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Perseverance pays off for Nashville

A purple WeGo Nashville bus travels down a city street

After well over a decade of effort, fast-growing Nashville finally passed a transit funding referendum, proving that patience, perseverance and learning from mistakes leads to success.

A public bus in Nashville, TN (WeGo Transit)

The November 2024 elections will leave a lot to unpack in the coming weeks and months. So it’s understandable that you might have missed that Nashville’s $3.1 billion “Choose How You Move” transit referendum passed resoundingly on Tuesday with 66 percent support. This half-cent sales tax increase for consolidated Nashville-Davidson County will fund bus rapid transit expansion, transit service and the construction of 86 miles of sidewalk, as well as safety improvements and Nashville’s first opportunity to meaningfully invest in smart traffic signals.

Nashville’s success comes after many years of work and a previous loss at the ballot box.

Back in 2015, Transportation for America (alongside TransitCenter) led a Transportation Innovation Academy with leaders from Indianapolis, Raleigh and Nashville to share knowledge, visit cities with inspiring success stories, and help develop the local leadership to advance their transportation and transit plans. Key business leaders from each region participated, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

Both Indianapolis and Raleigh went on to pass transit funding measures in 2016. But Nashville’s first attempt—the “Let’s Move Nashville” referendum—failed hard in May of 2018, with 64 percent opposition. TransitCenter’s in-depth analysis of the ballot measure’s failure identified several key factors: The measure was developed in an insular fashion within the mayor’s office without broad community input, rushed forward without solid plans or robust public engagement, took African American support for granted, and failed to prioritize improving the city’s limited bus service.

This time was different!

Strong leadership and a good plan

Mayor Freddie O’Connell took ownership and took the lead, developing a plan that distributes benefits across the county. This included an emphasis on bus service that could deliver more transit to more neighborhoods, and synergistic improvements such as sidewalk infill, traffic signal upgrades and safety improvements that directly benefit non-transit riders.

Passengers in a shaded bus stop board the bus in Nashville, which is driving in a designated lane
Passengers make use of public transit in Nashville (Choose How You Move)

A large, diverse coalition of support

The Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, a Transportation for America member, was a leading supporter just as they were in 2018. “This significant vote represents decades of work and is a triumph for Nashville’s future,” said Ralph Schulz, President and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “Mayor Freddie O’Connell deserves a great deal of credit for building a broad coalition of partners and developing a plan that people could get behind. With this investment, the Nashville region is now prepared to better capitalize on the opportunities it can provide its residents.”

The Chamber was joined by leading community groups. Supporters included the Urban League of Middle Tennessee, Nashville Organized for Action and Hope (NOAH), and Shift Nashville, a coalition of three leading voices on racial justice, Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, Equity Alliance and Stand Up Nashville, announced their strong support for the measure in August.

In the campaign to win the ballot measure, the only substantive opposition was from a small anti-tax group “Committee to Stop an UnFair Tax.” This was in contrast to the 2018 measure, which had significant opposition from local and national conservative groups, as well as the Black faith community, who weren’t engaged on the substance of the plan nor brought into the process early enough. The campaign’s catchy but simple core message of “sidewalks, signals, service and safety” helped convey the broad benefits of the measure.

“For the first time in our city’s history, we will have dedicated revenue for transportation improvements, and that’s going to allow us to finally chip away at our traffic and cost of living issues,” said Mayor Freddie O’Connell. “We all deserve more time with our friends and family and less time just trying to get to them. Throughout this process, Nashvillians have been clear. They want to be able to get around the city we all love more easily and more conveniently.”

More good news

The money that will result from this successful ballot measure is paired with some encouraging policy developments in the city. Mayor O’Connell issued an executive order on Complete Streets and the city has adopted a Vision Zero Action Plan that will guide investments. T4America’s sister program at Smart Growth America, the National Complete Streets Coalition, has been working with Nashville’s department of transportation to train their staff and others on Complete Streets and Vision Zero implementation. Earlier this year, Nashville and the Tennessee Department of Transportation participated in Smart Growth America’s Complete Streets Leadership Academy, during which they developed quick-build demonstration projects to improve street safety while strengthening their approach to community partnerships.

Nashville is one of the fastest growing regions in the nation, but with infrequent and unreliable transit service and scores of city streets lacking sidewalks entirely, their approach to transportation has been stuck in the past. Voters were ready to do something. And on Tuesday, patience, perseverance and learning from past mistakes paid off.

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of October 20th

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • “Trump officials assure Republicans an infrastructure plan is coming.” (The Hill)
  • The Senate Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee delayed a scheduled vote last Wednesday on Paul Trombino’s nomination to be the administrator of the Federal Highways Administration (FHWA). The vote has been rescheduled for this Wednesday. (Senate EPW Committee)
  • Intel and Mobileye have developed a system to determine fault in self-driving-car crashes.” (San Francisco Gate)
  • A new report from the Brookings Institute calculates that over $80 billion has been invested in autonomous vehicle technology. (Brookings Institute)
  • City Lab says there is a better way to pick infrastructure projects than the current process. (City Lab)
  • Nashville last week unveiled a bold $5.2 billion proposal to dramatically expand light rail and bus service in Nashville. The city will hold a vote on a ballot referendum to help fund proposal via new taxes in the spring of 2018. (The Tennessean)

Stories You May Have Missed – Week of September 1st

Stories You May Have Missed

As a valued member, Transportation for America is dedicated to providing you pertinent information. This includes news articles to inform your work. Check out a list of stories you may have missed last week.

  • “President Trump’s infrastructure package will be broken up into three pieces, with the largest chunk of funding dedicated to projects that already have some private or local money secured.” (The Hill)
  • “Trump infrastructure package could be stretched too thin.” (The Hill)
  • “White House wants to help states, cities offload infrastructure.” (Reuters)
  • The House of Representatives will vote on automated vehicle legislation next week. (Reuters)
  • “Governing Examines How Better Bus Service Became ‘“The Hottest Trend In Transit.”’ (Governing, via Streetsblog)
  • A coalition has formed to support Nashville Mayor Megan Barry’s proposed transit referendum in 2018. (Tennessean)

Arts and culture are helping three cities transform neighborhoods in a positive way

From new light rail systems to bus rapid transit lines, cities are planning major new transportation investments to spur economic development and better connect people to opportunity. But how can they ensure that these investments — often in diverse and quickly evolving parts of their cities — transform neighborhoods in a positive way by building social capital, supporting local businesses, and celebrating the stories, cultural history and diversity of existing residents rather than displacing them?

Through a generous grant from the Kresge Foundation, over the last two years we’ve worked alongside local partners in three rapidly changing, diverse communities around the country to explore how arts and culture and more creative forms of engaging the public can provide positive answers to the questions asked above.

We’re seeking to award $50,000 (each) to creative placemaking projects in three new cities for 2017-2018. Find out more about the grant opportunity and apply today.

Learn More & Apply

In three specific cities outlined below (and elsewhere), an approach known as creative placemaking has helped engage community members in a deeper way than traditional transportation and public works agencies have managed to do, enabling and empowering true community-led visions for the projects at hand. This approach demonstrates tremendous promise for transportation agencies and local governments at a time when many have historically failed to win deep public support for important projects, often delaying or derailing implementation.

Over the last two years of our Cultural Corridor Consortium project, as it’s called, we’ve witnessed artistic and cultural practice sparking deep public engagement, facilitating the difficult — but necessary — conversations required to create better projects that more fully serve the needs of these communities and reflect what makes them unique in the first place. The consortium consists of trusted local partner organizations working in transit corridors in neighborhoods just outside urban cores: the Nolensville Pike Corridor in Nashville, the University Avenue corridor in San Diego’s City Heights neighborhood, and Division Street in Portland’s Jade and Division-Midway Districts.

Here are brief versions of each of their stories:

Nashville

In south Nashville, the Nolensville Pike corridor is a thriving community of recent immigrants, primarily of Latin, Kurdish, Somali, and Sudanese origin. Today, Nashville welcomes more than 1,000 refugees a year, has the fastest growing immigrant community in the United States, and is home to one of the largest Kurdish populations outside the Middle East. Nolensville Pike, which has been dubbed the “International District,” serves as the focal point of these immigrant communities.

Nolensville Pike is also a congested, typical arterial highway that carries 60,000 automobile trips a day while also serving adjacent commercial uses and residential neighborhoods. Though it serves as the central commercial spine of immigrant life in south Nashville, it has eroded or non-existent sidewalks, few crosswalks, insufficient bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, and no bus shelters, making travel outside of a car a downright unpleasant and often dangerous experience.

