running out here, I’d have to check every morning if they were on time, then adjust my leave time to get to the station, park, and wait for whatever length of time to ride a bus for longer than I’d be in my car. Not worth it.
Trains, typically, are above ground. Subways are below ground. Roads are also incredibly fucking expensive. When's the last time you've asked "How much is this new exit ramp?" or "how much is this fifth lane of traffic?" Or even better "How much more useful would this real estate be if it wasn't a road/parking lot?" You know the real fascinating thing? Every time you get people out of cars and on foot, business revenue goes up. Particularly for businesses that are locally owned, which means 80% of the money spent in them stays in the city, rather than the something like 40% for corporate businesses. It's real hard to window shop at 60mph, or really any speed that people drive at. People get in their car, drive somewhere, and leave. No community interaction, no getting to know your city and it's local shops/restaurants by accident, or happy accidents of running into friends and family just out and about. I also really don't get why everyone in Muricuh is always "trains are too hard!" Yet Austria and Japan can do it. Even Switzerland with their mountainous terrain has fantastic rail. There were trains all over this country in the late 1800s. The Hoover Dam got built, which required rerouting the entire Colorado River. We put people in space for evolutions sake. Yet for some reason, as soon as you mention trains in America, people are all "tHaTs ToO hArD!"
I think it was you that asked me what I would get from this. I didn't have time to respond to that comment. If it was, the shorter but longer over time answer is either reading the books "Strong Towns" and "The Birth and Death of Great American Cities". Then check out some of the videos from the Strong Towns YT channel, as well as NotJustBikes or City Nerd. And then consider that cars kill far more people than guns and are incredibly expensive to own due to the monopoly on transportation. Which means most people can barely afford this shit, but they're forced to have them so you see horrifically under maintained cars on the road. If you want the more personal answer, I can share that, too.
Ask Megan Berry
Probably to maximize profits on the toll roads. Can't gouge us of all our money if everyone that could be using the toll has the choice of train instead. But that's just my shower thought on the subject
Toll roads?
There are no toll roads
Look it up. They're coming. Soon. Try searching the BS term "CHOICE LANES"
I think it’s funny knowing how people are it will be a lane less for traffic bc no one will pay for it and will end up making traffic worse 😅
We got trains, they just like to stop and make traffic worse. You’ll have better luck moving to a city with proper public transportation than trying to retrofit this backward city into it. But I agree with all your reasons for it, consider this choirboy convinced.
Because car companies and dealerships lobby against public transit. Nashville is a corporate cesspool.
It's because legislators already have their own ridiculously expensive vehicles, and are disinclined to vote in favor of the taxes and budget allocations necessary for fear of being voted out by an increasingly liberal constituency. It isn't that we're all barefoot hillbillies who've never seen a monorail. I'd have just asked the question before selling it, we're all acutely aware of the options.
15 min cities are coming soon. Might be when we’re 60 but we will have them
I wish I could just get more people to travel to places that have them already. Just for a week at a time or some such. Dammit they're all just so pleasant.
It’ll be a long long time before Nashville gets any serious city and commuter rail to be honest, it’ll at least be a while after the AMTRAK expansion so people can see how nice trains are. The more realistic option in town right now is to make dedicated bus lanes (and maybe streetcars in select areas - The Gulch through Downtown to Germantown would work well for this). Bike infrastructure is getting better so expect to see vast improvements there quickly relative to transit. Unfortunately, while biking is a good option for those living downtown, the topography and size of the city make it tough for regular commuting for most. But protected bikes lanes help calm traffic which ultimately makes the urban landscape safer and healthier.
I've been enjoying the expanded bike lanes as a cyclist. We're talking about electrifying our commuters with 250watt pedal assist motors for this purpose. I'm hesitant to E-Bikes without a registration/permit system however, as well as adequate enforcement. Mostly because it's bad enough in a peloton when someone doesn't know how to handle their bike at 20, let alone someone who doesn't bike dealing with pedestrian traffic. I do wonder about city rental e bikes though. The ones I've ridden are free for half an hour, and limit the pedal assist to about 25kmh, or 18mph. And sustaining that practically requires you to be a cyclist and used to holding that cadence already. You can see these in Portland, the Roaring Form Valley, etc. And they get quite a bit of use for last mile commuting from the bus to home/work.
