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The Transportation and Mass Transit Megathread


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Very crude (apologies) but the printer is low on ink and couldn’t get a better map. So I’ll try again with better graphics. Hopefully this shows general idea. Had to draw Wedgewood. Buses would run ppl coming from BNA to the key stops and various hotels may want to run shuttles.

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3 hours ago, CityHeart said:

What are you talking about ?

You’re kidding right ? She had earlier taken a shot at the Nashville Statement, bloviating about Nashville’s “inclusive values” which apparently gave her license to go behind her husband’s back to boink another woman’s husband. The irony. I surmise it wasn’t a good look and had to have affected *her* transit tax to some degree.

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3 hours ago, PaulChinetti said:

Her affair that wouldn't have knocked her out of office if she was a man. 

 

I think her administration and the current one are so bad at messaging it was doomed as soon as soon as the anti-folks started going. I requested a yard sign for literally months and NEVER got one, ever, even after multiply requests. Then post election there was a story of a room full of yard signs that never went out because of ineptitude. 

It wasn't the affair.  It was spending taxpayer money to hire him as a bodyguard...taking him on a European getaway at taxpayer expense...and sleeping with him.  Definitely lawsuit territory and a felony.

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38 minutes ago, Dale said:

You’re kidding right ? She had earlier taken a shot at the Nashville Statement, bloviating about Nashville’s “inclusive values” which apparently gave her license to go behind her husband’s back to boink another woman’s husband. The irony. I surmise it wasn’t a good look and had to have affected *her* transit tax to some degree.

No, I wasn't kidding but I understand your post now.  

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2 hours ago, PHofKS said:

Cheatham County doesn't have a landfill. They have a transfer station where you drive across scales, pay for your load accordingly, drop in a dumpster and it gets hauled off somewhere. They charge too much.

My brother helped to get the old landfill shut down. It was poorly designed and managed by the county and was a danger to people's health in the area.

I was replying to this comment, which suggests that rural parts of Davidson County (like where one of our landfills is located-Off Briley at Ashland City Highway) should be banished to Cheatham County.

Sorry if you live up there but that part of the county needs to be in another county. It is the lowest populated part of the county I would guess. Bigfoot probobly is in the woods there not to mention that part of the county has had bear sightings. Very rural.”

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The other thing that killed it was the fact it took place after Briley took office and Berry had resigned. Briley did a very very poor job selling it to the public. I do agree with the above accessment about the pro side not doing what they needed to do. It was on this issue that Brileys leadership skills were evident and that was the fact he had none.

Ever who was running the show on the pro side would have been fired if I had been in charge becuase they were doing a horrible job promoting and publicizing the plan. They didn't rebuff the lies that were being told on TV by the antis, and frankly I would not be surprised if the person was not working as a hack to sabotage the plan or they were just clueless.

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7 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

The other thing that killed it was the fact it took place after Briley took office and Berry had resigned. Briley did a very very poor job selling it to the public. I do agree with the above accessment about the pro side not doing what they needed to do. It was on this issue that Brileys leadership skills were evident and that was the fact he had none.

Ever who was running the show on the pro side would have been fired if I had been in charge becuase they were doing a horrible job promoting and publicizing the plan. They didn't rebuff the lies that were being told on TV by the antis, and frankly I would not be surprised if the person was not working as a hack to sabotage the plan or they were just clueless.

And don't underestimate the majority of the county's citizens looking at the plan and seeing the $5 Billion going to projects that are basically downtown (in the "rich" part of town) and a few outlying areas...but really only covers areas where a small percentage of people live.  Like it or not...citizens are always going to be asking "what's in it for me?"  It's going to be hard to get citizens to vote for a $5 Billion project if the city can't prove to them there will be a direct benefit to them somehow.

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1 hour ago, ruraljuror said:

Seems like you're just giving people a pass for being selfish.  Of course you're right that some people will only vote for something that they think benefits them personally, but that doesn't mean we have to support or condone that kind of philosophy.  "What's in it for me" is pretty much the opposite of "Ask not what your country can do for you..." and we shouldn't pretend there's some sort of nobility or righteousness in it.

More practically, I'm not sure that a referendum is the only way that we can get a serious transit project done.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the choice to put the transit plan up for a public vote was a political decision, not a legal requirement.  Who knows if the MLS stadium, or the Conventions Center, or Bridgestone/Nissan would've happened if they were put to a referendum.

Even if a referendum is required because of some state law I'm not aware of or whatever, we should also keep in mind that 80 people are moving here every day.  There are some people whose minds you are never going to change on these issues, but 35k more pro votes and we'd be digging a subway right now.  At a rate of 80 per day, if 75% of them are pro-transit (which may be an underestimate) and 60% of them vote, then we could pass a transit referendum in a little under 5 years from now without any of the current voters budging.

I'm not giving people a pass for anything.  You act as if I'm saying I'm glad they didn't pass it...which isn't true.  My comments are only in regards to people trying to blame something other than the fact that if you're going to hold a referendum, at least have a bit of knowledge of how the people are going to vote.  Yes...they mostly vote with the "what's in it for me" attitude.  That doesn't mean I condone that.  It's just the facts of the situation.

