East Bank's blank slate lets Nashville plan traffic, transit and sidewalks from ground up

Driving from one end of Nashville's East Bank to the other currently means navigating a disjointed network of streets around parking lots and industrial properties.

A north-south trip requires five turns, according to a vision plan adopted in October 2022. The approximately 550-acre strip of prime land lining the Cumberland River is today cut in half by the concrete wall of the James Robertson Parkway Bridge. Interstate 24 divides the East Bank from the more walkable streets of East Nashville.

Plans to redevelop the underused area into Nashville's newest neighborhood focus heavily on transportation of all types: an improved vehicle grid, dedicated lanes for public transit, pedestrian corridors and bicycle lanes to name a few. A 2-acre plot of city-owned land is slated to become a hub for WeGo bus service, topped by 300 units of affordable housing. A main boulevard running parallel to the river would include extra-wide sidewalks, bus lanes and lanes for slow-moving vehicle traffic, according to the Imagine East Bank Vision Plan.

The "blank slate" nature of the city's East Bank holdings offers unprecedented planning control, something Metro Planning Director Lucy Kempf celebrates. "Future transit" was one of the pillars around which the planning department made core decisions for the land's redesign, a process that took two years.

"The way we've thought about the East Bank is that it is a major lynchpin to a number of different existing networks that need to be served, so I would say, firmly, that transit readiness was at the very front of our thinking in developing the plan," Kempf said.

With a new Tennessee Titans stadium under construction and a public-private partnership in place with The Fallon Company to develop an initial 30 acres of city-owned land, a handful of factors and their timing will impact how transportation takes shape over the coming decades:

• The city's ability to acquire land it needs to build the north-to-south arterial boulevard

• Working with the state to bring the James Robertson Parkway Bridge to street level

• The removal of the current Nissan Stadium

• The relocation of the Juvenile Justice Center (planning for a new facility is underway)

• Exploring a reroute of CSX freight tracks

A new grid for more than cars

East Bank transportation plans include a wide multimodal boulevard, an extension of the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge and multiple projects designed to make the area more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists.

East Bank boulevard

The north-south boulevard is currently designed to be about 110 feet in width, featuring extra-wide sidewalks, vehicle lanes with a 25 mph speed limit and lanes dedicated to frequent bus service.

"The boulevard has to be, first and foremost, a public place for people," Kempf said.

Second Street, which will run parallel to the boulevard, will prioritize pedestrians and cyclists with protected bike lanes and sidewalks, as will Waterside Drive near the riverfront. A pedestrian- and cyclist-exclusive East Bank greenway will connect to Shelby Bottoms Greenway, River North and Frederick Douglass and McFerrin parks in East Nashville.

The Fallon Company will develop the first portion of the East Bank boulevard: a quarter-mile stretch from Korean Veterans Boulevard to Victory Avenue. The segment could be complete by 2030, but the timeline for the remainder of the corridor remains fuzzy. The current Nissan Stadium, which will be razed soon after the new stadium opens in 2027, lies directly in the boulevard's path. The James Robertson Parkway Bridge will need to be lowered before boulevard construction can continue north.

The city also needs to acquire several parcels of land to create the boulevard, an effort that has been underway since at least 2022. Land earmarked for the boulevard is the subject of a pending lawsuit filed by a developer claiming the city purposefully held up its permits to prevent building on that land.

The Music City Mile

An extension of the John Seigenthaler Pedestrian Bridge will connect Nashville's downtown to a plaza area abutting the new Nissan Stadium, with connections to a new Tennessee Performing Arts Center and street-level green space along the way.

The "linear park," called the "Music City Mile" due to its one-mile distance between the west bank of the Cumberland River and the stadium, will feature retail along its edges. The pedestrian bridge will continue to be accessible to pedestrians and cyclists during construction, and no private event will completely shut down the bridge in the future, according to Metro Chief Development Officer Bob Mendes.

Fallon President Brian Awe said the development firm's goal is to ensure the Music City Mile "is an inviting space that feels open and accessible for everybody."

The pedestrian bridge extension will also serve as a key access point for patrons of TPAC and the new Nissan Stadium, offsetting the removal of about 3,700 parking spaces as the stadium's current lots are used for construction staging or put to other uses.

How East Bank plans fit into proposed transit tax vote

Nashville Mayor Freddie O'Connell's "Choose How You Move" transportation plan, which will be on the ballot in November, includes upgrades that touch the East Bank.

Under the plan, the East Bank transit center would be one of 12 new hubs throughout the city. Along with WeGo Central and a new hub in South Broadway, the East Bank transit center would round out a trio of key transit connections in Nashville's downtown core.

The proposal would upgrade 54 miles of Nashville's most traveled streets into "all-access corridors" that support high-frequency transit, smarter traffic signals and improved pedestrian infrastructure. Many of those corridors, which reach throughout the county, would connect to the East Bank:

• Gallatin Pike corridor: East Bank to Rivergate Walmart

• Dickerson Pike/East Bank corridor: Nissan Stadium to Skyline Walmart

• Downtown-East Bank: SoBro to East Bank

• Downtown-James Robertson: Elizabeth Duff Transit Center (WeGo Central) to East Bank

If voters approve the plan (and the half-cent sales tax increase to pay for it) on Nov. 5, improvements to the Gallatin Pike corridor would begin immediately, with Downtown corridors connecting to the East Bank beginning construction around 2029 and upgrades to Dickerson Pike concluding around 2036, according to plan projections.

O'Connell has described the referendum as a way to speed up the implementation of already-mapped concepts from a decade of city studies and plans. The half-cent sales tax increase, a dedicated funding source for transit improvements, would open greater opportunities for Nashville to receive federal grant funding to offset infrastructure costs, he said.

Kempf said plans for the East Bank were in place long before plans for a referendum solidified.

"What we want to do is make sure that we have the right urban design framework that can support the livability of the city, and all of those decisions about streets and sidewalks ... are so important in whatever neighborhood we're working in," she said.

The Titans are also interested in the East Bank's transportation future, including potential transit opportunities.

"We are certainly supportive of the city's efforts to expand transit, and we will be at the ready to help them identify how those specific plans can ultimately get people from around the city to and from the stadium for events and other things that happen around the stadium," Titans President and CEO Burke Nihill said.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Nashville's East Bank: Why rethinking transit of all kinds will be key