In 2015, Conexión Américas began hosting community meetings — facilitated by artists — to solicit ideas for transforming the road and surrounding spaces. At these meetings, the public expressed their desire for unbroken, connected  sidewalks, artistic crosswalks, slower traffic, public art, and bus shelters. To bolster this work, we supported Conexión Américas and the Nashville Area MPO to facilitate community-based arts and culture public engagement to plan and implement improved bus service and, eventually, light rail.

Through a student-led bus shelter design/build project, an intergenerational oral history project, and dynamic “Creative Labs” community meetings, the community came together to dream about the future of Nolensville Pike. This work was documented in Envision Nolensville Pike and led to the creation of the city’s first-ever bilingual crosswalk, situated on Nolensville Pike.

Supported by new analysis that T4America and Conexión Américas are releasing in the coming weeks, these partners are producing a plan to avoid commercial displacement and cultural gentrification along the corridor while building a better Pike for everyone. The next phase of this project will bring some of these visions to fruition to test ideas, push boundaries, and further build relationships along the diverse corridor.

The Nashville MPO formally launched its creative placemaking efforts with the adoption of its most recent regional transportation plan, and recently hosted a Creative Placemaking Symposium that convened area elected officials, transportation planners and engineers to think through applying creative placemaking to transportation projects.

San Diego

Since the mid-1990s, the neighborhood surrounding the intersection of 50th Street and University Avenue in the eastern City Heights neighborhood of San Diego has been a landing pad for newly arrived refugees from Somalia and other East African countries. Nearly three decades later, the bustling neighborhood, often referred to as as Little Mogadishu or Little Somalia, continues to serve the Somali and other East African communities. It’s a regional hub for other East Africans from throughout San Diego, a neighborhood hub for those that have been living there for years, and continues to be a welcoming home to new refugees. Many of those who arrived in the 1990s have become established business and community leaders, pillars of a strong local social fabric. In the neighborhood you’ll find Somali businesses, mosques that attract and support new arrivals, and affordable housing apartment complexes, all which contribute to the rich sense of culture and home.

Despite the sense of community that the the neighborhood has nurtured, it’s a dangerous area to walk, with high rates of pedestrian fatalities and other safety issues. The City Heights Community Development Corporation (CHCDC) has been engaging the community to envision how they can integrate their art, culture and history with a safer streetscape. Picking up on that work, Circulate San Diego, alongside CHCDC, initiated new programs to engage with largely East African and Somali residents to define community assets, and discuss how these assets can be reflected in art to improve the overall transit ridership experience with bus rapid transit on El Cajon Boulevard.

All of this public engagement has led to the development of parklets, gathering spaces, a pop-up coffee shop, local farmers market and traffic calming murals that have helped solidify sense of place, strengthened community ownership, and increased pedestrian safety.

The neighborhood’s “Take Back the Alley” mural project brought community members together to create a mural near a BRT station. This public art piece, and the positive effects it has on the surrounding area generated inertia, encouraging a small business owner nearby to clean up an adjacent parking lot and repurpose it as a café space, now leased by a local start-up coffee cart business.

Our partners also spearheaded the new San Diego Neighborhood Placemaking Collaborative, a collection of five neighborhood-based organizations who meet regularly to advocate for creative placemaking in the region. Last year, Circulate San Diego produced A Place for Placemaking in San Diego as a roadmap to overhaul the regulations and permitting policies that negatively impact creative placemaking projects in San Diego.  The white paper is already helping to shape new permitting procedures by defining creative placemaking in San Diego’s Municipal Code and subsequently providing for a new process for community organizations and other applicants interested in pursuing neighborhood placemaking projects. Circulate San Diego and CHCDC also recently participated as key stakeholders in a city-led “Complete Boulevard study” to bring a complete streets design concept and creative placemaking elements to El Cajon Boulevard and this neighborhood in particular.

Portland

In Portland, arts-based engagement has helped build a positive dialogue between local agencies and the community to ensure that a new planned bus rapid transit line serves the residents of ethnically diverse, working class districts in the eastern part of the city. The Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon (APANO) and the Division-Midway Alliance, two nonprofits located respectively in the Jade and Division districts along Division street in Portland, have been empowering residents, businesses, and students through arts and culture to shape the evolving BRT project.

This area is home to many immigrant families that give the area a rich ethnic and cultural diversity that is increasingly rare in Portland. In a corridor with members from such diverse backgrounds, creative tactics allow the community to advocate, express, and communicate their needs and interests related to this new transportation proposal.

By building public awareness and pressure through placemaking work and community organizing, APANO and Division-Midway Alliance helped to pause construction of the BRT planning process until the Portland Bureau of Transportation, Trimet, Metro, and others made formal community benefit agreements by agreeing to mitigation measures to ensure that the new vital transit service would transform the community in a positive way.

Similar to Nashville and San Diego, our partners in Portland also developed a community-based vision — the Jade-Midway Districts Art Plan — to guide their arts and culture solutions to transportation challenges. To further build local capacity, our partners built a Placemaking Steering Committee comprised of eight civic, nonprofit, and government members to guide creative placemaking plans in the district. APANO also launched a creative placemaking project grant program, which funds the creation of cultural worker-led projects in the district. These cultural workers then participate in a cohort known as the Resident Artist Collaborative, in which they receive training to help prepare to produce community-engaged work.

One of the most exciting products of this work is the creation of a new community placemaking grant program at Metro, which will institutionalize this cultural work through the Portland area. Metro, the Portland region’s MPO, kicked off their inaugural Community Placemaking Grant last month, and we were on hand, and we were on hand.

Arts and culture contribute to the unique identity of a city and exert a powerful emotional pull. They’re intrinsic to preserving what’s great about the places people already love, and for creating new places worth caring about. We firmly believe that engaging the public through the arts and culture helps produce better projects, promote social equity, and is part of building better places that are loved and cared for by a more diverse community of people.

In all three of these cities we’ve seen a deep commitment to community-building between local organizations and municipal agencies lead to new institutional creative placemaking programs that will last long after these isolated projects are finished. The pilot projects have led directly to new funding programs and policy changes to build a sustained practice of creative placemaking in the three cities, while bringing new voices to the table.

Bring creative placemaking to your city through a new grant opportunity

After working closely with these cities over the last few years, we are eager to expand on this work — we’re seeking to award $50,000 (each) to creative placemaking projects in three new cities for 2017-2018.

Find out more about the grant opportunity and apply today.

Learn More & Apply

This post was produced by Mallory Nezam and Ben Stone on our arts and culture team.

New to the world of creative placemaking? Catch up with our recent work

At T4America, we’ve stepped up our work in the arena of creative placemaking, traveling the country to learn from what others are doing and sharing the experience of our growing staff when it comes to this emerging approach for transportation planning.

National examination of the practice of creative placemaking. Late last month we announced that Transportation for America has been commissioned by ArtPlace America to undertake a rigorous national examination of creative placemaking in transportation to better understand how and where artists, designers, and cultural workers are collaborating with local governments and community partners to solve transportation challenges. T4America was chosen to lead this transportation field scan research and subsequent working group convening because of our “strong institutional commitment to creative placemaking, comprehensive knowledge of the transportation sector and recent commitment to the creation of an arts & culture program with Ben Stone at the helm,” according to Jamie Hand, ArtPlace’s Director of Research Strategies.

Portland, OR

Kicking off Portland’s new community creative placemaking grants. Our creative placemaking work also recently took us to Portland, Oregon where our arts & culture team met with key stakeholders and toured the creative placemaking projects we support through a grant from the Kresge Foundation.

In east Portland, the Jade and Midway Districts — led by our partners at APANO — are building public support and awareness to ensure that a new bus rapid transit project best serves the needs of the local community. Our team also presented at the launch of Metro’s new Community Placemaking grants, which have been inspired by the implementation of the APANO’s Jade-Midway District Arts Plan.

A creative city going deeper with a creative approach to engaging the public. The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) is deepening its commitment to engaging the community in creative ways, and integrating artists into community development and transportation projects. The Nashville Area MPO recently launched its creative placemaking efforts with the adoption of its most recent regional transportation plan and has a long-term goal of emboldening and equipping their members to facilitate more valuable public engagement and further community outreach in local planning efforts.

Nashville, TN, Creative Placemaking Symposium

In March, the Nashville MPO convened their first Creative Placemaking Symposium, bringing together area elected officials, transportation planners and engineers from local and state governments to learn how and why creative placemaking works. Rochelle Carpenter, T4A Program Manager and Nashville MPO Senior Policy Analyst, was a key organizer for the symposium, and brought in our Director of Arts & Culture, Ben Stone, to share his insights on how to build effect creative placemaking projects.

