Nashville Mayor Announces Transit Referendum To Be Included On November Ballot
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The Tennessee Conservative Staff –
Nashville residents will see a voting referendum for transit funding on the ballot in November.
Mayor Freddie O’Connell has not yet released the details of the plan, but he has noted that more than 70 recent studies of Nashville transportation have led to the creation of the plan which will concentrate on providing for “sidewalks, signals, service, and safety” across the Metro area.
According to a report from ThinkTennessee, Nashville is one of four major metropolitan areas in the U.S. that do not have specific funding set aside for transit. That report also cited a Forbes Home report that ranked Nashville as having the worst commute times of any metro area in the country.
“It’s time for Nashville to have the things that big cities are supposed to have,” O’Connell said. “It’s time for Nashville to build another tool to make it easier to stay here by having options that are less expensive and it’s time to build more sidewalks in more neighborhoods.”
Americans For Prosperity – Tennessee released a statement last week on the upcoming referendum:
“We’ll have to wait and see what all of the details are. We think Mayor O’Connell is a smart leader who will hopefully make an earnest effort to learn from the mistakes his predecessor made that led us to unfortunately having to kill the last transit plan. It was a bad deal for taxpayers. We hope Mayor O’Connell will offer a more responsible plan that respects already overburdened Davidson County taxpayers,” said AFP-TN State Director Tori Venable.
The previous transit proposal in 2018 would have included an increase in four taxes, including sales tax, to raise money for a $5.4 billion transit plan. AFP-TN used data software to help identify potential voters and encourage them to vote against the referendum. Nearly 2/3 of votes received were against the transit referendum at that time.
O’Connell says he will be working with WeGo and the Nashville Department of Transportation to come up with a completed plan in the next six weeks.
Want to lose HUGE amounts of money? Mass Transit is the way to do it. In 2019, Denver’s mass transit system had a $600 million operating loss. That isn’t a typo. Nashville’s property tax rates are already 50% more than Brentwood’s ($3.254 compared to $2.17).
I’ve studied Mass Transit. Double whatever the “experts” say it will cost to build and then double the operating expenses they project and cut the projected revenues in half. That’s what happened in Denver — a financial disaster.
There’s a train that runs between Downtown Nashville and Lebanon called the Music City Star that after 17 years of operation, still loses $5,000 per commuter and its fares only cover 30% of operating expenses (the loss is much higher if you include debt service and replacement reserves). At most it only takes 600 cars off the roads. Gov. Lee should stop subsidizing it – TN gives $1 million a year.
If you study the Music City Star projections, you will find that they are very misleading. A commuter who rides the train to and from work 250 days a year is counted as 500 “passengers”. That’s right – they call one person 500 passengers!!!! So, 500 commuters riding to and from work are called 250,000 “passengers”.
A system to serve Downtown Nashville might make sense.
Strangely, most of the people who want Mass Transit wouldn’t ride it – they just hope someone else will ride it. So if you hear someone say they want Mass Transit, ask them if they personally will ride it.
The solution to traffic congestion is to either encourage people to work from home or stagger work hours or car-pool.