Perseverance pays off for Nashville
After properly over a decade of effort, fast-growing Nashville lastly handed a transit funding referendum, proving that persistence, perseverance and studying from errors results in success.
The November 2024 elections will depart rather a lot to unpack within the coming weeks and months. So it’s comprehensible that you simply may need missed that Nashville’s $3.1 billion “Select How You Transfer” transit referendum handed resoundingly on Tuesday with 66 p.c help. This half-cent gross sales tax enhance for consolidated Nashville-Davidson County will fund bus speedy transit growth, transit service and the development of 86 miles of sidewalk, in addition to security enhancements and Nashville’s first alternative to meaningfully spend money on good visitors indicators.
Nashville’s success comes after a few years of labor and a earlier loss on the poll field.
Again in 2015, Transportation for America (alongside TransitCenter) led a Transportation Innovation Academy with leaders from Indianapolis, Raleigh and Nashville to share information, go to cities with inspiring success tales, and assist develop the native management to advance their transportation and transit plans. Key enterprise leaders from every area participated, together with mayors and metropolis/county council members, actual property execs, housing trade consultants and native advocates.
Each Indianapolis and Raleigh went on to move transit funding measures in 2016. However Nashville’s first try—the “Let’s Transfer Nashville” referendum—failed laborious in Could of 2018, with 64 p.c opposition. TransitCenter’s in-depth evaluation of the poll measure’s failure recognized a number of key elements: The measure was developed in an insular style inside the mayor’s workplace with out broad group enter, rushed ahead with out stable plans or strong public engagement, took African American help with no consideration, and didn’t prioritize bettering the town’s restricted bus service.
This time was totally different!
Robust management and a superb plan
Mayor Freddie O’Connell took possession and took the lead, creating a plan that distributes advantages throughout the county. This included an emphasis on bus service that might ship extra transit to extra neighborhoods, and synergistic enhancements equivalent to sidewalk infill, visitors sign upgrades and security enhancements that immediately profit non-transit riders.
A big, numerous coalition of help
The Nashville Space Chamber of Commerce, a Transportation for America member, was a main supporter simply as they have been in 2018. “This vital vote represents many years of labor and is a triumph for Nashville’s future,” mentioned Ralph Schulz, President and CEO of the Nashville Space Chamber of Commerce. “Mayor Freddie O’Connell deserves an excessive amount of credit score for constructing a broad coalition of companions and creating a plan that individuals might get behind. With this funding, the Nashville area is now ready to higher capitalize on the alternatives it might probably present its residents.”
The Chamber was joined by main group teams. Supporters included the City League of Center Tennessee, Nashville Organized for Motion and Hope (NOAH), and Shift Nashville, a coalition of three main voices on racial justice, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Fairness Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, introduced their sturdy help for the measure in August.
Within the marketing campaign to win the poll measure, the one substantive opposition was from a small anti-tax group “Committee to Cease an UnFair Tax.” This was in distinction to the 2018 measure, which had vital opposition from native and nationwide conservative teams, in addition to the Black religion group, who weren’t engaged on the substance of the plan nor introduced into the method early sufficient. The marketing campaign’s catchy however easy core message of “sidewalks, indicators, service and security” helped convey the broad advantages of the measure.
“For the primary time in our metropolis’s historical past, we may have devoted income for transportation enhancements, and that’s going to permit us to lastly chip away at our visitors and value of residing points,” mentioned Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “All of us deserve extra time with our family and friends and fewer time simply attempting to get to them. All through this course of, Nashvillians have been clear. They need to have the ability to get across the metropolis all of us love extra simply and extra conveniently.”
Extra excellent news
The cash that can end result from this profitable poll measure is paired with some encouraging coverage developments within the metropolis. Mayor O’Connell issued an govt order on Full Streets and the town has adopted a Imaginative and prescient Zero Motion Plan that can information investments. T4America’s sister program at Good Progress America, the Nationwide Full Streets Coalition, has been working with Nashville’s division of transportation to coach their workers and others on Full Streets and Imaginative and prescient Zero implementation. Earlier this 12 months, Nashville and the Tennessee Division of Transportation participated in Good Progress America’s Full Streets Management Academy, throughout which they developed quick-build demonstration tasks to enhance avenue security whereas strengthening their method to group partnerships.
Nashville is likely one of the quickest rising areas within the nation, however with rare and unreliable transit service and scores of metropolis streets missing sidewalks totally, their method to transportation has been caught prior to now. Voters have been able to do one thing. And on Tuesday, persistence, perseverance and studying from previous errors paid off.