How are artists and municipal officials learning to work together? The integration of arts and culture as new tools to help solve civic challenges is an exciting new development in the field. We’ve seen these tools better involve community members, and help to create places that are more meaningful to and reflective of the people that live, work and play there. The artists and cultural workers bridging the conversation between local communities and civic/transportation professionals are now serving an important role as co-problem solvers. But how are the municipal officials and artists being equipped and trained to work together and build these valuable partnerships?

Hear more by catching up with the recording of our most recent webinar on creative placemaking, Training for Artists and Civic/Transportation Collaboration, where we learned about these programs from the perspective of a national practitioner, local training organizer, and an alumna of a training program who also happens to be one of our newest staff members, Mallory Nezam.

Through this webinar we learned how these practitioners are being equipped to work in multiple sectors, communicate with diverse stakeholders, and harmonize the goals of different players. These programs train artists in both practical skills — like writing contracts — and community organizing skills–like how to work with diverse populations. As a result, these training programs are preparing artists to think outside of their traditional role and work with local communities, civic professionals, and local governments. When artists understand the benefits they can bring to the civic sector, we are able to work together to create thriving places that work for everyone.

Lastly, if you haven’t yet, please do check out our guide to creative placemaking, The Scenic Route, intended for a lay audience of elected officials, planners, or other local leaders.

Bolstering creative community engagement in the Nashville region

Considering the enduring creative energy in Tennessee’s principal city, it’s no surprise that Nashville is deepening its commitment to engaging the community in creative ways, and integrating artists into community development and transportation projects.

We believe that incorporating the arts into the process of planning and building transportation projects results in projects that better serve local communities, are championed by locals, and more fully reflect the community’s culture and values.

There’s been a surge of interest around the country in this approach; in developing strategies to be more responsive to a community’s transportation needs and the unique cultural components of place. Nashville, Tennessee is no exception. Through the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s (MPO) leadership, the region is deepening its commitment to creative community engagement and integrating artists into community development and transportation projects.

The Nashville Area MPO recently launched its creative placemaking efforts with the adoption of its most recent regional transportation plan. The MPO’s long-term goal is to embolden and equip their members to facilitate more valuable public engagement and further community outreach in local planning efforts.

On March 1st, the MPO convened area elected officials, transportation planners and engineers from local and state governments for a Creative Placemaking Symposium to learn how and why it works, and begin thinking through how this approach could address the challenges and opportunities in their own cities.

Through the symposium, the MPO educated attendees about the difference between creative placemaking — a method to engage the community in planning transportation projects — and simply plopping public art at a bus stop that is out of context and not reflective of the neighborhood.

But where should planners or local officials get started, especially when it seems like a new, perhaps unfamiliar approach? Symposium speakers inspired those in attendance to start by getting to know artists in their communities and work with them to identify and document transportation challenges and solutions.

El Paso Councilman Peter Svarzbein delivered a the keynote address on his successful arts-based campaign to bring back a historic streetcar between El Paso and Mexico. T4A’s own Director of Arts and Culture, Ben Stone, offered examples of creative placemaking projects across the country. Additionally, local leaders Caroline Vincent, director of public art for Metro Nashville Arts, Gary Gaston, executive director of the Nashville Civic Design Center and Renata Soto, executive director with Conexión Américas provided examples of their work in the Middle Tennessee region.

From left, Rochelle Carpenter with T4America/Nashville MPO, Renata Soto with Conexión Américas, Caroline Vincent with Metro Arts, Ben Stone with T4A/Smart Growth America, Gary Gaston with the Nashville Civic Design Center and El Paso Councilman Peter Svarzbein.

The symposium served as a forum for planners to think through how and why creative placemaking might benefit projects in their own towns and cities.

“Creative placemaking is first and foremost about public engagement,” said Rochelle Carpenter, who works for the MPO and T4America. “By facilitating community discussions that inspire people to express their feedback, we hope it will lead to greater participation in the transportation planning process, better transportation projects and more public support for those projects.”

To learn more about creative placemaking in Nashville, read about:

  • Profiled in our Scenic Route guidebook, the story of creating the region’s first-ever bilingual crosswalk along Nolensville Pike, in partnership with the MPO and Conexión Américas.
  • Envision Nolensville Pike: a community-led plan to improve walking, bicycling and transit use along Nashville’s most diverse corridor
  • Tactical urbanism initiated by the Nashville Civic Design Center and its program, TURBO
  • The Learning Lab, a professional development program for artists in civic, social and placemaking practices by the Metro Nashville Arts Commission and sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts

How best to stitch a community back together divided by an interstate?

USDOT is in the midst of a new initiative to address some of damage created by interstates driven through the heart of urban areas. Last week a group of experts traveled to Nashville to discuss ways to repair the damage inflicted upon a part of North Nashville by a segment of Interstate 40.

Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

Jefferson Street overpass over Interstate 40. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

More than a half-century ago, the new Interstate Highway System connected millions of Americans, creating new, valuable economic connections between cities and speeding the movement of goods and people across the country in a new network of roads that were the envy of the world. But the social costs weren’t shared equitably, and inside many urban areas, interstates were most frequently constructed through communities of color, disrupting, disconnecting, and displacing them.

Acknowledging this unfortunate reality, Secretary Foxx and the US Department of Transportation announced the Every Place Counts Design Challenge in May, which “seeks to raise awareness and identify innovative community design solutions that bridge the infrastructure divide and reconnect people to opportunity,” according to USDOT. Through an open competition, USDOT selected Spokane, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Philadelphia, and Nashville to receive pro bono design guidance to mitigate the disastrous effects of urban highways in each city.

On July 11th and 12th, a team with representatives from Transportation for America, USDOT, The Congress for The New Urbanism, Toole Design Group, and others participated in Nashville’s design challenge, focusing on North Nashville’s Jefferson Street corridor and its two intersections (one overpass, one underpass) with Interstate 40.

every place counts nashville

Jefferson Street in Nashville during a walk through the corridor. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

North Nashville, and especially Jefferson Street, has been the cultural and educational heart of black Nashville, and is still home to three historically black colleges and universities (Meharry, Fisk, and Tennessee State University). Though more than a dozen music venues once called the corridor home, all but one have been demolished — some by the construction of I-40, and some from the later decline aided by it. (Some of the historic venues were also torn down before Interstate 40 was built.)

Today, Jefferson Street suffers from a relatively high rate of vacancy, a lack of adequate sidewalks and connections across I-40, and property owners holding on to buildings with the hope that property values will increase, rather than selling or developing. Despite this, the corridor is also home to a collection of small cultural institutions, including the Art History Class Lounge and Gallery, Woodcuts Gallery, and the nearby Norf Walls street art project. In Nashville’s hot real estate market, the very real physical barrier of I-40 encircling downtown here has contributed to slowing development in North Nashville — much to the relief of renters and the chagrin of many property owners.

It was in this context that the design team met with stakeholders representing local, state, and federal government agencies, local residents and business owners, anchor institutions, and design professionals for two days of visioning exercises. Ideas generated included everything from widening sidewalks and removing right turn lanes, to decking over I-40 and building aerial parks à la downtown Dallas.

Thaxton Abshalom Waters, founder of the Art History Class Lounge, asked the designers and experts to “focus on tapping back into the same sources that made the neighborhood a beautiful and culturally rich landscape in the first place.” It’s a reasonable request: much of the positive momentum on Jefferson Street today comes, as it did before I-40, from artists and performers, building community through cultural production, art walks, and creative resuse of structures and spaces along Jefferson Street.

every place counts nashville

Discussions during the design charette. Photo by Rochelle Carpenter

Long before the term was coined, Jefferson Street has benefited from creative placemaking, an approach to community development that acknowledges the integral role that arts, culture, and creativity play in community development and in ensuring that communities better reflect and celebrate local culture, heritage and values.

Reminder: Have you browsed our new guidebook to creative placemaking yet? Visit httpcreativeplacemaking.t4america.org

Creative Placemaking 

To learn more about the ways in which corridor revitalization and transportation projects benefit from the arts, explore T4A’s guide to creative placemaking, the Scenic Route.

The design interventions generated by the two-day charrette are a good start, but on their own, they won’t be enough to produce the kind of positive change sought by the local leaders and residents who’ve been fighting an uphill battle to see some of the pride and glory restored to their neighborhood. But the process proved to be a great organizing tool for bringing together leadership from the neighborhood, government, business community, and transportation planners and engineers.

USDOT, with assistance from The Congress for the New Urbanism and Toole Design Group, will release a report summarizing findings and suggestions from the two-day event in the fall.

Nashville business leaders voice strong support for large-scale transit plan

Nashville business leaders – including members of T4America’s Transportation Innovation Academy co-hosted last year with TransitCenter – have come out strongly in support of an ambitious, large-scale transit plan for the region.

The Moving Forward initiative, a project organized by the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce that includes more than 100 business leaders volunteers, has spent the last year hosting community dialogues and engaging other leaders in the transit planning process.

