Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

And you may have gotten that little message there, letting you know that we do record these meetings. And so if you have a neighbor or anyone who wasn't able to join us tonight, that's one of the reasons we record these meetings. So feel free to let them know about that. These recordings are put up on the Metro Traffic Calming website. I'll make sure you know how to access that at the end of the meeting. It should go up fairly shortly. My name is Jeff Hammond. I'm a consultant working on behalf of NDOT. That's the National Department of Transportation that you see in the lower right-hand corner. And once again, this is a traffic calming meeting for Union Hill Road. A little bit about what we're going to do tonight. We'll do it, you know, go through these slides fairly quickly, try to get to the meat of the program here in a few slides. But we're going to give you a little bit of an overview about the Traffic Calming Program and talk some about the data that we have on your street on Union Hill and how you got inducted into the program. We'll look at some of the tools that we have available to us, what we can offer and what we cannot. And then for me, one of the most important things is to show you the preliminary, very preliminary concept that we've put together to give you Something to give us some feedback on, get your thoughts on that, and then leave you with some next steps, what you can expect from us, how to continue to stay involved in the project, get your feedback to us, and those kinds of things. You do see a QR code here on the screen. That goes to something called Engage Nashville. It's really a clearinghouse for all different types of projects that Metro is working on. This project, the Union Hill Road Traffic Calming Project, does have its own website, and so you can find that if you go to that Engage Nashville. You may have to do a search there, just put in Union Hill, and it should bring that up. It's a great place to log your comments, find contact information, and that kind of thing. All right, just a little bit about the Traffic Calming Program. It's been going for a while here in Nashville. I think the more projects that we've done, people have gotten more at least aware of the type of work that we do and what the program offers. It is a residential program. We only do this type of work on residential streets. We don't traffic calm commercial areas, industrial areas, and those kinds of things. And we do focus on speed reduction as opposed to trying to move traffic to some other street. We don't try to do that. We try to just get traffic to stay where it is, but just to operate a little more respectfully when it's in your neighborhood. We know this can be a safety issue, but it can also just be a quality of life issue. Nobody appreciates cars speeding down their street. I know you guys are in. about as rural in areas we have in Davidson County. And so that brings a little bit of a different wrinkle in how we are approaching traffic. We'll talk more about that. But we're very aware of your context and just a beautiful area of Davidson County that we have. We know that speed and speed reduction is not the sole purpose aspect to making streets safer. There's a lot of different things that go into that. This slide speaks to the safe systems approach, but it is a big part of it. And we have learned over the years that if we can make speed slower in general, that tends to lead towards safer streets. And a specific point of data that we like to speak about is this one, which just gives some information from a medical standpoint. If in the unfortunate event there is a car versus pedestrian crash, the likelihood of someone surviving that incident goes way up as speed goes down. So that's just one aspect of why Metro has put a lot of emphasis, a lot of attention on this program and safety programs in general. This program is very much in demand, and so This slide speaks to that. In this cohort, as of last spring, we're still somewhere well north of 600 applications for streets just like this one. So you're not alone. If you've noticed some speeding issues, and this is an application-based program, we're here because someone put in an application along with 650 others all over the county. And we go out for every one of those and collect some data and then have a prioritization process. I'll show you that in just a second. But this slide, just so you know, you're not alone in some of these issues. We're seeing it all across the county. And there's just a lot of demand for something to be done about speeding. To put that into context, what we do is we have funding and we have the ability to do projects like this on about 50 roads a year. Obviously, we can't get to all of those or at least not very quickly. We have that prioritization process. Fortunately or unfortunately, you guys are one of those. Fortunately, because at least the city's here to listen and to try to put together a plan that we think will work for all of us. But unfortunately, you guys even had the need in the first place.

We're sorry about that.

