Nashville Business Journal
Scott Harrison
The reaction of Nashville MTA board members to consultants’ draft transit alternatives Thursday suggests the group may be moving toward a bold, far reaching final product.
Such a move, if taken in the future, would certainly have major ramifications for Nashville.
For starters, there’s the roughly $5.4 billion cost estimate over the next 25 years to build the most ambitious of the three draft scenarios presented to the MTA board by consultants Nelson\Nygaard and Steve Bland, CEO of the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority. Funding for those costs will have to come somewhere — whether from tapping debt, federal grant programs, pursuing public-private partnerships, new streams of local revenue dedicated to transit, or some combination of all of those sources.
And that’s before you get into the feasibility of implementing and designing the extensive roster of projects featured on MTA’s broader comprehensive plan — what was dubbed “scenario one.” As evidence with the Amp, any single project will bring multiple stakeholders to the table, including several Metro departments, state and federal transportation agencies, residents as well as state and local elected officials. Now MTA is considering doing more than a dozen such projects over the next couple of decades, many of which will require tough decisions such as dedicating lanes of roads for transit projects, acquiring right-of-way and developing seamless connection points between regional and local transit.
A couple of key themes sprouted from the initial questions by the five-member MTA board: Will less costly options do the job, or should Nashville push for something more expansive? Will Nashville get needed transit riders if we only take half-measures, instead of going full-bore?
This is definitely the way to go, along with a plan for a route south of town too. Model out after Denver to be able to connect city over many years, Denver has done it, Nashville can too!
Scenario One sounds like the way to go. It is a long-term solution to the growing metro area. The others will be less costly now, but will most likely need to be modified as the area’s population continues to grow. In my opinion, it seems better to plan for the future, rather than have years of modification occurring as people continue to move to this area.