Earlier this week, Moving Forward released a report supporting a large-scale transit expansion in the region. In January Nashville MTA, the regional transit agency, introduced a 25-year plan that laid out three possible transit scenarios. Moving Forward recommended the most ambitious scenario as the starting point for the region’s future transit map. This scenario, estimated to cost $5.4 billion over the next 25 years, would add streetcars, light rail, and bus rapid transit to connect Nashville neighborhoods.

Pete Wooten, Executive Vice President at Avenue Bank, vice-chair of Moving Forward, and a participant in the Transportation Innovation Academy, told the Tennessean that investments in transit are both a defensive and offensive play for the region.

“It’s really about mobility and preserving quality of life — it’s a defensive game,” Wooten said. With the region expecting to add 1 million new residents in the next 25 years, new transportation options are critical.

Wooten continued, “The offensive game is what transit can do from an investment standpoint. It can really open up tremendous value because it connects employees to employers. It provides new corridors for business.”

Business leaders are hoping for speedy action on transit. The Moving Forward report recommends the city develop a plan for downtown transit access this year. And the chamber has aimed for a groundbreaking on the first transit expansion projects by 2020. Bert Mathews, a real estate developer and one of Moving Forward’s committee chairs said, “There are a variety of short-term pieces that can be done and need to be started right now.”

The business leaders also recommend including new transportation technologies in the plan. The report calls on the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization to study installation of intelligent transportation systems in cities and counties across the region and encourages Nashville MTA to include autonomous vehicles in the long-term plan.

Moving Forward’s report does not recommend ways to fund the extensive transit plan. Financing option will be the next issue the group will study.

Tennessee charting a course to make streets more dangerous & hamstring local authority

A bill moving through the Tennessee legislature would severely curtail local control and authority over transportation spending, result in more dangerous streets, and prevent cities and towns of all sizes from investing in the wide range of transportation options that are key to their economic prosperity.

Sidewalks would be useful here.

Sidewalks would be useful here on Nolensville Rd, a state highway that’s also a local street through Nolensville, TN southeast of Nashville. A new Tennessee law could prevent state gas tax dollars from being used to add them.

Less than a year after passing a statewide complete streets policy, at least two Tennessee state legislators are spearheading a fairly shocking legislative effort to curtail the flexibility that the state, cities and counties have to invest in the diverse types of transportation options that are demanded by their citizens and supported by scores of state and local elected leaders from across the state.

HB 1650 (with a companion in the Senate), as originally introduced and intended, would entirely ban the use of state gas tax revenue for building any sidewalks (even as part of a larger road project), bike lanes and trails, or other similarly cost-effective and popular projects to help make traveling on foot or by bike safer and more convenient.

But this bill goes further than a restriction on the projects that the Tennessee Department of Transportation plans and builds itself, however.

The bill would also narrowly restrict how a city or county could invest their share of gas tax dollars they receive back from the state. This bill would curtail the freedom and control communities of all sizes currently enjoy to invest these dollars however they choose.

Tracking state policy & fundingtracking state policy funding featured

This bill is just one of many pieces of state legislation that we are tracking closely as part of our new resource on state transportation policy & funding.

Visit our refreshed state policy bill tracker to see current information about the states attempting to raise new funding in 2016, states attempting to reform how those dollars are spent, and states (like Tennessee) taking unfortunate steps in the wrong direction on policy.

The bill has been opposed thus far by TDOT, in part because it would have a dramatic impact on safety and could prevent them from meeting decades-old, basic ADA requirements that require crosswalks and curb ramps and other basic safety and accessibility features — which could also jeopardize future federal funds for the state. While there’s potential for the bill to be amended to address the ADA issue and possibly allow sidewalk construction to some degree, the legislators appear to be intent on preserving the outright restriction of state funds for any on-street or off-street bike lanes or trails.

It’s a misguided attempt to save a state money, but considering that only about one percent of the entire state transportation budget goes to projects that make walking or biking safer or more convenient, it’s akin to trying to save money on your power bill by unplugging a single light bulb while running the AC at 60 degrees all summer.

The kicker is that Tennessee is already a national leader on evaluating proposed projects to find savings (or waste) and maximize the benefits of each dollar. We profiled them as a model to emulate in our recent report on smart state policies other states should consider:

In 2012, the Tennessee DOT (TDOT), in partnership with Smart Growth America, found that many transportation projects in its program could be redesigned to achieve 80-90 percent of benefits for as little as one-tenth of the initial proposed cost. After reviewing just the first five projects, TDOT found a cost savings of over $171 million through right-sizing the scope of work. In one project in Jackson County, TDOT was able to reduce the overall cost from an estimated $65 million to just $340,000 while still achieving the same safety and efficiency outcomes. As a result, TDOT has saved billions of dollars and stretched its limited resources even further (the state’s 21.4 cent per gallon gas tax was last raised in 1993, and the state operates its transportation program on a pay-as-you-go basis).

Check that math again: By re-scoping just one project, TDOT saved over $64 million dollars — equivalent to almost four full years of current state funding for safer streets and sidewalks.

There are indeed savings to be found, but curtailing local control and flexibility and making streets less safe for Tennesseans isn’t the solution.

TDOT’s leaders are already on board with awarding a small fraction of their budget — about half a percent of the state’s budget — to build a well-rounded transportation system, and they see how it supports the economic prosperity of the state and the safety of all citizens.

The state created a new Multimodal Access fund in 2013, which has competitively awarded about $10 million annually (out of a $1.8 billion annual budget) to “fund infrastructure projects that support the transportation needs of transit users, pedestrians, and bicyclists by addressing gaps along the state highway network,” according to TDOT.

“Our responsibilities as a transportation agency go far beyond building roads and bridges,” TDOT Commissioner John Schroer said in their release for the 2015 grant awards. “Providing safe access for different modes of transportation ultimately creates a more complete and diverse network for our users. These projects are also extremely cost effective, which allows TDOT to make improvements in more areas across the state.”

The sponsors of the bill appear to be unaware of the potential impacts on public safety, the growing public support for these projects, or the sizable economic benefits these projects can bring. HB 1650 would not only end this small multimodal state grant program that’s supported smart, cost-effective projects (chosen on the merits) from across the state, but would also put an incredible burden on local governments by essentially requiring them to self-fund even the most basic sidewalk components of road-related projects.

Amy Benner, a Knoxville-based bike attorney and board member at Bike Walk Tennessee, talked to Streetsblog last week about the bill.

“Our concern is that it prevents localized communities from doing what they want to with their roadways. The way it’s currently written is going to potentially prevent projects that have already been researched and approved and the communities support and mayors have signed off on from happening.”

It’s shocking to contrast this with other forward-looking places that are scrambling to invest in a wide range of transportation options to grow their economies, attract talent, improve mobility and double down on the unique qualities that makes their cities successful.

Scores of cities are enjoying the economic returns of investing in a broader range of transportation options, whether the bus rapid transit systems in medium-sized cities, the massively successful bikesharing systems in cities large and small, the Cultural Trail in Indianapolis or the inspiring Atlanta Beltline in-town trail network that’s been a boost to the local economy.

It’s incredibly discouraging to see Tennessee legislators trying to turn back the clock by making it harder for the state, cities and counties to build safer streets, kneecapping their ability to stay economically competitive in the process.

It’s a “cure” that will only kill the patient.

—

This story is part of the work of T4America’s START Network — State Transportation Advocacy, Research & Training —  for state elected leaders and advocates working on similar state issues.

Find out more and join.

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City leaders from Indy, Raleigh and Nashville get inspired by the secrets to Denver’s transit success

Delegations of city leaders from Nashville, Raleigh and Indianapolis wrapped up the latest two-day Transportation Innovation Academy workshop in Denver last week, where they learned firsthand about the years of hard work that went into Denver’s economic development plan to vastly expand the city’s transportation options, including new buses, light rail and commuter rail.

The three delegations underneath the new train shed on the platform at Denver Union Station last week.

The three delegations underneath the new train shed on the platform at Denver Union Station last week.

The Transportation Innovation Academy is a joint project of Transportation for America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos 2The three delegations saw the tangible fruit of Denver’s successful transit investments first laid out by their FasTracks plan in the early 2000s, and they learned how Denver went about the monumental task of building support and raising the funding required to make it all happen.

Analyzing Denver’s success so closely provided participants an opportunity to evaluate their own ongoing city and/or regional campaign efforts, and all were clearly struck by just how much work is plowed into the earth before you taste the fruits of success. It’s do-able and the benefits are sizable, but the task is not easy or quick. The participants know they have a challenge on their hands, but they were encouraged to see how Denver made it all happen and are taking imminently practical lessons back home to help build their coalitions and engage supporters back home.