We'd like to pause here at this point and just talk about Hub Nashville, if you're not familiar with it, it's a great resource for those of us in Davidson County. We can log on at hub.nashville.gov and make any kind of requests from the city, not just Department of Transportation, but pretty much every metro department is represented there. You can also just call 311 and talk to 1 of the operators and we like to mention this just because there are sometimes. There are requests related to traffic calming sort of, but things that we don't offer in this program. A good example of that is people will often say what we really need is a sidewalk, something like that. And that's certainly a valid request, but it's just not 1 that we can offer given our funding and all in this program. So hub natural is a great way to. to engage those types of things. But a little bit about the prioritization process that we use for every one of those applications that come in. We do go out and collect data on the street. 70% of the score that we look at to try and pick the highest needs in the county come from data that you probably would expect. It comes from the number of cars traveling on your street every day and also how fast that traffic is driving. But the other 30% are important as well, and that has to do with some of the other users on the types of users on the street. So, if you have sidewalks, your score actually goes down a little bit, because at least you've got a safe place to walk many streets like yours don't. If you have an instance of a documented pedestrian crash, you get some points for that. And then also, if your area is. considered kind of walkable, like are there schools nearby? Are there parks nearby? Is there a library? Is there transit service? Those types of things, those destinations can also add to your score as well. So we take all that data, roll it all together and rank those projects that way. And again, for better or worse, Union Hill has risen within the top 25. And so that's why we're here. working with you all for a traffic calming project. Here's some of the specific data related to your street. So the 85th percentile speed, that's just what our industry looks at to gauge the level of speeding that's on the street. That's 42 miles an hour. What that really means is 15% of the traffic that we counted on your street is going faster than that. Some may be significantly faster. Everybody remembers that time, you know, some kid or something is driving 60 miles an hour down the street. That really stands out. And so that would be one car, one data point among all the others. So we can't tell exactly how fast, at least not using this metric, how fast the fastest person is going. But what we really look at is we say 15% is an appreciable amount of traffic. And so that number for use 42. That's a little on the high end for even for the streets that we do traffic calming projects on. So again, I think that gets to your kind of rural character. You've got nice big setbacks. Houses aren't up next to the road. And so it tends to be a little bit faster in rural areas like this. Um, the volume that we have, then the number of cars every day is a little over 2300. that sounds like an awful lot and that's that's kind of middle of the road for the types of projects that we work on. So, nothing surprising. There the street with, um, is about 20 feet. We'll come out and we'll make more detailed measurements if needed, but. We can tell just from a desktop review. That's about what it is. That's a little on the narrow side, but it's not uncommon. So a 20-foot wide road, that's 10-foot lanes. Where we have speed as high as 42 and volume at 23, that may be a little narrow, but that's not a bad thing from a traffic calming standpoint. We typically find The wider the road or the wider the road feels, the higher the speed. So the fact that we've got a little bit of a narrower road is actually a good thing from a speed control standpoint. And then the project that we're working with is about two-thirds of a mile long. And I'll show you this. This is just a map image of the project that we're working on. We're looking for this project on Union Hill Road from White's Creek Pike up to I-24. And I am monitoring that Engage Nashville page that I talked about earlier. I know there's already been some comments and we appreciate those very much. And some people have said, you know, actually there's more issues north of I-24. Maybe that's where we ought to be working. So we appreciate that kind of feedback, but our project has been chosen from White's Creek to I-24. This map is a snapshot of an interactive map that is on Metro's website for traffic calming. And you may find it useful, I mean, you know, we're looking at the red line here for Union Hill, but you see some other red lines around. You also see some purple lines and some blue lines. Those purple lines mean that we already have an application on file for that road. So there's the western end of Rawlings Road is the only one that I see in this area, a little bit of Eaton's Creek, I guess. We have an application and on those we're not acting on it yet. It hasn't risen to the level of a project. But just so, you know, and if you're ever curious as to whether. You know, an application's been put in, you can go to this map and find that. And then the blue, the blue dotted lines indicate places where we have implemented a traffic common project. Usually that means speed questions, but not always. So. I think there may have been some put in on Rawlings Road. I'm sure you all know. At least our map shows that those have been installed. But anyhow, that can be helpful if you're not as familiar with some of the tools that we use and want to go to that street and drive over those and experience that. This gives you some guidance on where to do that. All right, I'm going to go through some of the tools that we have in our toolkit just to get us thinking about