And btw...I'm the one who has said all along that if the city administrators would have had enough vision 20-30 years ago, they would budgeted small amounts of $$ towards light rail each year and built it up piecemeal.  By now, we'd probably have at least a few miles of light rail and the citizens would at least have an idea if it's worth it or not...as far as expansion.  

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1 hour ago, ruraljuror said:

 

Sorry, I thought you were implying that you agreed it 'was a bad plan' and 'there's a better way to go at this' in your post below.    You give them credit for 'understanding' that the transit proposal was 'a bad plan' -  but if their definition of a bad plan is any plan that doesn't benefit them directly (as you acknowledge above), then it does sort of seem like you're condoning it.  Maybe I'm just missing something here.

 

This is a fine idea and all and I agree, but it's kind of a moot point.  I could understand raising this issue if you'd been voting for city administrators who support this kind of budget planning for the last 30 years or if you'd been leading the Transit Foresight non-profit all this time (is that what you mean by 'saying it all along'?), but otherwise I'm not sure what good it does us now just to wish previous city officials had some kind of foresight superpower that we ourselves didn't/don't have. 

I don't think it was a good plan.  It was too ambitious.  I'm more of a "one bite at a time" person when it comes to something like this because I realize you'll get more done in the longterm if you just go ahead and find a way to budget a smaller amount each year directly for something like light rail.  Of course, even that will get pushback from some...but will probably be more palatable to more people...and if it's part of the budget instead of needing taxpayer approval...it has a better chance of actually coming to fruition.

 

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12 hours ago, ruraljuror said:

Seems like you're just giving people a pass for being selfish.  Of course you're right that some people will only vote for something that they think benefits them personally, but that doesn't mean we have to support or condone that kind of philosophy.  "What's in it for me" is pretty much the opposite of "Ask not what your country can do for you..." and we shouldn't pretend there's some sort of nobility or righteousness in it.

More practically, I'm not sure that a referendum is the only way that we can get a serious transit project done.  Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the choice to put the transit plan up for a public vote was a political decision, not a legal requirement.  Who knows if the MLS stadium, or the Conventions Center, or Bridgestone/Nissan would've happened if they were put to a referendum.

Even if a referendum is required because of some state law I'm not aware of or whatever, we should also keep in mind that 80 people are moving here every day.  There are some people whose minds you are never going to change on these issues, but 35k more pro votes and we'd be digging a subway right now.  At a rate of 80 per day, if 75% of them are pro-transit (which may be an underestimate) and 60% of them vote, then we could pass a transit referendum in a little under 5 years from now without any of the current voters budging.

Just remember that all of those people are not moving to Davidson County. I would say more than half are moving to the outlying counties, so they would  have to vote. I wish I knew the true numbers of who and how many were moving to where, but that is a job for our numbers guys on the board.

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2 hours ago, smeagolsfree said:

Just remember that all of those people are not moving to Davidson County. I would say more than half are moving to the outlying counties, so they would  have to vote.

That is correct. The "100 people per day" statistic that made interesting water cooler talk a few years ago actually accounted for the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area, not Davidson County alone. I would guess most of those 100 or so people moving to the Mid-State were settling in Williamson or Rutherford.

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1 minute ago, Tennessine said:

That is correct. The "100 people per day" statistic that made interesting water cooler talk a few years ago actually accounted for the entire 13-county Nashville metropolitan area, not Davidson County alone. I would guess most of those 100 or so people moving to the Mid-State were settling in Williamson or Rutherford.

It was also 100 people per day including organic growth (i.e., births) so the actual number of people relocating here (though not necessarily the number of people seeking new homes) was somewhat lower than that.

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These are all good additional considerations to refine my back of the envelope scenario, but I think they obscure the point I was trying to make a little.  

To put it another way - regardless whether there's an average of 100 or 80 or 50 voting age people moving to the Mid-state or surrounding 7 or 13 counties every day - Davidson Country only needs to net 15 pro-transit voters per day for about 5 years in order to overcome the deficit if the exact same transit proposal were being voted on again. 

Is that very likely?  I have no idea, but it seems on the vaguely side of plausible to me given that we'll net 10 - 12% of the necessary total over the next couple years from Amazon/Alliance relocations alone.  Let's say we lower that number to only netting 3 pro-transit voters per day (which would be a pretty low estimate in my opinion), we still erase the deficit in about 18 years.  Of course a lot can change in 18 years, but the trajectory is clear and less than 2 decades out is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of things.  

All that to say, I really only introduced this whole hypothetical as a thought exercise to highlight that trajectory.  Obviously the quickest way to reach a majority is to flip anti-votes, but given how baked in much of the opposition is, the far easier route is better messaging and getting 5% more of the several hundred thousand non-voters to the polls next time

Edited by ruraljuror
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Yup, every 10 years after the census. Last one had around 17,900 people per district, will be interesting to see how they shift the borders to re-equalize.

https://www.tennessean.com/story/opinion/2019/08/02/nashville-council-redistricting-nashville-mayors-race-census/1880542001/

Apparently a similar process has been followed since 1970. Does anyone know where you can find the old council maps? I'd be interested to see how they've shifted over time.

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