Nashville, Tennessee Scraps Right-on-Red Ban Bill: Transportation Department to Roll Out Ban at Select Intersections
A high-profile bill to ban right turns on red in Nashville, Tennessee, has been withdrawn from the Metro Council, and the Nashville Department of Transportation (NDOT) will roll out the ban itself instead. The original bill would have eliminated right turns on red at every intersection throughout Nashville's nearly 200-square-mile Urban Services District, while a scaled-back substitute version focused on about 60 intersections mostly in the downtown core and near school zones. The bill had been repeatedly deferred since mid-September.
The bill's main sponsor, District 30 Council Member Sandra Sepulveda, told colleagues at an October 19 committee meeting that a productive meeting with NDOT officials paved the way for the department to advance a concrete implementation plan without legislation. Under the rollout over the next two weeks, a department spokesperson clarified on October 21, right turns on red will be banned at seven of the first 13 affected intersections, while the others will initially receive leading pedestrian interval improvements, which give pedestrians a head start entering crosswalks; one intersection will receive both.
"We are saving lives at the end of the day," Sepulveda said. "We are going to save pedestrians and we are going to save cyclists, and the city is going to be better off." NDOT also plans continued study of pedestrian safety improvements at other intersections throughout the county.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: Nashville 市中心 Broadway 街景，w_lemay 摄，CC BY-SA 2.0，Wikimedia Commons / Broadway in downtown Nashville, by w_lemay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