what some of our options may be before I show you what we've come up with for a preliminary project. Speed cushions has become the bread and butter of traffic calming in Nashville. I think a lot of people think about these when they think about a traffic calming project. That's not always welcome. We know that. We wish we didn't have to use those. We have found them to be very effective in slowing traffic down. But the flip side of that is you as residents have to drive over them every day as well. And I know that's not welcome. And so we'll talk more about that and the potential use of speed cushions, but you see the gaps in the middle. The reason it's not one big long piece of rubber is because it's a consideration for emergency vehicles. These are six feet wide, and the wheelbase of your car is not that wide. The wheelbase of a fire truck or an ambulance is almost that wide, not quite, so they do encounter these. They can't quite straddle them, but that's the idea. It lessens the impact on those emergency responders. So we've worked all of that out with OEM and with the fire chief and all, and so they're very comfortable with the tools that we use, but we do try to minimize impact on all those important vehicles. These cushions are recycled rubber. We're getting really good results from them. They're made in a factory, so we order them and everyone that comes off looks the same, feels the same. So what you may experience on a street would be the same thing on every street. So we like that consistency. They're only about three inches tall, but most people will tell you that's enough to slow traffic down. I think they, anecdotally, they really do work well if your objective is to slow traffic down on the streets. We also would put them in different configurations that you see here. Sometimes we do two side by side, sometimes three, sometimes more. And then we use the signage and occasionally the white plastic sticks like you see in that bottom right hand picture. The idea with all of this is just to make sure that we get good coverage from one edge of the pavement to the other because we have learned that if we allow any kind of an opportunity for someone to drive around these, they will. And if a car doesn't come into contact with the speed cushion, it really doesn't help very much. So I'm very careful about that. This is where your road width of 20 feet comes into play. If we're thinking about speed cushions, just make sure we've got good coverage across the road. Another tool that we have that's a very close cousin to the speed cushion is the speed table. This is one where it goes all the way across. We don't use these nearly as often just because of that. more of an impact to emergency vehicles. We really like to stay with the speed cushions whenever possible, but there are some instances where we use these. You see them more in parks and things like that where emergency response may not be as critical. Otherwise, it's pretty much the same product, comes from the same manufacturer, it's just a different configuration. We do have some before and after data. I don't go into a lot of this because every street's a little different. You guys are starting at a 42 mile an hour speed. That's a little higher, so we might expect if you were to use a speed cushion or something, you would probably see something like a nine mile an hour speed reduction. That's what we're finding on average for streets around Metro, but it really depends and it depends on the configuration. Just know that we have some of this data. I'm not going to give a science lesson on statistics and all of that, but they are effective. Another tool that we have that we have a little bit of before and after data is radar feedback signs. These certainly don't have the impact that speed cushions do, and a lot of people say these are giving their street a really good result in terms of just reminding folks how fast they're going and doing that. all the time, 24 hours a day. And so some people will say, you know, you kind of get used to seeing that. Maybe it's not quite as effective. Others say it does wonders for the streets. So we use these. Sometimes we will use them where we can't use speed cushions. Sometimes we use them instead of, and it can be a really good alternative for some streets. Sometimes we will do things, I mentioned sometimes if a road feels like, if it feels wider, often it operates faster. And so sometimes we will try to visually narrow a street by using pavement markings, maybe just adding edge lines or something like that can kind of visually narrow that street and bring about a slower speed. In your case, you're already only 20 feet wide, so probably wouldn't get as much result from something like that. If a street is really wide, we can narrow it even further and kind of create a walking area. I know, like I mentioned, sidewalks are in demand for about every street, but this can be a good low-cost alternative if there's enough pavement out there. Again, not really fitting for your street just because it's not wide enough to begin with, but something that we do. Another specialized use of traffic of pavement markings can be called bulb outs that's where we really try to narrow an intersection predominantly so sometimes people say you know people fly around the corner and enter our street at a very high rate of speed and so we can have some tools to try and cut down on that often that's where we have a lot of pedestrian activity maybe a more urban environment Some people say they don't like the looks of it. We have to use kind of a combination of a lot of striping and some of those, again, plastic delineators. And so we try to be sensitive to that. We know this is your neighborhood and you want it looking good, and so do we. Chicanes is kind of a specialized application where it sort of creates an artificial meandering of a street back and forth. Again, we don't have a lot of these in Davidson County.