From the very first discussion, the academy participants learned about the unique factors in Denver’s success. One factor was education — Denver succeeded in their ballot campaign by throwing out assumptions about who would and would not support transit. Polling and focus groups revealed who support Denver’s efforts and why. Women over 60 and suburban drivers — groups often assumed to be neutral to or against transit — became key supporters. On the other hand, it could not be assumed that transit riders would support the plan.

In the end, leaders from these three cities saw the possibilities of reaching out to key constituencies who haven’t been engaged in their efforts so far.

Denver Union Station transportation innovation academyDenver Union Station transportation innovation academy 2

With years of actual construction behind them at this point, participants also experienced Denver’s story in a tangible way. They ooh’ed and aah’ed inside the jewel of the new system — the redeveloped Union Station in downtown — took a ride along a new light rail line, and toured a mixed income housing development constructed by MetroWest Housing Solutions — the former city public housing authority which the City of Lakewood has reimagined and reconstituted as an opportunistic community developer. That project and the surrounding 40W Arts District are using arts and creative design to engage the community and build support for new projects. The delegates learned that one of the most vocal opponents to the arts district and development quickly changed his tune when the city sponsored a mural on his industrial building.

Denver light rail transportation innovation academy

A key to all of this success is the way Denver’s regional leaders stayed together as a region throughout the first failed ballot measure for transit, the successful FasTracks ballot measure and the subsequent drop in anticipated revenues brought on by the recession that made implementation a challenge.

Mayor Bob Murphy, mayor of the suburban city of Lakewood and past chair of the Metro Mayors Caucus, showed how that cooperative forum among mayors — from Denver, major suburbs, and even towns as small as 500 in population — builds cohesion. Cities in the region don’t try to poach jobs and industries from neighboring cities, but work collectively at economic development across the region. “Sometimes we are competitors,” Murphy said, “but we are [ultimately] colleagues.”

The leaders from Indy, Nashville and Raleigh will meet in Nashville for the last session of this year’s Academy in December, where they’ll build their own action plans for campaigns in their regions, while also learning more about Nashville’s growth and development, its challenges in building bus rapid transit and how they’re moving forward despite a few setbacks.

While only these three regions are participating this year, they’re emblematic of a burgeoning group of mid-sized U.S. cities that are either in the midst of or planning new transit service to meet the demand and help them stay competitive in the race for talent.

This post was written by Michael Russell with contributions from Dan Levine and Stephen Lee Davis.

Healthy economies need healthy people — Nashville leads the way for other regions

What’s the connection between healthy residents and a healthy bottom line? Why should a local business community care about improving the health of the residents that live there? Representatives from five regions gathered last week in Nashville to learn how providing better transportation infrastructure and building more walkable communities can help improve residents’ health — and boost local economic prosperity and competitiveness.

This post was written by Rochelle Carpenter and Stephen Lee Davis with Transportation for America.

The Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization, responsible for planning and allocating federal transportation dollars in the seven-county Nashville region, has become a nationally recognized leader in prioritizing health when selecting transportation projects.

Getting to that point wasn’t easy, but their hard work to make that shift was kick-started by two related developments: the widespread recognition of a looming health crisis in the least active state in the nation, and the realization that there was pent-up demand among Nashville residents for healthier options to get around —whether safer streets with new sidewalks, trails, transit, or bikeshare.

One economic connection is obvious: employers are often the ones paying a large share of healthcare costs for employees. If those employees are living in a place where it’s challenging to get or stay healthy because of factors inherent to the built environment, that’s a cost that those companies have to bear. If those costs become a known challenge within the business community, it presents a major roadblock when recruiting new employers or trying to retain them.

Whether by continuing to make ambitious plans to bring new bus rapid transit to the city, building new projects that make it easier to walk or bike, or through incorporating health considerations into their process for funding transportation projects, Nashville is trying to stay ahead of their growth challenges, remain competitive for new talent and ensure that their residents can be healthy — all helping to boost the bottom line for the region. It’s a region experiencing some of the fastest job growth in the country, but they know they can’t rest on their laurels.

We’ll be publishing an in-depth profile of how Nashville began to integrate health considerations into their planning efforts sometime in the next few weeks. Watch this space, and sign up for our emails to be notified if you haven’t already. –Ed.

To learn from Nashville’s experiences, T4America and the Nashville MPO — through an ongoing grant from the Kresge Foundation — brought civic leaders and agency staff from Seattle, San Diego, Detroit and Portland, OR, to the Music City last week; sharing best practices and hoping to build on what the others have done.

Kresge Nashville gathering 2

MPO staff and advocates from Nashville, San Diego, Detroit, Portland and Seattle along with Nolensville staff and leadership during last week’s gathering in Nashville.

Meeting in the Bridge Building overlooking downtown Nashville and the Cumberland River, the group of leaders from across the country saw the rapid changes made in the downtown core to improve streetscapes and public spaces to create vibrant, welcoming places for the many families, professionals and visitors.

While Nashville proper is making significant strides, other communities around the MPO’s seven-county region are also eager to expand their options for walking, bicycling and transit.

The delegation visited the rapidly growing town of Nolensville (pop. 8,000) on the south side of the region.

Kresge Nashville gathering 1

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander led Transportation Choices Coalition Executive Director Rob Johnson, Upstream Public Health Policy Manager Heidi Guenin and Transportation for America Field Organizer Chris Rall along Nolensville Road. The town was recently awarded half a million dollars to construct a greenway parallel to Nolensville Road, providing a new safe and convenient route between popular destinations.

Nolensville Mayor Jimmy Alexander described the town’s ambitious goal that local leaders see as critical for their local economy and competitive advantage. “We want to make it possible for every student in Nolensville to be able to walk to school,” he told us. The town has passionately sought and secured federal, state and local funding for multi-use paths, sidewalks and greenways that will eventually link the community’s most-visited destinations: residential neighborhoods, the historic district and commercial town center, schools, Nolensville Ball Park and the Williamson County Recreation Center.

Nolensville’s early leadership in clamoring for more of the infrastructure that makes it easier to safely get around on foot or bike — and the Nashville MPO’s response in providing technical assistance, policy and funding — will help them reach their goal in just a few years time.

The tour of new, energetic thinking on transportation and community development in the area would not be complete without a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to several nonprofits that serve the thousands of recent immigrants and refugees that are settling in Nashville and helping shape its future.

Renata Soto, Executive Director of Conexión Américas, led the delegation on a tour of Casa Azafrán, including a day care center, culinary incubator, health clinic and classrooms. But since moving to their new location on busy Nolensville Pike in south Nashville two years ago, Soto has witnessed first hand the challenges of poor transportation infrastructure. She took it upon herself to get the city to install the city’s first bilingual crosswalk to allow clients and visitors to safely cross busy Nolensville Pike while welcoming non-English speakers.

Kresge Nashville gathering 3

During a visit to Casa Azafrán, a community center and home to nonprofits serving New Americans, Renata Soto explains the new bilingual crosswalk installed to make it safer to get to work, the bus stop and several restaurants on both sides of busy Nolensville Pike.

Kresge Nashville gathering 4

The signs on the new bilingual crosswalk on busy Nolensville Pike.

The promise of a new rapid bus line coming later in the year will help, but challenges remain. “There are so many high school students who could use our facilities,” Soto explained. “But they can’t get here — they’re so close, but so far away.”

This gathering last week in Middle Tennessee offered inspiration, new information and a meeting of the minds to generate new ideas and discuss how to overcome political and technical challenges in our path. Stay tuned as we report more from each of these regions over the coming months.

Will Congress reward the ambitious places that are seizing their future with both hands?

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos 2The three mid-sized regions participating in this week’s Transportation Innovation Academy in Indianapolis are a refreshing reminder that local communities – particularly a growing wave of mid-size cities — are seizing their future with both hands and planning to tax themselves to help make ambitious transportation plans a reality. Yet even the most ambitious cities can’t do it alone, and if Congress fails to find a way to put the nation’s transportation fund on stable footing, it will jeopardize even the most homegrown, can-do plans to stay economically competitive.

Following up on the first session of this yearlong academy, sponsored by both T4America and TransitCenter, that began back in March, 21 representatives from these three similar-sized cities — Indianapolis, Raleigh, and Nashville — are reuniting in Indianapolis today and tomorrow to learn from experts and from each other about how to make their ambitious transit expansion plans a reality.

Follow along today and tomorrow (May 14-15 on twitter by following @T4America, @TransitCtr, and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy. The participants will be sharing some of the helpful nuggets of info they’re hearing throughout the two-day workshop.

With Infrastructure Week events happening here in DC all week (#RebuildRenew), it’s a good reality check to hear about these forward-looking plans bubbling up from the grassroots in cities far away from Capitol Hill.