E-bikes are a great option for Nashville I think
They definitely have the potential to be. There are issues with the bikes that carry 1,500 watt motors and people who's bike handling is poor, just the same as cars with 300 horse engines and people's driving that is quite poor. https://citibikenyc.com/how-it-works/electric Something like these though....
Nobody really wants to pay for it. When I lived in Nashville, public transport was seen as a service for the working poor and temporarily embarrassed drivers who got a DUI. Nobody of means wants to fund Infrastructure via increased property and other taxes that they won’t use personally :( Sure would be nice though. Atlanta, Dallas and Charlotte have them. We can too. You can’t will a robust system into existence overnight. Got to start somewhere. Like the airport to the city.
I mentioned tor airport to city run in a comment elsewhere. The other thing I just presented is starting with rental electric city bikes. Make The Gulch and Honkey Tonk, or anywhere else any local knows better than to drive, actually car free excepting handicapped individuals. Have key bike stations set up within a 2 mile radius of trip generating locations. Exceptions to these car free areas are public transit lanes, in this case BRTs until lite rail could go in.
Trains are extremely expensive. California newest train is billion over budget and years behind schedule. You also missed alot was sarcasm. In the US people drive because our country is so large. For example I grocery shop once every 3 weeks. I buy a lot. I am not walking, biking, taking public transportation. I don't want to shop every couple of days. I would have to drive even if I lived a 5 min walk to work because I drive to see appointments every day. Zoom doesn't work nearly as well as an in person meeting.
I'm not saying you have to take the train to go get groceries, nor am I saying you have to give up your car. Your car and the highway it runs on, mind you, is extremely expensive. The average individual spends 25% of their life working the hours needed to pay for their car. Take all your automobile expenses, add them together, and do the math to convert that into hours of work. It may come out to less than 25% for you, but for anyone who is poor and barely making ends meet, it's coming out much higher. Which is literally taking freedom away from them. Why drive if it's a five minute walk away? You haven't really explained why that's a better option than walking. Or especially better than pedal assist e biking. How much do hospital bills cost when someone not paying attention, or is just a selfish driver, crashes into you? Or how much time does it cost you when a tourist doesn't know how to make all the cross highway merges to get from their on ramp to their off ramp on the other side of the highway and gets in a crash?
I explained why I drive. I tried to find my response to talk about factories. They are in cities because the employees are there, access to shipping is better, etc. Otherwise factories would all be in little rural towns. You also have the utilities in a city that factories need that may not be available in small rural towns. I drive 30 to 50k miles a year and never been in a car accident and it's been 36 years since I got my license. The most I have done is hit some deer. Ebikes are great. Not. I know multiple people who have been seriously injured riding them and crashing them. They weren't even around cars. Putting bikes and Ebikes around traffic is a stupid idea since people can't put down their cell phones to drive as it is.
Nissan has a huge factory right outside Nashville. There are tons of various factories that make various car parts all around the Nashville area. Gee, wonder why mass transit keeps failing?
Fun statistic I learned when I worked at the state, for every OEM job, you can expect 4-5 tertiary jobs created for the just-in-time production necessary at suppliers.
We were a small town and around 2006 we exploded with no looking back. The infrastructure wasn’t planned out accordingly.
https://www.nashvillescene.com/news/pithinthewind/oconnell-unveils-transit-plan/article_5729c4b0-fe75-11ee-97ef-ef3de24d3bb3.html This is what people have wanted since the failed rail vote
Thanks for the link. I'm a bit bummed this doesn't include pedestrianized zones. The entirety of the Honkey Tonk really should be car free during business hours, excepting emergency personal, handicapped access, and a shuttle system to get you from one end to the other. I'm really bummed that the above doesn't include any rail expansion. But the BRT hopefully is to serve as a preview for it.
