Quote:
Originally Posted by PillowTalk4
As always, I feared my life at times as I was transitioning from the I-24/40 split to the I-65/40 portion of the loop.
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Nashville would benefit, in my opinion, from doing away entirely with the I-40 and I-65 routing through downtown and turn it into an urban parkway system with maybe an integrated transit solution using some rights of way you regain from a redesign.
Highway upgrades couldn't be avoided, they would be required to upgrade and re-route I-40 and I-65 traffic through what is now I-440 and I-24, and with that would require widening and some new landscaping of the environment.
Here is my a concept:
Turquoise would be the I-24 assignment, which remains the same as today. Gold is I-65's new assignment. The lavender color is the new I-40 assignment.
The darker red color would be decommissioned as an Interstate highway system and would become an urban parkway system, large in nature (you could easily do a 10-12 lane parkway within the rights of way) with limited stoplights and pedestrian friendly crossings/reconnection between the neighborhoods. You could even do a mixed parkway-transit corridor utilizing any technology (BRT, light rail, heavy rail, etc). Traffic could be slowed to go about 45mph so that its less divisive through the neighborhoods.
The existing highway system would need upgrades, you would likely need to have I-24 east of downtown become a 10 lane (5 bi-directional) route with better bridge connections to downtown, and better connections to East Nashville by allowing more foot traffic across the highway on the streets.
I-440 would need massive upgrades, you would need it to have lanes added as appropriate to become the only East-West highway corridor. There are limitations with that since 440 has residential nearby, but not nearly as many as keeping the existing system as is.
I'm not against highway building at all, but it needs to be appropriate for its neighborhood. Nashville has too many criss-cross messes and it needs to end. I'd rather see highway widening where it makes sense: 440, the east side of the river (so long as the widening project builds bridges with walkable elements), and I-24 should eventually be 8 lanes/4 bi-directional from Nashville to the Kentucky border as Clarksville is growing and that is always a choked highway.
In the city, we need to rethink why we need I-40 cutting through the center of the urban core as I don't think its necessary. Ellington Parkway I don't know about, it is a highway to nowhere and could become an urban parkway as well, I suppose. It is pretty clear than when these original highway designs came along they were very much of the modernist, early era of highway building and we've learned what NOT to do since that period. My plan has one major flaw though, the widening of I-24 really doesn't address East Nashville's disconnection from the city, but with proper bridge renovations and additions I think it could be reconnected better than it is today. The concept I've drawn up still keeps a primarily auto centric city well connected by automobile, but allows for a real urban form to continue to develop in the central core. There is a happy balance, I think, between automobile and transit oriented development that can be met. European cities are better models than other American cities, because quite frankly its easier to drive in central Berlin than it is New York City. Europeans aren't exactly afraid of cars or driving... They just don't tend to cut downtowns into bits and pieces with them.