So what’s on tap in Indy that’s worth sharing with the other business and civic leaders from Raleigh and Nashville this week?

Indianapolis

Indy profile featured

Action by the Indiana legislature in early 2014 cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to have a long-awaited vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. With that legislative battle behind them, the broad Indy coalition is working toward a November 2016 ballot measure to fund the first phase of their ambitious Indy Connect transportation plan.

Read the full profile.

While the particulars vary from place to place, Indy isn’t all that different than Nashville and Raleigh. All three cities have various groups of leaders who have coalesced around the notion that big investments in transit are crucial to their long-term economic prosperity and competitiveness.

As the task force concluded in Indianapolis in the story above, a well-rounded investment in a multimodal transportation network in Indy is the long-term plan with the highest return-on-investment. Though all are in different stages of the process, all three are making plans to tax themselves and/or raise local revenue that they are hoping to pair with additional investment from a reliable federal partner.

But will the feds continue to be a reliable partner?

We’ve spent a lot of time here focusing on the trend of states raising new transportation funds over the last few years, and some have mistaken that to mean that states are ready to go it alone. The truth is far from it. While all of these states are moving to address growing needs and declining revenues, they’re absolutely counting on the feds to continue their historic role as a partner. And shouldn’t those efforts be rewarded, rather than using it as an excuse to pass the buck down to states or localities?

In a story detailed in our longer “can-do” Indy profile, Indy is counting on the feds to support their efforts to get started with their bus rapid transit network.

The Red Line won’t get off the ground without a grant from the Federal Transit Administration, and if Congress fails to keep the nation’s trust fund solvent this summer and pass an annual appropriations bill with robust funding for infrastructure, neither will happen. Not only is Indy hopefully raising their own local funds, they’re also leveraging other investments to support the corridor and help it be as successful as possible — like prioritizing their federal block grants for community development into the soon-to-be Red Line corridor.

Red Line Indy slide

Indy, Raleigh, Nashville, and dozens of other cities and regions have been putting their own skin in the game as they make their bets on smart transportation investments. Yet Congress has shown no sign of either settling on a long-term funding source or coming up with an authorization proposal that lasts more than a couple of years. (Or a couple of months!)

Infrastructure Week, happening now, is a great time to hear from leaders of all stripes about the importance of investing in our nation’s infrastructure, but it can feel a little vague or hard to wrap your head around. Which infrastructure? What kind of infrastructure? To what end?

Hearing more about these very specific plans in Raleigh, Nashville and Indianapolis is a great way to bring the point of Infrastructure Week to a specific, understandable, local focus. For these three cities, transit = continued economic prosperity.

Mark Fisher, vice president of government relations and policy development at the Indy Chamber, made this connection clear in the Chamber’s press release for today’s event. “Other regions are using transit to attract talent and investment, connect workers to jobs and spark new development. We must move forward or we will continue to fall behind,” he said.

Hopefully the leaders on Capitol Hill will take note of the things happening in Indianapolis this week — and in Nashville and Raleigh and countless others — and finally come up with the fortitude required help our local economies prosper.

Ongoing training academy brings together key leaders from three ambitious regions

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation will be reuniting in Indianapolis this week to continue the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

(This is a slightly updated version of the post we published in conjunction with the first workshop in Raleigh in early March that kicked off the Academy. – Ed.)

Similarly sized regions of 1 million-plus, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Raleigh all have notable plans to expand their transportation systems with additional bus rapid transit or rail service. In partnership with TransitCenter, T4America has created a new yearlong academy for a select group of key leaders from each region that was selected to participate. The academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) will be in Indianapolis on Thursday and Friday this week for the second of three two-day workshops with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities are hosting an academy workshop, focusing on the particular specifics of that city while also learning valuable lessons that are applicable back home. The participants will also take a trip together to a fourth region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Would you like to follow along and hear some of the great insights participants are picking up in this week’s Indianapolis workshop? Follow @t4america, @TransitCtr and the hashtag #TranspoAcademy on Thursday May 14 and Friday May 15.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

The diverse group of members, assembled by each region’s team lead, recognizes the fact that making any big plan to invest in a new transit line or system requires buy-in from more than just a mayor and/or a few citizen groups. There has to be a shared vision with support from a wide range of civic players. In some regions, there might be a huge university presence. In others, it might be a big medical institution that anchors the local economy.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 3 Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 2 Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 1

In Indianapolis, the host of this week’s workshop, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including higher education, healthcare and IT industries) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

“Supported by a strong business community, an ambitious heartland city wins the ability to let citizens decide their own transportation future.” Read our detailed “can-do” profile of Indianapolis.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of the first workshop in March in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

Adjoining Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Wake County Commissioners, meanwhile, had not allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members replaced four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County.  Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, who helped kick things off in the workshop this morning, has long supported a regional plan for transit.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employers is one of the few major metro regions lacking a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016.

In Nashville, local advocates and elected leaders are still smarting from the setback on last year’s effort to kick-start a bus rapid-transit network with a line that would have connected neighborhoods and major employment centers along an east-west route through the city.

Inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce chose transit as a top priority six years ago, second only to improving public education. Local leaders there, including the recently departed Mayor Karl Dean, wanted to get out in front of the issue, rather than waiting 10 years after gridlock has overtaken the booming region. The business community and the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization have both been a key part of crafting the plan to make bus rapid transit a reality in Nashville, and members of the MPO, the Chamber, a and several businesses are all represented in their academy group.

Along with TransitCenter, we’re excited to see what the year will bring for these 21 participants and the up-and-coming regions that they represent. We’re going to have much more on these three cities this year, so stay tuned.

New training academy brings together key leaders from three ambitious regions

Twenty-one local leaders representing three regions with ambitious plans to invest in public transportation gathered today in Raleigh, NC, to kick off the first yearlong Transportation Innovation Academy, sponsored by T4America and TransitCenter.

Transportation Innovation Academy with logos

Similarly sized regions of 1 million-plus, Indianapolis, Nashville, and Raleigh all have notable plans to expand their transportation systems with additional bus rapid transit or rail service. In partnership with TransitCenter, T4America has created a new yearlong academy for a select group of key leaders from each region that was selected to participate. The academy is intended to share knowledge and best practices, visit cities that have inspiring success stories, and help develop and catalyze the local leadership necessary to turn these ambitious visions into reality.

Sheila Ogle of Ogle Enterprises (Raleigh), left, Shane Douglas of Collier International (Nashville) and Juan Gonzalez of KeyBank Indiana (Indy) go through an exercise led by Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) where teams design a transit network for a fictional city with a set budget — one way to experience the real-life trade-offs that transit planners and cities have to make.

Sheila Ogle of Ogle Enterprises (Raleigh), left, Shane Douglas of Collier International (Nashville) and Juan Gonzalez of KeyBank Indiana (Indy) go through an exercise led by Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) where teams design a transit network for a fictional city with a set budget — one way to experience the real-life trade-offs that transit planners and cities have to make.

All 21 participants (seven from each region) are in Raleigh this week for a two-day workshop with experts in the field and leaders from other cities with similar experiences. Each of the three cities will host an academy workshop, focusing on the particular specifics of that city while also learning valuable lessons that are applicable back home. The participants will also take a trip together to a fourth region that already has tasted the kind of success that these leaders would love to replicate.

Key business leaders from each region are part of each group, along with mayors and city/county council members, real estate pros, housing industry experts and local advocates.

The diverse group of members, assembled by each region’s team lead, recognizes the fact that making any big plan to invest in a new transit line or system requires buy-in from more than just a mayor and/or a few citizen groups. There has to be a shared vision with support from a wide range of civic players. In some regions, there might be a huge university presence. In others, it might be a big medical institution that anchors the local economy.

In all cases, getting everyone to the table and building a vision that everyone can share in are keys to success.

Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 3 Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 2 Transportation Innovation Academy Raleigh 1

In Indianapolis, action by the Indiana legislature and Governor Mike Pence cleared the way for metro Indianapolis counties to vote on funding a much-expanded public transportation network, with a major emphasis on bus rapid transit. Civic, elected and business leaders had been hard at work since 2009 producing an ambitious and inspiring IndyConnect plan, “the most comprehensive transportation plan — created with the most public input — our region has ever seen,” according to Mayor Greg Ballard in the foreword to our Innovative MPO report. Now the hard part comes as they build public and political will and decide what to include on a November 2016 ballot measure that would raise revenue from changes to local income taxes — a challenging revenue mechanism to say the least.

