Quote:
Originally Posted by MidTenn1
Primary objections include:
>Loss of parking on West End thus reducing customer access to local businesses
>Disruption of traffic flow and patterns
>Primary use by visitors thus not reducing traffic demand significantly
>Other corridors would serve actual residents better
>City can't afford it
Quite frankly, each point does have some merit. However, I support BRT it because it will tie midtown to downtown creating a 40 block long central business district. It will encourage more residential density in the core leading to more office, retail and entertainment opportunities giving Nashville one of the more vibrant and diversified urban cores in the south.
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This isn't a response to you, but rather the points. (I didn't watch the video btw)
>Loss of parking is basically a drop in the bucket. How many parking spaces per block are there? On the south side of West End on a HUGE block between 28th and 29th...12. On about 600' of street frontage. Yes, those spaces do add up. But it is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. You can't even use those spaces during rush hour. Would some of those spaces not be utilized by people that *could* use the Amp rather than driving their cars from their West End offices to restaurants/businesses on West End? Yes, there is a cost associated with that. But as parking gets tighter...wouldn't there be a cost to parking in general?
>Disruption to traffic flow patterns. Yes. I do think this will disrupt traffic in some way. As I commented on one of Gail Kerr's articles, this should not be viewed as a 'solution' to our traffic problems, but rather a solution to
increasing traffic. West End isn't getting less dense. The corridor is getting more built up. It simply can't be widened to handle extra traffic. Some of the actual traffic needs to be dispersed to other corridors. And naturally, some of the traffic can be taken care of by offering
neighborhood residents and college students and office workers an alternative to driving their cars on the corridor.
>I call BS on this one. Yes, there are a lot of visitors in hotels on this corridor...but if you polled current MTA traffic on the #3/5, I think you would find the vast majority are not visitors. Still...even if this line becomes more attractive to visitors than residents, it reduces traffic pretty significantly because they aren't taking individual cabs or their personal vehicles/rentals, which cause traffic problems because they don't know where the eff they are going.
>Other corridors being more viable might be the most compelling argument. I think a case could be made here. However, it seems one of the main reasons this corridor was picked is because the density actually meets the federal standards for funding. Nashville is not an overly dense city. It is more dense in the core than the overall numbers reflect...but nonetheless, it is not high density. Federal funding is an important part in actually getting our rapid transit program off the ground. Sometimes you need to do what will get funding rather than just do what is needed. If this line proves successful, the hope is it will open the door to other lines being utilized. It will make it easier for the city to justify using more local funding if it is successful.
>More BS. The city has a $1.8 billion budget. This is about the allocation of resources, not whether or not the city has money. Where are our priorities? For a long time, public transit hasn't been one. It's time we make it one. Perhaps the next step will be to get in line with other cities and have more dedicated funding for mass transit. I don't think people realize just how much the city spends on...anything. 4% of that goes to transportation/infrastructure. Perhaps it is time to rethink how much we spend on transportation.