Metropolitan Council - Regular Meeting

Hello and good evening. Welcome to the first neighborhood meeting for Weston drive project as a part of the neighborhood street traffic calming program. There's nobody in attendance at this virtual meeting, but I will go ahead and go through the slots. So this can be posted on Metro's YouTube page later for anyone who might want to view. So, my name is Chase Fuqua. I'm an engineer with Finley Horne working on behalf of NDOT on the traffic calming program. And I will go ahead and go through the slideshow. So, an agenda, we'll go through a quick slide deck that goes over the program generally and Weston Drive specifically. We'll go through some typical tools that the traffic calming program uses and go over the primary design concept and next steps. If you are viewing this online after the fact and there is a survey open right now for the project, you can see that survey if you visit the QR code there at engage.nashville.gov slash traffic calming. Yeah, so definitely encourage you if you're watching this after the fact to go check that out. So what is traffic calming? Specifically in the context of the NSTC program, we focus on residential streets as opposed to your busier arterials and collectors. We really focus on physical solutions in vertical measures in the traveled way because those are proven to help encourage lower speeds and provide a safer environment for those in and outside of cars. A little bit on the safe system approach. The safe system approach was put forward by USDOT. And it's essentially a comprehensive look at how we can improve the safety on our traveled ways. It includes safer people, safer vehicles, safer speeds, safer roads, post-crash care. And the traffic calming program here at MACRO really hits on four of those. So safer speeds, roads, people, and post-crash care. So yeah. Safety in Vision Zero. So Vision Zero is adopted by NDOT and Metro Nashville kind of with the goal, not kind of, with the goal of eliminating or very much reducing serious injuries and fatalities on our roadways. Speed reduction is a big part of that. So as you see on the graphic on the screen, as speeds increase, so does the chance of a fatal or serious injury. So, this is a really popular program over 650 applications as of the spring drive as a part of the spring 2026 selection 1 of 25 streets that were selected. You can see a status on all the traffic calming projects that have that have gone on here in Nashville over the last several years on the traffic calming tracker. You can visit that at traffic calming dot national dot Gov. And there's a snip on the on the right there. I want to point you to put a plug in for Hub Nashville. If you haven't visited Hub Nashville before, it's a one-stop shop for getting in touch with Metro and NDOT on issues that you're seeing on your street. This is a really easy way for you to connect with NDOT, especially on things that are outside of the traffic calming program. A little bit about how West Sound Drive was selected and how all the streets are selected currently in the traffic calming program. essentially an equation. So whenever an application is put in on the street, We will go out and collect data, so we'll get speed data, we'll get volume data. We'll analyze that and we'll also look at walkability, nearby destinations, whether or not you have sidewalks or bus routes, things like that, and also crash history of pedestrians and bicyclists. And that all gets put into an equation that you can see the split of all those weights on the right with the pie chart. And all the streets are prioritized and the top 25 are selected. Um, so Weston drop fell actually in the top 10 of the past. Um, of this past cycles, prioritization process. So, what's on drop is the project that we're looking at here from how we 100 right there at Sam's place over to page road. So here, a little bit of the numbers. So 30 miles an hour is the 85th percentile speed. That's five miles an hour over the posted speed of 25 miles an hour. And on such a short stretch of road with as many stop signs as there are, it's a pretty good clip. And then over 1,300 vehicles a day using this street. And it's a pretty narrow street already with 20 foot of width mostly throughout. This is the location map, so this is a snip from the traffic calming tracker on Metro's website. You can see Weston drive. For this project, the limits of this project highlighted there in yellow. You can see there's a recently completed. Project on page road and you see a couple of other applications that have come in kind of on some of the surrounding streets. We're focusing on Weston drop with this project. At this point, this is typically where we like to get feedback from anybody who's on the call. I'm just going to pause really quick and see if we've got anybody online. Okay. It looks like Trevor. Hey, Trevor. Thanks for being able to make it. I know Trevor's the applicant, and I know you had a scheduling conflict. So I see your hand raised. Please feel free to come off mute and let us know a little bit about why you applied and kind of what your experience is out on West Tundraff.

You are on mute if you are trying to talk. You can look at the chat too.

Okay, Trevor, I see that you're there, so if you do decide to come off mute or have a message that you want to share in the chat, I'm happy to address that.

My microphone is not working.

Okay. Okay, I see that your microphone's not working. I'm going to go ahead with the slides, but feel free to type out any questions, and we can go back and forth.

Get the presentation pulled back up here.