While transit expansion has more support in the region’s core, local leaders acknowledge they have an uphill battle in some suburban counties more skeptical of the merits of transit. Mayor Ballard and the diverse group of Indy businesses (including a booming healthcare industry) supporting IndyConnect understand how important this measure is for helping Indy be economically competitive in the future. Local leaders hope to position their city to attract young families who think Chicago is too expensive and to lure recent college grads back home to Indy. And a strong regional public transit system is lies at the core of their economic strategy.

After watching the region’s two other counties approve ballot measure to raise funds for a regional transit system originally envisioned by all three counties, the hosts of this week’s workshop in Raleigh (Wake County) hope to join the other two core metro counties in beginning a new regional rail transit system.

Adjoining Durham and Orange counties approved half-cent sales taxes in 2011 and 2012 to fund transit operations, improved bus service and a regional light rail line. Wake County Commissioners, meanwhile, had not allowed a question to raise funds for a regional transit system to go to the ballot. In fact, a handful of commissioners actively prevented the issue going forward, often stifling debate at times.

That could all change in 2015, as more than half of the county board was replaced last November. Four new supportive members replaced four who had consistently been on the other side of the issue, clearing the way for a potential ballot measure in Wake County.  Raleigh Mayor Nancy McFarlane, who helped kick things off in the workshop this morning, has long supported a regional plan for transit.

Wake County is one of the fastest growing counties in the U.S. and the county’s population is due to double by 2035. Yet this rapidly growing community with a notable high-tech, research, government and major university employers is one of the few major metro regions lacking a significant transit system. Just like Indianapolis, they will be crafting their plan and building consensus in 2015 as they shoot for a vote in 2016.

In Nashville, local advocates and elected leaders are still smarting from the setback on last year’s effort to kick-start a bus rapid-transit network with a line that would have connected neighborhoods and major employment centers along an east-west route through the city.

Inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes, the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce chose transit as a top priority six years ago, second only to improving public education. Local leaders there, including the recently departed Mayor Karl Dean, wanted to get out in front of the issue, rather than waiting 10 years after gridlock has overtaken the booming region. The business community and the Nashville Area Metropolitan Planning Organization have both been a key part of crafting the plan to make bus rapid transit a reality in Nashville, and members of the MPO, the Chamber, a and several businesses are all represented in their academy group.

Along with TransitCenter, we’re excited to see what the year will bring for these 21 participants and the up-and-coming regions that they represent.  We’re going to have much more on these three cities this year, so stay tuned.

Survey: To recruit and keep millennials, give them walkable places with good transit and other options

Four in five millennials say they want to live in places where they have a variety of options to get to jobs, school or daily needs, according to a new survey of Americans age 18-34 in 10 major U.S. cities, released today by The Rockefeller Foundation and Transportation for America.

Three in four say it is likely they will live in a place where they do not need a car to get around. But a majority in all but the largest metros rate their own cities “fair” or “poor” in providing public transportation, and they want more options such as car share and bike share.

The survey focused on the “millennial generation” – those born between 1982 and 2003 – because it is the largest generation in history, and it is the age group that any metro area that hopes to be viable in the future has to attract and keep.

Now, one caveat is that the survey respondents are already living in cities, so some self-selection is involved. Interestingly, though, the aspirations hold true even in cities that don’t have great options at the moment. The survey covered three cities with mature transit systems: Chicago, San Francisco and New York; four cities where transit networks are growing: Minneapolis, Denver, Charlotte and Los Angeles; and three cities making plans to grow their systems: Nashville, Indianapolis and Tampa-St. Petersburg.

Millennials like to stay connected when they travel

Millennials like to stay connected when they travel

More than half (54%) of millennials surveyed say they would consider moving to another city if it had more and better options for getting around, and 66 percent say that access to high quality transportation is one of the top three criteria in considering deciding where to live next.

Even in a city like Nashville – a rapidly growing region with limited travel options – a strong majority of current millennial residents agree they “would prefer to live in a place where most people have transportation options so they do not need to rely only on cars” versus “a place where most people rely on cars to get around” – 54 percent “strongly” and 19 percent “somewhat” in agreement.  The trick for Nashville  and its peers will be hanging onto to those residents while attracting other talented young people. While 64 percent in Nashville say they expect to live in walkable places where they don’t necessarily need a car, only 6 percent say they currently live in such a place.

“These findings confirm what we have heard from the business and elected leaders we work with across the country,” said James Corless, director of Transportation for America. “The talented young workforce that every region is trying to recruit aspires to live in places where they can find walkable neighborhoods with convenient access to services, including public transportation. Providing those travel and living options will be the key to future economic success.”

There are lots of other interesting tibits in the survey. You can read the news release here or see the full, topline results here.

Locals encountering help or hindrance from states on their transportation plans

Flickr photo by John Greenfield http://www.flickr.com/photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/

Several places have been in the news lately as they find their ambitious efforts to solve transportation challenges hinging on legislative action this lawmaking season. In some, state legislators are helping out with enabling legislation, but in others they are challenging the concept of local control and threatening needed investment.

The prime case of the latter has been in Nashville, where a handful of Tennessee legislators decided to interfere in a regional Nashville plan to build a first-of-its-kind bus rapid transit system through the region’s core.

An initial measure from a non-Nashville lawmaker would have required a vote of the General Assembly to approve the BRT line, despite the state DOT’s role in planning the line as a member of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization’s board. An amendment to an unrelated bill said flatly: ”No rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

Mayors of Tennessee’s four large cities immediately saw the threat that legislative micromanaging posed to their ability to meet their economic challenges and fired off a letter (pdf) that helped persuade legislators to try a different tack. The House version now simply affirms the status quo that the DOT must approve use of state right-of-way for a transit line and that only the legislature can appropriate state funds.

But new language was added in the Senate’s version that would prohibit any transit system from picking up or dropping off passengers in the middle of state roads as a “safety” measure — exactly what’s planned for The Amp line — regardless of what the Federal Transit Administration or engineers at TDOT have to say about the safety track record of center-running BRT. (Center running BRT is already in use or on the way in Cleveland, OH; Eugene, OR; San Bernardino, CA; Chicago, IL; and a handful of other cities.)

Photo by CTAFlickr photo by John Greenfield /photos/24858199@N00/10090187245/
Current conditions on Ashland in Chicago, and rendering of the new planned center-running BRT for the corridor. Does one of these streets look safer for pedestrians than the other?

In Indiana, meanwhile, the legislature finally granted metro Indianapolis the right to vote on funding a much-expanded bus network, including bus rapid transit. What it won’t include is light rail, as dictated by the new law, which would allow six counties to hold referendums to let voters decide whether to build a transit system using mostly income-tax revenue, according to the Indianapolis Star.

Despite the mode-specific directive, it was a big victory for the business community, who pointed out that the state stands to benefit if growth engine Indianapolis continues to succeed economically. The region is a hotbed of healthcare jobs, and once again, providing a better bus system — something Mayor Greg Ballard and region’s other leaders are committed to doing — means that those employers get access to a bigger pool of workers, and workers of all incomes can reach a greater range of jobs.

Four years after their bus service was completely canceled, Clayton County just south of Atlanta proper is catching a helping hand from the Georgia general assembly. Lawmakers just passed a measure that would allow Clayton County voters to vote on approving a penny sales tax to restore local transit operations — something voters, local leaders and citizens alike strongly support.

When Clayton County lost that bus service, they lost something that employers — especially those at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson Airport — depended on to get employees to work every day. There are thousands of jobs at that enormous airport right at the edge of Clayton County, and a good transit connection was a boost for jobs and residents to benefit from that economic magnet.

Up in Minnesota, the state is moving a huge comprehensive funding package for transportation across the state — one of many states considering ways to raise their own new revenue for transportation. (See our tracker) A House committee voted 9-6 Friday to pass the comprehensive transportation funding bill (HF 2395). Similar legislation didn’t make it through the House committee in 2013.

Supporting and enabling these efforts is exactly what states should be doing as local cities and regions are trying desperately to make these sorts of investments a reality, usually with their own skin in the game; not obstructing them at every turn.

When a city or region wants to raise a tax via public ballot vote to improve their transportation network, shouldn’t the state leaders proudly support those efforts of a city bootstrapping their way up?

Editors note: We’re in the process of updating it with 2014 information, but you can find similar information to the Minnesota plan over on our State Funding Tracker, which focuses largely on state (i.e., not local) plans to fund transportation.

As feds OK funding, critical legislators move to block Nashville’s planned transit investment

Opponents in the Tennessee legislature have put forward an amendment designed to stop Nashville’s bus rapid transit line, eliciting howls of protest over legislative intervention in a local project previously approved by the state DOT.

Last updated: 4/12 1:24 p.m. at bottom. You may recall our profile of Nashville and it’s vision to get ahead of rapid growth by investing in bus rapid transit network.  Nashville struggles with some of the worst congestion in the Southeast along with some of the longest peak-hour travel times in the nation.

