Brentwood Home Page
Samantha Hearn

Williamson County is expected to double in size in the next 20 years, leading to a population of more than 400,000 residents and creating a need for improvements to public transportation.

County Mayor Rogers Anderson hosted a summit in Brentwood on Monday to address county transportation needs in response to the accelerated growth.

The ‘Williamson Moves’ summit was held at the Tractor Supply Headquarters at 7:30 a.m. and gave attendees the opportunity to interact with guest speakers from peer communities and local businesses, as well as state and national featured guests.

Gov. Bill Haslam opened the summit and voiced his concerns of taking on debt to pay for new infrastructure in the face of limited federal funding.

“I am not in favor of taking on any debt to pay for infrastructure,” he said. “Even if we have major reconstruction, we can’t be assured of funding from the federal government. A limited number of people realize the criticality of needing new road infrastructure.”

Tennessee spends the third-least amount of money per road in the nation, and $450 million of road projects are expected to occur this year.

U.S. Sen. Bob Corker said in a video message at the summit that he wants a long-term highway program paid for in the same time frame that the money is spent, agreeing with Haslam on the issue of debt. The state historically has not taken on debt to build roads.

The summit featured a range of panel subjects and speakers representing agencies at the federal, state and local level.

Pam Kordenbrock, the Tennessee Administrator for the Federal Highway Administration, was first to speak in the early morning panel about funding. She explained that only 24 percent of roads in Tennessee are eligible for federal funding, most of those being high-volume roads like interstates.

However, interstates represent only one percent of more than four million miles of public roads. More than half of highway funds at the state level came from the federal government in 2014, and 14 percent came from the state. 60 percent of state funds come from fuel taxes.

Kordenbrock explained that the FHA approves projects for federal funding but they do not choose them, leaving that decision to the state.

Susan Mattson, the principal legislative research analyst at the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office, presented options to address public transportation and road issues. The biggest challenge is that revenue isn’t expected to be sufficient enough to make the changes that are needed.

Mattson explained that while revenue has stayed at the same level in the last few years, inflation has eroded some of its purchasing power. Possible revenue options she presented included increasing fuel tax rates, increasing vehicle registration fees and increasing the index fuel rates to match inflation or the cost of fuel.

“Unless taxes are increased on a regular basis they do not grow with the economy,” she said.

Gas tax in Tennessee is nine cents per gallon lower than the national average. A one cent increase in gas taxes would cost an average of $7.50 per year per user, but would bring almost $31 million in revenue to the state which is a 17.5 percent increase. Mattson also suggested the option of adding current sales tax rates to fuel.

Williamson Inc. CEO and President Matt Largen reported in March that 58 percent of surveyed business professionals in the community would support a tax increase to help fund some form of public transportation.

Franklin Mayor Ken Moore addressed transportation funding at the local level, saying that the beauty of the Williamson County community is threatened by its own success and growth.

He said that 50 percent of people surveyed earlier this year support the dedication of taxes to mass transit, and that local government must play an increasingly significant role in working with the federal government.

“In 2035, we’ll be in a gridlock if we don’t address the issues now surrounding public transit,” he said. “The predictions of doing nothing is pretty bleak.”

Transportation investments were discussed in the mid-morning panel featuring Dr. Alison Premo Black, chief economist with the American Road & Transportation Builders Association.

Black said that the U.S. transportation network supports four million jobs nationwide and produces $508 billion in economic activity. If the state increased highway and bridge investment by $460 million, it would generate $1.17 billion in economic output and increase the gross domestic product by $600.4 million. It would also create over 10,000 jobs, mostly in construction.

“For every dollar that is invested, there would be a return of $2.50,” she said. “That’s higher than the national average.”

Black explained that increased investment could improve the safety of roads, adding that in Williamson County there are 499 bridges of which 17 are structurally deficient.

The next panel featured Williamson County business leaders Chris Czarka, director of tax and trade with Nissan North America, Andy Marshall, proprietor at A. Marshall Family Foods, and Brian Evans, vice president of human resources at Tractor Supply Company.

Marshall noted that when considering traffic when deciding to expand business, finding workers who can pay for parking is a challenge.

Czarka said that traffic was a non-issue with Nissan and that they don’t typically lose employees because of commute time. 53 percent of Nissan employees are from Williamson County, with 21 percent from Davidson and 15 percent from Rutherford.

When asked about how many of their employees carpool, all three panelists said a very low percentage.

Marshall brought up the subject of millennials, which in Williamson County has surpassed the number baby boomers, and said that they would prefer to live, work and play in the same area rather than drive long commutes.

Evans noted that traffic was not a deterrent in selecting Maryland Farms as the location for Tractor Supply’s headquarters, and that they encourage electric vehicles as the building is LEED certified. They are also looking at work-from-home options as the company grows, with technology playing a big role.

The next panel featured peer community Williamson County in Texas, represented by Texas Commissioner Cynthia Long.

Williamson County, Texas was where Williamson County, Tennessee is today as far as population and growth rates go.

In 2006 and 2013, Texas proposed legislation to approve bonds worth $828 million in roadway construction projects in Austin. They developed the first county transportation plan that focused on transit improvements and economic development.

Long said that they also lobbied Texas legislation to streamline processes at the state Department of Transportation. Their future plans involve updating the transit plan every five yeas and accelerating the economic development efforts.

“There’s no public transit that pays for itself,” she said. “The community must decide what kind of investment it wants to make.”

Nashville Metro Transit Authority CEO Steve Bland was the final speaker and talked about transit futures.

“Williamson County will be the epicenter of the Middle Tennessee region,” he said, adding that the county is expected to double not only in population but jobs as well.

Williamson County has the lowest unemployment rate in Tennessee, with employment having increased more than 25 percent in the last five years alone.

According to a report released this spring by Williamson Inc., the county is expected to reach 146,260 jobs by 2040, with nearly 55 percent of Williamson’s workforce living within county boundaries. About 23,000 local workers currently commute to work in Williamson from Davidson County.

Bland talked about an MTA project called nMotion 2015 that is aiming to engage over 10,000 middle Tennesseans and present multiple scenarios for the future of public transit. They want the most input from as many Nashvillians as possible in order to develop the best mass transit system that works in favor of those using it.

Bland said so far the public response has been that convenience, dependability, frequency and safety are the most important issues for mass transit. He noted that extending hours into the night would add convenience for working-class people and that there’d be no point in spending the money to develop a system if it wasn’t going to be available for everyone.

He compared Williamson, Rutherford and Wilson county commutes and focused on population, interstate volume and travel time. Williamson County has a daily ridership on the MTA of about 260. Rutherford has about 570 and Wilson has about 1,100.

A question was raised as to whether Williamson County has the density to support some form of public transportation, and Bland said the county is pretty close and that a passenger rail could be an option to accommodate traffic coming from surrounding counties.

“Success will be very expensive, but failure will be even more expensive,” he said.

Solving the public transit issue will be a very long process, and most current elected officials won’t be in office by the time anything is resolved. Mayor Anderson took feedback from the audience on continuing to study the transportation issue before the panel ended at 2 p.m.

An audience survey given at the summit between panelists showed that most felt about the same as before on the issue, prompting Anderson to suggest another summit in the near future.