Existing Assessment Review
The project team conducted a review of the Nashville Department of Transportation's existing Traffic Impact Study (TIS) Requirements, seeking feedback from internal and external stakeholders. Both groups, which included Nashville Department of Transportation and Metro Nashville staff, traffic consultants, Metro employees, and private developers, expressed similar concerns regarding the current guidelines. These concerns included a lack of representation for new geographical and land use changes, a lack of alignment with current best practices, and a lack of cohesion between updated city planning requirements and Traffic Impact Study requirements. Stakeholders also highlighted the need for improved accessibility to documents and data, as well as better communication channels.
To inform the forthcoming Traffic Impact Study guideline update, the project team evaluated the development review requirements and procedures of four peer cities: Austin, Seattle, San José, and Washington D.C. These cities provided valuable insights into current best practices, including measuring transportation demand management effectiveness, alternative metrics for assessing development impact, and streamlined processes for obtaining and tracking transportation improvements. It should be noted that these cities were chosen not because they have similar characteristics, but because they all have desirable development transportation review characteristics that the Nashville Department of Transportation aspired to achieve with an updated guideline. The stakeholder engagement and research conducted by the project team serve as a foundation for the upcoming Traffic Impact Study Guideline update.
Existing Assessment Full Report
Interim Instructional Bulletin
Following the completion of the Existing Assessment Report, NDOT identified the need to create an interim solution to address the 2004 Traffic Impact Study (TIS) Guideline discrepancies with the Metro Code 17.20.140 and provide a high-level guidance for including multimodal and safety analysis in TIS’ submitted until the final MMTA Guidelines would be released and implemented fully.
The result was a five-page Interim Instructional Bulletin that went into effect beginning April 3, 2023. This bulletin addressed the TIS threshold discrepancy to be consistent with what was defined with the 2017 Zoning Code update. It also added guidance on providing multimodal infrastructure inventories and physical conditions, details on Transportation Demand Management (TDM) strategies, links to Metro Nashville plans and policies, and identification of the High Injury Network rankings in the study area.