Transit and sidewalks are two big priorities for Middle Tennessee and its regional transportation needs, according to a survey of community members who gathered for a special meeting this week.
As reported, Faye DiMassimo, senior advisor for Transportation and Infrastructure for Nashville Democratic Mayor John Cooper, spoke Thursday to community members at Nashville’s Adventure Science Center. This was a part of the Moving Forward initiative.
Through a special survey, participants ranked their top transportation priorities for the area.
Members of Cooper’s office released those results Friday.
Investing in transit ranked first.
Investing in sidewalks ranked second.
And investing in signals and traffic operations ranked third.
As reported, Moving Forward organizers say Middle Tennessee is behind in addressing its mobility needs and want business and community leaders to help create a regional mobility plan through “a cohesive community effort.”
“The office is in the first step of planning a process to determine Nashville’s transportation priorities,” DiMassimo said.
“This is with the goal of initial recommendations in June and a full transportation plan by the end of September.”
DiMassimo said Cooper had committed to a new transportation plan for Nashville by the end of his first term.
One man in the audience asked how Cooper’s priorities will dovetail with those of the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s.
DiMassimo said Cooper’s plan will integrate a larger regional effort along with the Tennessee Department of Transportation’s work.
Another man in the audience said he worried how members of the public perceive these issues.
“Obviously the folks in the room are behind this conversation, but then there is the public at large that does not understand how transportation planning works, which leads into negative feelings we have had in previous referendums,” the man said.
According to its website, for almost a year “the Moving Forward Mobility Policy Task Force has studied models of regional coordination around the provision of transit. The Task Force considered the experience of seven peer and aspirational regions from across the country. The Task Force’s goal is to provide an understanding of how Middle Tennessee coordinates to create regional transit compared to how other regions have collaborated across jurisdictions to provide transit options.”
“When the Let’s Move Nashville transit plan failed at the polls in Nashville/Davidson County in 2018, one criticism of the plan was that it was not regional. This critique noted that the proposed light rail lines did not extend to the outer portions of Davidson County, much less to the outlying counties where commuters add vehicles to roads and interstates (over 50 percent of employees commute across county lines in Middle Tennessee every day),” according to its website.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Yep. Just what Nashville needs – more cost to the taxpayer for severely underutilized mass transit. Just another form of welfare. Oh, and sidewalks will surely cut commute times. What a bunch of losers.
Right! I agree wholeheartedly that Nashville and the rest of the state of Tennessee desperately needs more sidewalks and public passenger transit to promote a more pedestrian- and transit-friendly environment to give people a positive incentive to cut back on the use of their private mostly single-occupant motor vehicles. Nobody is calling for a ban on automobiles; we simply want people to have a CHOICE between wasteful automobile carbon foot-printing and the alternative of having safe pedestrian and affordable clean transit options. For too many decades, Nashville has carelessly constructed new subdivisions without any sidewalks or even shoulders on the roads for pedestrians. This lack of shoulders, much less sidewalks, on these very narrow suburban subdivision streets even makes it dangerous for motorists whose cars could easily fall into the side gullies either stranding their vehicle or causing a major accident. I almost had a few accidents on these suburban roads myself when I used to drive my car there years ago. Why Nashville and Davidson County could get away since the 1940’s with such slipshod design corner-cutting on simple and sensible driver/pedestrian safety procedures is a criminal scandal. This was an issue that our family fought over during our 46 years of residency (1952-1998) in Nashville. Even our own neighborhood ten years before we moved to it lacked sidewalks. It took drastic local neighborhood action to finally get then Mayor Bob Cummings (1904’s-1951) to finally put sidewalks next to our future home. Some of our neighbors told us about that battle long after we moved in.
Well, I hope that this time that Nashville/Davidson County will finally have better luck in retrofitting all of our neighborhoods with sidewalks and some type of flexible transit. It will be necessary this time around to be sure that we have REAL local input into the planning that we failed to have in 2018 when an earlier plan went down into defeat.
Our transportation needs should give more emphasis to people-moving instead of to vehicle-moving. Good luck!
Also, it is clear to me, looking at the Sidewalks of LA, SF, and Seattle that we need more sidewalk space for the homeless refugees and future democrat voters.
CCW – Well said!!!