The Root of All Traffic
Good afternoon, everyone.
In what I can only assume was an algorithmically driven article, yesterday, WSMV published the results of INRIX’s 2024 Traffic Scorecard Report which ranked Nashville traffic congestion as the 27th-worst worldwide. In part, I think the story hit such a nerve because New York City launched congestion pricing the same day.
So far, transit fanatics have been shrieking about how much keeping poor people out of Lower Manhattan decreases congestion, but I have gotten to the root of Nashville’s traffic woes without asking you for more money: Nashville traffic is bad because Nashvillians are uniquely bad at driving.
To address this issue, we must make licensing requirements more stringent to raise the average ability of drivers on the road—which will, in the process, reduce the number of cars on the road.
Those unable to grasp basic mobility principles such as the zipper merge or slow-stay-right can take the bus. This way, the transit fanatics won’t have to invent a constituency interested in riding the bus and will instead; instead, they will get a subset of the population captive to their services.
The naive justification of “build it and they will come” would no longer be necessary. We’d need to get people around the city and half of them can’t drive! That’s a crisis that only a bus can solve.
The city should keep shoulder activity during rush hour to a minimum and radically speed up the process of clearing accidents. If all drivers were perfectly instructed on how to zipper merge and stay right when driving slower than the flow of traffic, poof go the complaints, and down goes our INRIX’s Traffic Scorecard Report ranking.
A car-centric city favors the driver of greater ability. As people politely pile into line on off-ramps—something that has been proven to cause traffic jams time and again—the savvy drivers loop around them, merging at the last second.
Would improving the average driver’s ability, increasing the efficiency of clearing accidents, and reducing shoulder activity help that line of cars slide through congestion points like icing out of a hexagonal piper?
I can’t say for sure, but I do know that two consistent chokepoints in my relatively short commute are shoulder activity on the off-ramp from I-40E onto I-440E and, if I let it, the line of cars refusing to occupy the adjacent lane as they slavishly wait to get off at the I-65S exit.
Onward.
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🚘 Car Break-ins A handful of teenagers have been linked to a series of recent vehicle break-ins across Nashville. Several of the suspects have committed similar crimes in recent years, highlighting the troubling issue of juvenile recidivism in Davidson County.
During Friday’s media roundtable, Mayor O’Connell emphasized the importance of reporting incidents to the police to help them effectively detect crime patterns. “Always reach out to your precinct commanders,” echoed Inspector Preston Brandimore. “They're the experts in their area. The more they know—to the mayor's point—the more they can proactively address matters.”
Though MNPD has increased patrols and scheduled a special meeting tonight to encourage smart parking habits, Coucilmember Jordan Huffman has called for accountability and a concerted effort from state and local leaders. “If we are not going to keep the kids on a level of accountability, somebody has to be accountable,” Huffman told News2 in response to the break-ins. “If you don’t know where your kids are and it’s three, four, five o’clock in the morning, well, that’s on you.”
🔢 Nashville By The Numbers This morning, the mayor’s office released a list of its 2024 accomplishments. “Crime was down overall in the city by more than 700 incidents, violent crime dropped 5 percent, we broke ground or cut the ribbon on more than 1,000 new, affordable homes, plus we received a historic commitment to affordability on the East Bank from our partners at Fallon,” O’Connell told the press on Friday. “In infrastructure news, we filled more than 40,000 potholes over the course of the year, we added 19 state-of-the-art snow plows to our fleet, pushing us to 40 total plows ready to treat and plow roads this winter.”
In addition, Metro Public Health Department Centers distributed 10,000 gun locks, TDOT laid about four miles of sidewalk, and Metro schools had their highest recorded graduation rate in history.
💰 The Chamber Has Chosen The search for a new Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce CEO is over. Stephanie Coleman, who started as the Chamber’s communications account executive in 2008, was selected to replace veteran CEO Ralph Schulz. According to Axios, Coleman will focus on mending the relationship between the Chamber and the Metro Council. Coleman was chosen over Matt Wiltshire, who ran for mayor in 2023 and has a background in affordable housing and economic development for Metro.
DEVELOPMENT
✹ THIS WEEK IN STREAMING (January 7th)
Juror #2 (Max) Hollywood’s last living legend proves the power of classical filmmaking in this taut courtroom drama about a juror (Nicholas Hoult) who finds himself in the position to exonerate the defendant in a hit-and-run while slowly realizing he may be guilty of the crime himself. Warner Bros. did Clint dirty by dumping this in a few theaters a couple of weeks before Wicked. Here’s hoping it earns the following it deserves.
Columbo (Peacock) The January doldrums are the perfect time to go deep into the ten seasons and endless TV-movies featuring Peter Falk as the most inquisitive detective this side of Monk. Neither superhuman nor aspiring for higher status, Columbo may well be American TV’s first unabashed working-class hero.
The Lodge (Hulu) This intense psychological thriller had the misfortune of releasing a month before COVID, but its focus on the depths of stir-crazy isolation cemented its status as the perfect post-pandemic snowpocalypse movie. Left alone at the family cabin by her much older boyfriend to tend to his kids during a rustic Christmas vacation, Grace (Riley Keough) nurses the onset of a breakdown. But whether her declining mental state is the result of trauma from growing up in a cult or the realization that her youth may not last forever remains up in the air. As if Keough’s intensity weren’t enough, the film also offers up a career-best for Alicia Silverstone.
THINGS TO DO
View our calendar for the week here and our weekly film rundown here.
📅 Visit our On The Radar list to find upcoming events around Nashville.
🎧 On Spotify: Pamphleteer's Picks, a playlist of our favorite bands in town this week.
👨🏻🌾 Check out our Nashville farmer's market guide.
TONIGHT
🎹 Rockin Blues & Country Tuesdays: Henri Herbert @ Dee's Lounge, 9p, $5, Info
🎸 Honky Tonk Tuesday @ Eastside Bowl, 8p, $10, Info
+ two-step lessons @ 7p, The Cowpokes @ 8p
🎸 Cole Ritter and the Night Owls @ The Underdog, 11:30p, Free, Info
📰 Check out the full newsletter archive here.