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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.

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