Month: November 2017

Many critics of Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s mass transit proposal are conservatives and libertarians, but her plans have also prompted criticism from left-leaning advocates of the poor and working class. A group called People’s Alliance for Transit, Housing and Employment (PATHE) has formed to press the progressive Democratic mayor and other Metro leaders to make affordable housing, higher wages and immediate improvements to the bus system greater priorities. A key element of Barry’s proposal is light rail along five corridors, but PATHE maintains that “light rail is meaningless if most of us can no longer afford to live along the routes,” according to a statement on the group’s website describing its mission and purpose. The statement also says: While no one denies that our public transit system needs major expansion, we still have not been presented with a plan that addresses the most pressing crises facing our communities, mainly economically distressed neighborhoods and residents. The experience of other cities, including Denver and Atlanta, has shown that without explicit community benefits (or equivalent measures) legally written into or alongside major transit projects, there are unintended, devastating consequences for everyday people. These include dramatic cost of living hikes along new transit corridors, mass displacement…