By Chris Bowe, Community Member

3 min read Following a pedestrian fatality, Chris Bowe, a community member on the Vision Zero Advisory Committee, thinks we should do something while we wait for permanent solutions to improve pedestrian safety. With a tactical urbanism application in the works, read more to learn about his idea.

The Problem

In the US, traffic-related fatalities generally grew every year from the beginning of recorded data until the late 1970s. From 1979 to 2011, the traffic fatality rate reversed course and generally fell slowly each year. Unfortunately, and unlike in basically every other developed nation globally, that trend did not hold. The US traffic fatality rate once again began trending higher in the 2010s and continues to grow today, especially for pedestrians and cyclists. Traffic crash fatalities are now the 1st or 2nd leading cause of death for every age cohort of Americans from 5 years old to 67 [Wikipedia].

Nashville is not the exception that proves this rule. On the contrary, the proliferation of five (or more) lane “stroads”, and general lack of safe pedestrian or cycling infrastructure predictably leads to higher than average rates of traffic-related death in Davison County each year.

One such “stroad”, Gallatin Pike, forms the backbone of East Nashville. Since 2017, fourteen people have tragically lost their lives traveling on Gallatin Pike just within the current boundary of District 7. Of those fourteen, eight fatalities have involved a pedestrian simply attempting to cross or navigate the deeply hostile environment surrounding the road. Just in the 2,000’ stretch of Gallatin between Stratford and Ardee Avenues, three pedestrians have been killed in the past five years. There are exactly zero marked crosswalks in those 2,000’.

The Solution

Luckily, NDOT already knows that Gallatin Pike needs to change. There is an active design project in the works to rebuild the entire corridor from 5th Street near downtown all the way out to Briley Parkway as a “Complete Street”. By their own survey data, collected as part of the engagement effort on the project, respondents ranked “Safe and accessible crossing opportunities” and “Better pedestrian roadside experience” as their highest priorities for the rebuild.

The Choose How You Move plan has identified Gallatin Pike as an “All-Access Corridor”, which should include transformative capital projects to realign the roadway to prioritize transit users, pedestrians, and cyclists above motorists. NDOT has even completed a study to identify locations in need of safe crosswalks along Gallatin Pike, which shows Stratford to Ardee as an area which needs additional safe crossing options.

So, if this area has been identified as dangerous by its inclusion in the High Injury Network and three separate study efforts, why haven’t new safe crossings already been built here?

There is a clue lurking in NDOT’s newly established safe crossings guidance (adapted from FHWA guidance) shown in the table below:

According to the table, the only safe crossing intervention at this location (>15,000 vpd, 35-40 mph, 4-5 lanes) is a “PHB” or Pedestrian Hybrid Beacon. NDOT/TDOT have installed several of these around town in the past few years, including on Dickerson Pike near the Skyliner, on 8th Avenue near Arnold’s, and on Lafayette St near LEAD Cameron Middle School. PHBs are very effective and dramatically improve the safety of crossings on major roads – but they’re expensive. Not just expensive, but intensive too. Planning, community engagement, rounds of funding, roadway closures, electrical, lighting upgrades, data cables, control cabinets, underground vaults and foundations, concrete work in the median space, and much more means that these projects are not easy and take A LOT of time from start to finish. Since there is no existing dedicated funding for PHBs on Gallatin, it would likely be 2-3 years to complete the project if NDOT committed to starting tomorrow.

I don’t know about you, but I think we should do something while we wait for the permanent solutions that are still years away.

Enter, NDOT’s Tactical Urbanism program.

This program allows a local organization or individual to dream up a safety related or placemaking project that can be installed on a temporary basis. At its best, Tactical Urbanism (TU) can be used to quickly install cheap, proof-of-concept designs that would then be used by the public, tested, reviewed, and even tweaked before the real money comes in to make the proven elements permanent. The TU approach flips the traditional public project delivery method to prioritize action and collecting real-world feedback on potential designs, rather than conducting an endless series of engagement sessions and surveys before anything is designed or built. It is a lot easier to deliver thoughtful feedback on a crosswalk you have just used than it is to look at a plan on paper and imagine how you would feel about that if it were built in three dimensions!

Below is my proposal for adding a marked crosswalk at Gallatin Pike & Oak Street:

The large concrete planters are especially important to the overall design. Vehicles should be incentivized to slow down to navigate the visually narrowed lanes. Slower vehicles carry immensely lower momentum into the space, meaning that pedestrian crashes are far less likely to result in a fatality. Pedestrians can utilize the planters as physical protection from errant vehicles while they wait to cross just two lanes of active traffic at a time, instead of engaging in a real-life, high-stakes game of five-lane Frogger.

The next step for this project is to submit it to NDOT through their regular TU permit application process. If approved, this new crosswalk will be installed for up to one year, providing a much-needed improvement to the existing condition. All the materials are temporary grade and can easily be removed or altered if there are issues with the way vehicles and people interact with the design.

If you are interested in following the process, hit the “Follow” button at cbowe34@bsky.social where I will be posting updates along the way. With a little luck and lot of community support, we can make a difference in our neighborhoods. Keep an eye out for future Tactical Urbanism project opportunities in yours!

Stop Waiting for Permanent Change

The Problem

The Solution

Functional Art in Historic Germantown

Excluding Some Excludes All