We do in a couple of places.

And then bench points, we have a very low volume. I wouldn't suggest this on Union Hill, but where it kind of creates a requirement that cars go through one at a time and you yield if someone's coming through. And then traffic circles, something that we don't do often, but sometimes it's a good fit. If we've got especially two streets, we're trying to traffic calm, but we have a really wide intersection, something like that does require a lot of pavement for something like this to fit and we just have to be careful about some special users like school buses and things like that make sure that they can continue to turn around these but it can be very effective at slowing traffic down and at the same time not requiring you to drive over a speed cushion or something like that so sometimes people like that All right, so I've talked a lot, but this brings us to what I really wanted to show you tonight is, and by the way, if you got questions on any of that, again, feel free to just interject and have me go back over something. I'll be glad to. I know we went through that fairly quickly, but I wanted to show you the concept that I'd like to get some feedback on. And I'll talk through it. This is the purple line represents the project that we're working on. Again, it's Union Hill from White's Creek Pike up to I-24. I put some stop signs on there. Those are all existing stop signs. You stop at White's Creek Pike, Claylick Road as it comes in from the east there has a stop sign at Union Hill. And then you've got a pretty interesting configuration at the intersection of Union Hill and Claylick. And I haven't been up onto the street yet. We will do that. here in the next couple of weeks as we put together a design plan. But if Google is right, you have a stop sign there as you come south on Union Hill that says stop, and it says something like accept right turn or something like that. And that's not a standard approach. You don't see that many other places. I'm not sure that's the best way to handle that intersection, but I'd like to get y'all's feedback on how that does work. Yeah, there's not a stop sign there.

There's not at all when you come around Union Hill road and you come over the interstate. And you're going towards white script. There is not a stop sign there. That road is Union Hill road. It continues around. Okay, does have a stop sign.

Okay, very good.

Well, I think on on Google, there is a stop sign if you're coming from. the Union Hill Trading Post to Whites Creek Pike that does say stop except for right turns. Now, people that live here know that you don't stop because it's all Union Hill Road. But when people are using that as a cut through to avoid traffic on the interstate, they don't know. So if that, I mean, it's been there forever and it's been like that forever.

That's what I was seeing on Google and that, yeah, it would totally confuse me not being from there. So, yeah, that's why I put at that location on this sketch, you see a yellow circle with an eye. And what I've put there is proposed intersection modification. I'll talk to you about what I have some thoughts about what to do with that intersection, if anything. And you guys may say, no, it's all right. We're all used to it. Leave it alone. That's fine. But I want to talk to you about that intersection as part of this project. And then the main traffic calming component that I have put here are these three diamonds with an R in them. Excuse me. That indicates that the main thing that I'm recommending and want to get your feedback on is that those would be radar feedback signs. We're not right now proposing any speed cushions for the street. And that's largely due to its rural nature. Excuse me. But also, I think you have a 40 mile an hour speed limit on the street. And our policy is we don't use speed cushions on anything that's signed faster than 30.

So that right there kind of takes it off the table.

We could talk more about it, you know, if you felt really strongly like we need more than what we're showing here. But our recommendation would be that the bulk of the traffic calming comes in this advisory of a couple of radar feedback signs and then a little bit of a heavier improvement there at this intersection of Union Hill and Claylip. So let me talk about that for just a second. I think we could do a couple of things, uh, if anything, um, one would be, um, you know, a potential, I think you have, you have kind of a sweeping curve there. Uh, y'all can tell me whether or not that creates any problems as you turn right around that corner, or if you turn left, if you're continuing North on Union Hill. Um, but you know, I think there's probably enough room we could work a design in for some sort of a traffic circle where, um, Traffic doesn't necessarily have to stop on Union Hill, but you've got to slow down in order to navigate that circle. That's kind of the point of it. Another thing that we could do that you see on the right-hand side, I just called it a standard stop, is to try and do a better job of teeing Claylip Road into it so that it's a little bit clearer on how you're supposed to drive that. And I think y'all are treating it the way it was intended, which is Union Hill is the continuous road, but Just as I'm looking at it on the desktop, it sure feels like Union Hill to Clay Lake seems to be the continuous road. And so we could do some things with maybe some deep paving. You see a green block there. Potentially we could remove some pavement and really formalize that, or it could be as informal as some striping and maybe some of those delineators.

I think if you even fix some potholes right there would be great.

or fixed potholes.

Potholes are kind of... We have enough humps in the road already. Believe me, it's like one pothole after the other out here.

I understand. Yeah, so...

So much better money spent is to fix the road.

Yeah, I will check. I mean, one thing we normally do is we'll kind of check as we get closer to a design and just make sure there's no paving coming. I'm not aware that this one is on any paving schedule, but I will double check that. So let me just back up to this, kind of the overall. Any thoughts on speed cushions, lack of speed cushions, the radar feedback signs that we do have?