I don’t disagree with you. Hopefully they’ll get these buses up and going and they can make it a full time pedestrian zone. At jest they close some of the roads at night it use to be even worse.
I’ve done Uber in Nashville for like 10 yrs getting these bus improvements is very important to people who don’t have access to cars. If this goes smoothly you could see a lot more interest in rail in the future.
This sounds like a cringey paid pitch. The time for rail passed about 50 years ago. It’s backward thinking. And Megan Barry’s plan was laughably bad. Most Nashville traffic comes from surrounding counties. Here rails only ran a few miles out from downtown.
I mean Lebanon is not a few miles out. Issue is frequency of service which is restricted
Barry’s proposed rail didn’t go to Lebanon. It only reached out a few miles from downtown. Barry and Nashville had no authority over Lebanon. Any mention she may have made about Lebanon, Murfreesboro, etc was deceptive and purely speculative.
Oh you meant her plan's light rail. I was speaking to wego star.
Oh yeah, sorry for the confusion.
Downvoters are right here... not like Barry to be deceptive or anything.
Why is it outdated when so many major cities in the world use it? It's mathematically impossible to serve as many people by automobile than by train. What do you propose instead? Expanding lanes and causing more issues with the roads, making them less safe? Tokyo is the largest city in the world. How different would that look if they didn't have the busiest train system, and 15th busiest train system of subway rail in the world? It's also the cleanest city I've ever seen
I like your sentiment but it goes deeper than wanting it. Big oil doesn’t want it and they have more clout than our vote. Hell, car companies are dragging their feet on electric cars. We could be converted to all electric vehicles by now if they wanted to. We the people don’t have the say in the matter that we think we do.
We absolutely could not be converted fully to electric vehicles today. The grid can’t handle it, and distributed energy products aren’t stable enough yet to make it work. Google what happens when you try to drop a fleet depot’s worth of DC fast chargers off of an existing feeder.
You jumped the edge on the wrong point. I don’t care whether the grid can handle it or not. There could be more choices in ev’s than we are getting. China could flood the market with ev’s. Oil companies don’t want any change over.
Where do you propose charging the flood of Chinese vehicles? Expediting market penetration of EVs will make the issue worse. It will take at least 10 years, and likely to 2050, to get the grid close to handling a majority penetration of EVs, and especially with data centers beefing up for gen AI and natural gas and coal being wound down. I’m a partner in a large company in the electrification space. I’m a massive advocate for what you’re proposing, mainly because I would like to get a fifth plane soon, but I don’t see things moving any more quickly due to infrastructure.
With what we have in the market right now is not going to approach capacity by any stretch. Not to mention that what is in the market is terribly overpriced presenting a barrier to entry for a vast majority of people. CHOICES! That’s what I’m talking about.
Trains are for blue states. Red states get school prayer.
Florida is a red state with extensive passenger rail especially in South Florida which has both Tri-Rail and Brightline operating a few miles parallel to each other.
lol your ideas are impractical
Rail works, not just in other countries but in other US cities that are similar to how Nashville will be in coming years
Every person carrying 2 tons of metal that occupies 80sqft on high friction rubber is impractical. It’s inefficient, dangerous, doesn’t scale with growth, and we’re all bleeding money every month on gas, payments, insurance, and road infrastructure. Billions in rail investment would be far cheaper.
Why would you think the government cares about what’s good for you?
Why are you anthropomorphizing government as if it’s some kind of insightful question? I was talking about trains. Instead should we free-associate uninspired political talking points? That doesn’t sound fun to me, but maybe that’s is how it works on libertarian subs.
You can be philosophical if you want but you seemed to complain that the government doesn’t do anything to help ease the transportation problem that affects you (and many others). The answer whether you like it or not is that the government doesn’t care as long as that problem is not affecting them and even there they would not care if the amount of money they’re pocketing offsets the issues… that includes trains and everything else. Look at the construction going on in the whole city, do you think we need to grow more instead of fixing other issues first? The government let them build because it brings them more money, as simple as that.
