NDOT presents traffic-calming plan for Bowling Avenue; neighbors raise safety and diversion concerns

The Nashville Department of Transportation presented a preliminary traffic-calming plan for a roughly 0.4-mile segment of Bowling Avenue on Oct. 12, saying engineering changes could reduce speeds on a street where speed data and neighborhood uses indicate safety concerns.

At a virtual neighborhood meeting, Jeff, a consultant for the Nashville Department of Transportation (NDOT), said the city selected Bowling Avenue from an application-based backlog of roughly 600 streets and that the corridor scored in the top 25 for the current selection cycle. He described 80th-percentile speeds of 32 mph, a recorded daily traffic volume of about 3,800 vehicles, and said NDOT uses a 24-hour count window to generate those metrics. "These meetings are recorded. We'll make this available to you, really to anyone through the NDOT traffic calming website," Jeff said as he opened the session.

Why it matters: Residents identified school pick-up and the nearby synagogue as concentrated pedestrian activity that could be affected by high vehicle speeds; several speakers said children wait at bus stops along Bowling and that sight-distance over a crest is a recurring hazard. Neighbors also warned that slowing Bowling could push traffic onto narrower nearby streets such as Greenway and Craighead.

NDOT’s preliminary design and toolbox NDOT staff presented a preliminary layout that would place two…