Okay. So a little bit about the toolkit. So these are the things that we, as a part of the traffic calming program, typically see on most projects. So one that you're probably familiar with, speed cushions. So these are These are rubber devices that are 3 inches in height, and they range from 7 to 14 feet in length. So it's less of a speed bump that you would see in a parking lot that you would go over at like 5 miles an hour. These are designed for higher speeds, like 20 to 25 miles an hour. And they're characterized by the gaps between them to allow for emergency vehicle access and things like that. Speed tables are very similar to speed cushions, it's just that they don't have the gaps. And so I'll pause here. So I mentioned earlier, we talk a lot about vertical measures and a heavy emphasis on reducing speed and also how this program is data driven. So this is an example of that. There have been a lot of speed cushions deployed over Nashville over the last several years. And so what we did last year As a part as a part of the traffic calming program is go get. After data and compare it to the data that we took before the whenever the project was applied for. So this is about 38 projects that we went out and did this for. And you can see there it ranges we have in the yellow gold is the 80 is the 50th percentile speed. So the average speed. Um, that blue is an 85th percentile. So, um, the 1 that, um, typically, like, speed limits and things like that are set based off of and then the 95th percentile speed. So those who are really traveling the fastest on our streets. And you have a significant reduction across all those projects on average. From the average speed, so that 32.7 average before going to a 24.4 after, so an over an eight mile an hour difference in average speed. And that differential only goes up as you get to the highest speed. So on that highest one, the 95th percentile speed, you get 42.3 before and 32.5 after. And that's a 9.8 mile an hour difference. And these are projects where speed cushions specifically were installed or speed tables, vertical measures.

All right, and I'm looking at the chat.

Trevor is telling me I have to change Chrome settings. I don't know what this platform we are in is. So this is WebEx, which we typically use for all these meetings. Never used WebEx. Okay.

It's telling me that I have to change Chrome settings. I don't know.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to help you turn your microphone on.

Are you in Chrome? Yeah. I use Teams a lot as well. OK. Let's see if I can figure it out.

Settings. okay yep yeah i'm sorry about that uh we'll keep rolling and yeah we when we get to the concept we can we can go back and forth and i'll just make sure to read your questions so anybody viewing can online after the fact can can follow okay all right okay radar speed feedback sounds so these are we we like to propose these when like a vertical measure, like a speed cushion or table isn't viable for whatever reason, that being like too many driveways or like a vertical grade that's too steep or too many curves, things like that. But they're just not quite as effective because people don't have to drive over them. They're not something that's actually in the street. So you still see an average reduction of speeds, but not as significant as you would for a speed cushion. And then narrowing. So narrowing, I think this is, you know, What's not not as relevant to Weston drive because the street is already so narrow and I think that you do have the edge line striping. So I'll skip this 1. So, there's a for shoulder also probably not applicable. Um, since we only have, we typically need more than 24 feet of payment and I think we're only looking at around 20. Or Weston drive. Full belts similar to narrowing except that intersections again, I don't think we're or we are not currently proposing a bull about on West town drive. But for reference, it's essentially turn hardening or making making it to where people can't roll through curves. Turns and have to go slower through intersections. Chicanes also require a lot of pavement, but the general idea is that you provide a horizontal deflection or a curve as opposed to just a straight line to slow people down. Pinch points. Pinch points we use sometimes. It's like a chicane where you are forcing a horizontal deflection, but the real thing is that you're forcing a yield condition. So if two cars are going in the opposite direction and one would have to yield to oncoming traffic, And then traffic circles, so traffic circles are usually reserved for some of our largest largest intersections. Okay, so now here is the. The proposed, or the current iteration of the concept for Weston drive, we prepared this based off of the data that we. Collected and a desktop review and to definitely want to get your get your feedback on this. I'll just general. I'll just go over it quickly. So. The project starts at how we 100 in the West and then as we're moving to the East. We've got 1 cushion placed right before Don Allen Avenue. So it's kind of past Sam's place and all of that right before that 1st cross street. And then from Don Allen Avenue to Hedy Drive, we've got two evenly spaced cushions heading to that four-way stop condition. And then between Hedy and Page Road, that section's only about 300 feet apart, which typically we like to space cushions at about 300 feet. So we did not think that it was worth it to propose one between Hedy and Page Road. Currently, what we're showing is three evenly spaced speed cushions between Hobby 100 and Head E-Drive. So with this, I'm going to pull down to where I can see the chat.

If I can find it. Okay.

So Trevor said, I'm not in favor of this type of speed cushion, paved speed cushions and tables like the ones on Chickering Lane are much better. Okay.

So, typically or traditionally in this program, we've gone with a,

more temporary material. So the rubber speed cushions are sturdy and they, you know, are connected into the ground and they're meant to last for a good while. But the idea is that, you know, they are able to be taken up if need be down the road. But typically, yeah, we stick with these rubber speed cushions with this program. the paved ones being more expensive.

Potentially, I don't know the answer to that.

I'm sure they are more expensive.

I'm not sure about that.