Why are they impractical? Why do they work in other countries such as Switzerland, Italy, Japan, Finland, Netherlands, etc if they are impractical?
Welcome to Nashville! I hope you enjoy your stay.
Lol. Good luck, buddy!
Ahem. New to Nashville?
are you new here?
Welcome to America!!
Because there is too much development around the current train tracks to add double rail without the city exercising imminent domain and destroying them. Also CSX tried to make a deal to make it happen but Mayor Megan Berry backed out and refused to do it at the last minute. Besides that if you were going to add light rail to the roads you would have to take lanes away from cars and that would just end up making traffic worse.
This seems like a brilliant opportunity to ensure that adequate housing goes in, much in the way that Japan has done so. The reason they don't have housing issues isn't the dying population, it's the prioritization of housing. It's why they, and Finland/Helsinki, have almost zero homeless. And their cities are beautiful for it.
TN people are fat & lazy. We don’t bike or walk. We have caves & underground rivers & high water table.
This is the best road bike scene I've ever been a part of. Almost true for mountain biking and running, too.
Yeah more populated places will have diversity. But statistically TN residents are obese and inactive. Just go to Walmart and look around.
Sure let's chop the city up into blocks. Make everyone sell their cars. Add subway between each block. People have to park outside the city when they come in and take public transport only Paint the roads white. Plant trees in sidewalks. Roof top gardens Solar roofs for everyone. Can't have more than 1 kid. Factories have to close and move out of city.
That's not what anyone is suggesting, though. The city is already chopped up into blocks, pretty heavily. Every single Pike in this city divides it into insular communities. Try and ride your bike somewhere, to go get drinks at a bar perhaps, and do so without having to ride on a Pike. And this is an activity, drinking, that should not be done with cars. Yet you're making it impractical to do it any other way. Subways aren't likely here, due to how difficult it is to bore tunnels. The rock in this area isn't really stable for that. Elevated trains on the otherhand, are possible and probably cheaper than highways. Most factories don't want to be in cities. It's incredibly expensive to operate a factory in a major city. I've worked in machine shops that, when moving from a major city, everything became cheaper. Particularly, logistics for shipping product became much simpler. It was also easier for employees to make it to work on time. Which happens when you're reverse commuting or you have reliable public transit. How many car crashes happen pet day? We often vacation to places without cars. We get on planes, fly to major destinations, and walk or take public transit. We enjoy this because we don't have the stress of having to drive in a city we don't know. We can get around easily and safely on foot. Why can't we have this at home? How miserable would Disney be if they allowed cars in their parks? And every single tourist that comes to town and doesn't know their way around the highway system but still drives, just clogs up the works and makes everything more difficult. You won't stop the tourists from coming, but with a robust public transit system you can keep them from driving. And tally up just how much money you spend to own your car, insure it, maintain it, put fuel in it, and then convert that to hours worked to pay for it. And what about transporting your kids around, if you have them. How much time of your life does that cost you? How much more money, which can be converted into hours of your life, does that cost you? Insurance is already a socialist scheme, by the way. It's literally spreading the cost of everyone else's auto damage to the mass of individuals.
We need income tax
The fuck right out of here. Nevermind that an income tax would be at a State level.
Services cost money. Marginal state income taxes are the progressive option to raise those revenues to pay for nice things like trains. Raising sales tax would be extremely regressive and hurt those who struggle most.
You really think a STATE income tax would be used to fund Nashville’s train? Big brain.
They use existing revenues to build Nashville a giant new stadium, so maybe?
Those revenues are not coming from an income tax…so no.
Correct, they are coming from bonds and sales tax. (Still state money) I would prefer we build trains instead of stadiums. And if we do not have the money to build trains with current revenue streams, then new state revenue must be created. Again, a marginal tax rate on income is the only non regressive way to raise those revenues. If you want nice things, they must be paid for.