Well, the problem with your cushions are that is the only way out without a hill when it snows. You will not plow if there's cushions in the road. So, where does that leave us sitting at home? We can't get out.

Yeah. Well, we're not proposing speed cushions, but even if we were, they do plow. We do put them on streets that are on the plow routes, and NDOT is very aware of that it goes on their mapping and their plow trucks but you know so it's really neither here nor there at this point so good point we definitely don't want speed cushions okay

Yeah, I just don't see the point. Like, I have a Polaris slingshot. It's very low to the ground. I can't go over them. And I have a motorcycle. I can't go. I don't want to have to swerve in between them to keep from wrecking. There's a main, there's a trader's post up here that has bike night. We have tons of bikes that come down this road. And they come from White's Creek. So if you have a speed hump there, you're causing a problem.

You're causing an accident. And that's the main cut through from Springfield to Goodlettsville. Everybody lives up there cuts down this road.

Very good. That's good feedback.

I mean, we're in the country.

Most of the things you proposed are great for the city, but they're not very good for the country. I've lived here for 20 years. I've never had a problem. Now, I have had a problem with police not being present.

Yeah. Yeah, we do hear that a lot. We're partners with the police. We appreciate the work they do. Unfortunately, they just don't often have a lot of...

you know, bandwidth to do ticket and traffic enforcement, unfortunately.

Well, so are you saying that even something like feedback signs are not desirable on the street?

I'm just saying I think it's a waste of money when it could be used better elsewhere. If you could fix the sides of the roads that are crumbling off, I mean, there's dips in the roads. that would be a much better use of money that's where i want my tax dollars to go and not beat my truck to death every day yeah i understand so the radar signs would be fine they are not i mean

you couldn't do, I mean, like you said, the 40 miles an hour, it's hard to do the speed humps because you're coming at them at 40 miles an hour. If you wanted to reduce the speed through there, that would not be a bad idea. And like you said, this 15% of the people that are going over 40, you know, 42 miles an hour, most of that is not local. Most of that is people cutting through and...

Oh, I agree 100%.

Yeah. And we do not want to reduce the speed.

You think 40 feels about right for the street? Absolutely.

Yeah, because we all drive a long way to work. I drive all the way across Nashville to the other side of town.

I'm already leaving an hour and a half early.

Okay.

All right, well, that's good feedback. What, what about any thoughts on the, the, any changes to the intersection?

Well, the way you've got it over here with the payment where it shows. Play it kind of goes at an angle. I understand that. Because they do not understand they're supposed to stop 9 times out of 10. And they will run at you, but. you know, we all live here and we've lived here for a long time. So we watch for people, but like the other lady said, people that don't live here that are cutting through because of traffic on the interstate's always backed up, then it's an issue. But the people who live here don't have the issue.

I like that mention. That's helpful. So sometimes the interstate congestion, it'll get back up and you see that. You see some of that traffic come off and come along Union Hill.

It's all the time.

I feel like that this money that we're spending for speed bumps all over Nashville would be much better spent. And widening the main roads people would be all of the secondary roads more. I feel like all the speed bumps in Davidson County. Are a waste of money and with our tax increase that we've just had. I'm a little sad to see where some of this money's going. We're in a rural area. We don't have trash pickup. We don't have transit service. We really don't need any help with our roads. The way that Clay Lake runs into Union Hill Road's always been like that. It works just fine. To back up just a minute, I wasn't available for the middle road meeting and I didn't know about Rollins road, but on Rollins road, where y'all have installed about 5 speed bumps. And about 1200 feet about 10 years ago. There was a red line put up at that row. From white scrape pipe to Clarksville highway, there's 4 roads how you can get over there. And the red light was put at Rollins Road for everybody to go Rollins Road instead of Eaton's Creek Road, Oak Parkville Highway, or Chambliss Road to Clarksville Highway. Now we've got five speed bumps and a 1,200-foot road that you really can't speed on anyway. So all the other traffic is going back to where the stop signs are now, away from where we've installed the red light. That makes no sense to me. speed bumps in this area in a rural area are just not needed and i think most everybody that i talk to feels that way yeah and i and i appreciate that and i don't disagree with you and that's why i have i'm not recommended them for for this street but um that's it that's it what's the recommendation for bidwell road i'm sorry about jumping to that but i'm new on this i don't know what happened with bidwell

I'm not aware of it. That's someone else.