Yeah, but traditionally, and it kind of goes to how Metro procures these things too. So all of the speed cushions come from the same company. We're able to kind of fill a back load or a um backlog and get these things deployed quickly cheap yeah no one likes the people go around them with one tire in your yard they also screw up your car suspension that's pretty typical like this feedback that we get and to your point about um going around them with one tire in your yard that's especially

Let's make sure I didn't miss something.

We let, we definitely look at whenever we, whenever we place these to make sure that you can see the attenuate or the, um, the delineator, especially if there's space on the outside, we try to put one there. So people don't go around them on the outside, but are forced to navigate on the inside, but your feedback's taken. Yeah, the bollards, so Trevor City doesn't like the bollards. Yeah, the plastic delineator or what have you.

I would have to see on this one because the road is so Yeah, comment is all this looks cheap and arguably will impact property values. Yeah, we've certainly heard that.

It's the nature of the program and the projects and being able to implement them in an effective in an effective way in a similar way across the county and Metro.

But as far as, I can certainly take that feedback back to our Metro team.

As of right now, I mean, I can't promise anything more than, yeah, if not, I would assume do nothing. Understood. That makes sense. Yeah, I can't promise right now that we would do anything other than what's done with the rest of the program as far as the rubber speed cushions. But I'm happy to bring the concern back to Metro and follow up with you. And also, if we want to get on a call after that, maybe sometime next week and talk through any options that we have there.

Okay.

Yeah, and I think you have my email address. We can connect. That would be fun.

Okay, I'm going to go on to... Yeah, it's no big deal.

Like I said, I'm happy to connect with you offline and talk through any of this. But generally the number of speed cushions and like the placement of them, um, do you feel comfortable with the number and kind of where they are or do you have any comments on like, um, any comments on that?

Okay.

Okay, so I'm going to move forward and I can come back, we can come back to the chat as well.

I'm going to go ahead and move forward with the flow chart and what the next steps are. That's fair. Okay.

So application process. So I'll just quickly run through this. So we talked about the application process. This was selected. Okay, so Trevor said some people have suggested a stop sign at Don Allen Avenue with that. So that's outside definitely outside the scope of the traffic calming program. That would be a hub Nashville request. There was a slot earlier that pointed out, I think the, the web address to hub Nashville, or if you download the app, it's really easy way to get in touch and make suggestions. Or submit concerns to end on things like that. It's definitely outside of the scope of the traffic calming program though. So, we went through, we went through application process. This is part of the spring 2026 selection, prioritization selection. We're at the red circle here. So the 1st neighborhood meeting. After this meeting, we'll go out into the field out on Weston drive and we'll refine the design. We'll actually take field measurements. Um, to get exact locations of cushions related to driveways and things like that. Um. And then if the necessary, and this is really up to you. Um, and your neighbors, Trevor, if we want to have a 2nd neighborhood meeting. To discuss the final design, um. That's really to go over like, if there, if we receive feedback in meeting 1, that, like, would significantly change, like. The number of questions or where they are exactly. We would go through a meeting too, but if not, then you would. We could also bypass that. So, then we would go to an online ballot with the funnel and I have a couple of sides on balloting. Basically, the design plan to be posted online. And the neighbors on the street would receive a mailer. With a unique ID, so this is this is. An example ballot here in the top left again, it would be an online vote based off of your mailer would contain. The close date of the voting in your unique ID, and you would go online view the final design plan and then go vote yes or no on the plan. Voting is open for 6 weeks and that date will be on your mailer. And it's a yes or no vote and success of the project is determined by if. 2 thirds of respondents people who respond to the survey.

Say, yes, a little bit more balloting.

So, this is the ballot zone for Weston drive. So it's. Only the properties that directly that are directly on Weston drive in the limits of the project. So you can see from highway 100 all the way to page road. All those properties along Weston drive would. Would get a vote. A few caveats to that are orders with if there is an owner with multiple properties on the in the project area, they would only get 1 vote. And then vacant properties are ineligible and businesses are ineligible. And stop in here too, if you're viewing this online after the fact, and think that you've gotten a matter of district and did it. I definitely want you to reach out and we want to make sure that you get get the information and are able to vote. Um, I'll stop here for a 2nd, uh, Trevor, do you have any questions on the balloting process? And kind of where we go from here in thoughts on a meeting to.

Good. Okay.

Thank you for that. Um, any other any other questions if not, we can, we can wrap it up again. There's an online survey open now at engaged at Nashville dot Gov slash traffic common West on drive specifically and you can visit that. Um, by scanning the QR code here. Um, and again, in case my email address is on the screen there. Um, please feel free to reach out to me via email. Um, please be sure to keep in dot traffic coming at Nashville as well. So we're all on the loop. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks for your time. And looking forward to progressing this to the next step. And we'll be in touch. Thanks, Trevor. Thanks, everyone.

Bye.