Last week.

Yeah, someone else is handling that project. So I'm sorry. I don't know the outcome of that. Okay, thank you.

This is joy. Kimbrough. I was there and what they're going to do is mail out the ballots. They said that their decision will be based on 66 percent of those that are returned. I think he said the ballots will be mailed out in the next four to six weeks. You get your ballot, you go online, and you vote. It's going to, I think, 24 different locations, homes, schools, or whatever. It'll go to 24 addresses and the owner, Will vote 1 way or the other if they so choose. But they go online to vote and, um. Who, you know, based on 66% of those return. It will make the decision so theoretically, and I ask this question. If only 3 people return the balance. And two are yes, then they'll go forward. If two are no and one is yes, then it'll be no. So it's based on ballots returned. If you have one ballot returned, that represents 100%. So it's very important when you get the ballot to express your decision, what you want to do. And you go online to do that.

So who are these ballots going to? Because I haven't gotten one.

He explained it's going to 24 different addresses that will be affected. I don't know if you're one of those. They show the area that would be affected and that's where the ballots are going. What about it?

It doesn't just affect the people that live right in that area. It affects everybody who uses Union Hill road. I live on Morgan road and I use Union Hill every single day. So it affects me.

We're talking about, I thought he was asking about biblical role. Is that what you're asking? Mr. Smith.

Well, Bidwell Road is the same way. There's 150 people that live past the 24 people.

I was speaking specifically to clarify regarding the Bidwell Road meeting that you said you weren't able to make. And I was responding to that. I'm not speaking about Union Hill.

Well, will Union Hill be the same? Will it just be, will the ballots only be sent to people in that area? Zone?

I think Mr. Hammond. Mr. Hammond, can you answer that for them?

That's the one we want today. Okay. I can. And yeah, let me kind of move forward in the slides a little bit and then we can come back to the proposal if you want. So we're here tonight at the neighborhood meeting. That's the red circle that you see. What we will do after tonight is go into more of a design process where we kind of flesh these ideas out a little bit more. And then at that point- Hello.

I have not been able to talk and I'm sorry if I'm interrupting somebody, but first of all, my name is Kathy Straub and I'm the one that, and my computer, I couldn't, it would not stay muted. So I called, I'm calling in. I'm the one that started out at Hub Nashville and then I went, was directed to you, Jeff Hammond. Now, first of all, they should have put the place where they counted the cars and everything on this strip from clay lick to the interstate not where you had it because the fast speeders are they're coming across from the interstate bridge and then they hit the brakes so they come around that curve now i've almost been hit once walking on our road around that curve i have to get way over my husband was almost hit twice mowing our yard and we have a red or a bright yellow mower Yes, Union Road is very narrow. I don't know where these other people live, but I live right there. I walk on that road every day. And we are definitely in favor of the calming humps. And a couple other people are away on vacation. that are also forward and another guy had to leave. So I'm sorry I interrupted, but I wanted to get that in because I couldn't get your attention and I don't know why it wouldn't come up on my computer.

So that's who we are.

Yes. Or we'd like that sign that says slow down. The one that, you know, flashes. That would be great. People go really fast that area. And we thought it would be important to have one because there's a daycare by the post office that those kids have to go to the bus. And, you know, people are going faster. But really, it should have been across the road between you missed the mark. They didn't put it at the right spot.

Well, what I said in any case, you you applied and were selected for a traffic calming project. So. Maybe we could have gotten a faster speed somewhere else, but it really wouldn't matter. We'd be at the same place. And so this project, in some form, I would say will happen. Right now, we're not proposing speed cushions. But if there's a lot of feedback that comes alternative to that in that Engage Nashville, we'll certainly be open. to it, although we really have to watch this.

You could sit here on a Sunday afternoon in our yard and see how fast they fly. Friday nights, Saturday nights, Saturday, try walking on Union Hill Road where I have lived here since night, let's see, 47 years in this exact house.

We built this house.

Yes. And now we walk to our church and there's kids in the church. So, yeah, we've been here a good while. And I'm just saying that this was me turning this in. It wasn't, you know, I mean, Steve said, hey, that guy almost hit me. People don't look. They don't get over. I know I can't get a sidewalk. That'd be kind of silly for me for some people, although there's other people who do walk. uh but you know especially with the daycare by the post office and um how fast they fly from those two which has a stop sign right past it so everyone is already slow yeah and they don't yes exactly they fly so they have to slow down because of the stop sign not hardly you don't want somebody behind you when you're trying to pull in the post office but anyways I thought I'd share because I can't get on picture wise on the thing. Yes.

Yeah, well, and this goes for any of you, if you'd like the slides, you're welcome to have them. I'll give you my email address in just a minute, and I'll be glad to send you what we're looking at. Sorry, it'll be kind of after the fact, but you'll be able to see it.

Oh, no, no, I saw your slides. I saw your slides. You couldn't hear me through the video, so I called the number. so yeah I don't know why my computer would not I kept waving and going it's me I'm trying to talk but no no that was it yeah well I mean if something can be done that would be wonderful yeah we think the signs will be a good fit for the street we think they'll be you know effective especially in these cases like I'm glad to hear that you know sometimes it's not all local traffic it's people that cut through and maybe they don't do that all the time and so

You know, you get on a street like this that feels fairly rural and you go fast. And so I think those signs would be a good reminder to folks that, hey, people live here. We're watching the street. We need you to slow down. So that's what we're proposing now. So in the design process, we can come back. And it sounds like maybe we would come back if we decide to do anything with that intersection. I want to make sure that everyone here is abreast of what we're working on. And so if we want to come back and do a second neighborhood meeting, we're happy to do that. We used to make it mandatory, but in a lot of cases, people did want speed cushions. That was pretty clear. And so we don't make it mandatory anymore. And in those cases, we do have a ballot. And so when we were talking a minute ago about Bidwell Road, that ballot discussion is what we were talking about. We typically only ballot when speed cushions are involved. Because we know there's some people that are in favor of it and some people that are not. And so we try to make it as fair as possible just to make sure everybody's aware and has a say on whether or not that's a good fit for their street. So I'll talk a little bit more about the ballot process. But before I leave this slide, just to say, after that ballot, if it were to pass, you go into a construction queue. And that typically takes a number of months. NDOT has really made some great strides in speeding this process up. We used to say from this point we're still probably a year out from any sort of traffic calming. I think we're a little faster than that now. But just don't expect that, you know, in a couple of months we'll out there be doing traffic calming. It won't happen quite that quickly. So we've got some time.

Just want you to kind of

be aware of that. The ballot process, and again, we're not proposing speed cushion, so as it stands right now, we probably wouldn't even have a ballot for this project. But if we did, and if that changed, and to help the questions on Bidwell Road, the way the ballot process works is anyone who owns property within the project limits, I'll define that here in just a second, will get one of these cards by mail. Hopefully some of you got the card for tonight. It would, it looks very similar to that. It has a code on it and a special way to access that ballot. And you just go in and give us your name and address and whether you're for the project or not. And if at the end of that, that stays open for six weeks. At the end of that, we count all those up. And if two thirds of the people who voted said, yes, I would, I'm in favor of it. Then we moved the project forward. And so that's the way that works. The people that are eligible for this street looks like this. Of course, it would be different on Bidwell Road, but the same idea. Again, you take the limits of the project of the street, and if you own the property adjacent to that right-of-way within those limits, you would be validated. We know the street is used by way more people than this. And we know that maybe they should have a say, but this is the policy because it's very difficult to come up with a perfect way to do that and not ballot everybody in Northern Davidson County who might use that street. So we know it's kind of an imperfect system, but we think it's the best way to do it. But anyway, again, this probably doesn't affect Union Hill Road, but hopefully that's a helpful definition of that for a bit. which I assume means, Council Member Kimbrough, I appreciate you joining us tonight. I assume that means that there are speed cushions being proposed on Bidwell.

That's why it was speed cushions. You're correct.

Yeah. So that's generally the only time we validate. Any questions on that? If I can be helpful on Bidwell, I'll be glad to answer questions in general.

my my questions about the money on the speech bumps is how much is in our budget for the speed bumps the planning the construction your fee all the mail outs all the work we're doing on these 60 or 100 or 200 streets in nashville getting speed bumps what kind of budget does metro have allowed it for that do you know

I don't know the annual budget. What we used to do is when we were setting it up in a very ballpark general case, we would say each of these projects would have a budget not to exceed $50,000. We're coming in pretty significantly below that. If speed cushions are proposed, each location is somewhere like $3,000 to $5,000. I mean, I know that's a lot of money. It's significant. I don't want to downplay it at all. It's all of our money. It's mine too. But in this grand scheme of infrastructure, it's about as cheap a project as we have. These are considered fairly low-cost projects, but again, not to minimize that that's real money and it could be going to a lot of different things.

So very sensitive to that.

But sorry, I don't have like a fiscal year budget for just for traffic calming. That's my contact. I'm Jeff. I'm the one in green below. And then you've got the end traffic calming web traffic calming email there as well. And again, the same QR code that we had at the beginning of the presentation about Engage Nashville. We'd love to hear from you on any of those platforms. Any questions you have, comments you have. You hate it. You love it. You want to do something different. Let us hear from you. We'll be coming out there and kind of continuing on. I think as I hear it right now, I'm going to back up a few slides. I think if I had to stop right here tonight and say, what are we doing on Union Hill? I would propose that we're going to look at three locations of radar feedback signs. I think I'll have a little bit better feel for if anything is needed at Clay Lick and Union Hill after seeing it on the ground. But it sounded like there may be a little more interest in doing something like we show on the right than on the left. Am I right in saying a traffic circle may not be the best fit there for you all as residents?

Correct. Okay. I agree. Okay. Well, that's helpful.

I agree, Tim.

I think it works fine the way it is.

Okay. Well, I'll look at it. It doesn't look good on Google. I'm a traffic engineer, so I like things to be standard. To me, it sure looks like, if you look at that picture that's on the left there that's on your screen, it sure feels like people would come off Union Hill and go straight through Clay Lick and vice versa. all the time. But I guess everyone's gotten used to it the way it is. So we'll look at that. I mean, of course, like a doctor, our first thing is don't make anything worse than it is. So we don't want to do that. But if we see that there may be an alternative to clean that up a little bit, maybe narrow it a little bit and slow traffic down that's coming around that sharp curve and clarify those movements, that may be worthwhile. Am I right in that if we did something like that, you'd want to get back together and see that before we move forward. Definitely.

Okay.

Yes. We'll plan on setting up a 2nd meeting. And, um, we'll typically work with the applicant doing that, but, um, yeah, we'll, we'll.

Make all that available if union Hill road has 2000 cars a day. Clearly it might not happen to a 300. okay.

So that's helpful. Yeah. Yeah. And so I think that makes sense as, you know, why you would bring it to a stop and make sure that Union Hill continues on. And I, and I guess in theory, if you're coming south on Union Hill, I want to turn left on Clay Lake. You're supposed to come to a stop, but. I just, I just feel dangerous to me. It feels awkward.

Now, Clay Lake's the only one that's supposed to stop unless you are turning on the Clay Lake.

That's right.

Also on Tlaloc, there used to be a sign that says the cross traffic does not stop and it's not there anymore. Okay. That also would probably help a lot.

Yeah, it could. So, yeah, there's just something about that that doesn't feel right. When you sign it stop and then have exceptions to that, that's really not allowed. That's not a proper use, but we'll take a look at that and see if we can't improve.

Yeah, because technically that's all Union Hill Road.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. All right, I think we got it through everything. You've got my contact there. And then this last slide is just the traffic calming website. That map that I showed you is there. All of our design plans are there. This meeting will be posted there. A link to a YouTube of this meeting will be there. If you're ever interested in how many of these things pass and fail, we put the results of every ballot that we ever do there. So just a lot of information. Most of it you're probably not interested in, but it's all there. I appreciate very much you guys for taking your time here tonight and giving us this feedback and staying interested in the project. And again, we work in good faith. We kind of consider ourselves your engineer on this. We're here to, I think it's a good service of Metro that, you know, be responsive to some of the feedback we've got on your street. Hopefully we can help. in that. We just want to work with you on that. Thanks very much.

Thank you.

Yes, ma'am.

Any final thoughts? Thank you very much.

No, just thank you for coming out and explaining it. I know there was a lot of anticipation and concerns and worry. Thank you for coming out and answering the questions. I appreciate it.

No doubt about it. Thank you, council member. Always appreciate it. your support and the work that y'all do. With that, we'll say thank you very much for attending. Hope you have a great rest of your evening and we'll be in touch.

Thanks.

Thanks.