Nashville Amp Map crop

That’s in part because the region’s economy has led the nation in rate of job growth. As population surges, metro leaders have been working to grow in a way that will continue attracting and retaining top-flight talent while avoiding the challenges that have plagued larger peers like Atlanta.

Their first big step toward a more sophisticated transit network is The Amp, an east-west line through the heart of the city that would connect diverse neighborhoods, major employers (including two hospitals and a university), and heavily visited tourist destinations.

Just last week they received the encouraging news that the Federal Transit Administration recommended $27 million in federal funding, the first installment  of a potential $75 million match to state and local contributions.

That good news for supporters was overshadowed by an unexpected amendment explicitly crafted to require Nashville get the approval of the state legislature before being able to move ahead.

According to Nashville’s daily, The Tennessean, the amendment to a bill on crosswalk safety  “says no rapid bus project in a metropolitan form of government, such as Nashville, could be built without the permission of the … General Assembly.”

In the same article, Nashville Mayor Karl Dean’s office called the move an “overreach” into a project that enjoys public and federal support. A followup piece further explored the issue of legislative intervention with Michael Skipper, executive director of the Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization:

The Tennessee Department of Transportation is part of the MPO, which approved $4 million in Amp funding in December, and the governor or his designee sits on the agency’s board, Skipper said Friday.

“My position is that the project’s already approved by the state, and the governor’s concurrence is there,” he said. “These are typically executive branch decisions. …

“Giving the state legislature veto authority over projects that are already approved sort of undermines the federal law that requires the state and the locals to make these decisions together.”

The business community seemed to be shocked that the state would attempt to overrule local control on a plan that represents a key pillar of the local economic development strategy for a place so important to the state.

“You’ve got the largest regional economic contributor to this state, and it’s the only target of this limiting legislation,” said [Ralph] Schulz, president and CEO of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. “It just doesn’t make sense.”

The amended crosswalk safety bill could move through the Tennessee legislature as early as Wednesday. The Amp coalition is urging supporters to make phone calls to their state representatives and the leadership to ensure that they hear all the voices from Nashville residents (see below.)

We’ll be keeping a close eye on what happens this week, but follow us on twitter @t4america for more regular updates.

Post by Nashville Amp.

UPDATED (4:57 p.m.) The Nashville Metropolitan Planning Organization and the Middle Tennessee Mayors Caucus sent a letter today to the chairs of the Tennessee House and Senate transportation committees letting them know that “mayors and county executives see the legislation as an overreach that reduces our ability to make local decisions,” urging them to reconsider “any legislation that would interfere with TDOT’s ability to work with local communities to plan and select projects, particularly those that advance infrastructure improvements aimed at managing congestion and fostering economic growth in metropolitan areas.”

Read the full letter here, also posted by The Tennessean. (pdf)

UPDATED 4/12 1:24 p.m. Another letter in opposition to the legislation was sent to the same state House and Senate committees from the mayors of the biggest four cities in Tennessee — Chattanooga, Knoxville, Memphis and Nashville — cities that collectively account for 80 percent of the state’s GDP and 91 percent of the state’s job growth over the last year.

This concentration of economic activity, in turn, generates important tax revenue that funds services and infrastructure in all corners of our state. We plan to continue to grow, prosper, and serve as the economic drivers of our great state. And in order to do that, we need the ability to make decisions about infrastructure solutions in our communities, especially in the area of transportation, as mass transit is the only long- term solution to the increasing traffic congestion that accompanies our economic growth.

Read the full letter. (pdf)

In Hill event, local leaders make case for federal support for transportation needs

Before a packed room on Capitol Hill, local leaders from three very different communities shared one very specific message with a handful of Congressmen and at least four dozen staffers: If Congress doesn’t act to shore up the nation’s transportation fund before it goes insolvent later this year, their cities and communities would bear the brunt of the pain.

Ways and Means briefing overall

Along with Reps. Richard Hanna (R-NY) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR), Transportation for America helped to bring local leaders to Washington to talk about what the looming insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund means for their communities. As we’ve noted here, states and local governments stand to lose nearly all access to federal transportation support next year if Congress doesn’t act to shore up the nation’s transportation fund sometime before the end of the summer. (The details of which were explored at length in a presentation by the day’s last panelist, Sarah Puro, Principal Analyst at the Congressional Budget Office.)

In between appearances by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, as well as comments from Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington and Rep. Rodney Davis of Illinois, three local officials painted pictures of their ambitious transportation plans, and what the lack of federal investment would mean for them.

Normal, IL, Mayor Chris Koos shared the story of how city leaders revitalized their town’s core — and how federal support was the only way they could make it a reality. (Read that full story here.) He noted that the private sector has since followed through with millions in new investments, but that they were unwilling to invest in Uptown Normal until they knew the public sector was truly committed.

 

Rep. Rodney Davis, a Republican from the 13th District that includes Normal, came up and offered his support for Normal Mayor Chris Koos and expressed pride in this project in his district — a model for how the federal government could support a smart local vision that also had strong local and state funding and support.

Koos and Davis

Rep. Rodney Davis (right) greets Mayor Chris Koos of Normal, Illinois after the Mayor shared the story of the revitalization of Uptown Normal — made possible by a federal TIGER grant.

While Mayor Koos was speaking in one hearing room, Transportation for America director James Corless was telling a different group of more than 20 members of Congress the same story from Normal, Illinois.

He was testifying alongside many of the transportation industry groups in an invitation-only congressional roundtable hosted by the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure to discuss the next transportation bill. He told the 20-plus members of Congress there, along with transportation lobbyists and advocacy groups, that because local economies are the heart of the American economy, the federal program should support more local initiatives like Normal’s.

“Normal should be “normal,” not the exception,” Corless said.

While Normal is a small college town, Nashville, Tennessee is a much larger, booming metropolis. They’ve been adding jobs and people over the last ten years, and are expected to add a million more in another 20-plus years.

Marc Hill, Chief Policy Officer of the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce, explained how the business community and the chamber got together years ago and recognized that congestion threatens that economic prosperity.

“Six years ago, the Chamber began focusing on transit as a top priority — second only to improving public education.”

Marc Hill from the Nashville Chamber of Commerce

Marc Hill from the Nashville Chamber of Commerce

Why? They’ve certainly been inspired by watching and learning from some of their neighbors’ mistakes. “We don’t want to be another Atlanta. We don’t want to start working on transit 10 years after we’re in gridlock,” he said.

The business community is leading the way for making bus-rapid transit a reality in Nashville — and they hope that The Amp’s first line through the center of town is just the first component of what could be a wide-ranging regional bus-rapid transit system, the first of its kind in the South.

But, “there’s simply no way a local community can pull off something like this without a federal partnership,” he said. If the trust fund goes belly up and the federal contribution is curtailed for next year, Tennessee could be out $900 million and Nashville would lose $40 million.

Down in Florida, Tampa Bay is home to the 15th largest port in the nation and the closest to the Panama Canal in sea-miles. Charlie Hunsicker, director of the Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Dept and also speaking on behalf of the Manatee Chamber of Commerce, urged the Ways and Means members to consider freight as they mull how to rescue the trust fund from insolvency.

“Ports constitute the most important first mile, or last mile, in world trade,” he said.

Charlie Hunsicker

Charlie Hunsicker, Director of the Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Department.

The recurring theme today was clear: No matter how motivated and inspired, the American public and business community cannot do this alone.

Nashville is working on their local funding sources for The Amp, and hoping for the feds to support this region that’s “an economic driver, not just in Tennessee, but for the mid-South,” as Marc Hill put it. “There’s no lack of will locally to invest to be a full partner, a majority partner, but we absolutely can’t do it without that federal support.”

Messages and stories like these will continue to flow into Washington, DC from cities and towns and counties and districts all across the country.

But the ball is in Congress’ court, and especially the Ways and Means Committee that’s responsible for funding a transportation bill. Without a solution to the funding crisis, writing great new transportation policies will be like crafting a beautiful saddle without the horse.

These local leaders are counting on Congress to come through for them.

—

Photos from the event

Sarah Puro of the CBO gives a presentation at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Sarah Puro of the CBO gives a presentation at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Richard Hanna speaking at the briefing organized by his office and Rep. Blumenauer, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Richard Hanna speaking at the briefing organized by his office and Rep. Blumenauer, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Earl Blumenauer speaking at the briefing organized by his office and Rep. and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Earl Blumenauer speaking at the briefing organized by his office and Rep. Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Jim McDermott speaking at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Jim McDermott stopped in to say a few words at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) at the briefing organized by Reps. Blumenauer and Hanna, with Transportation for America. 2/26/14

JRS at Ways and Means Briefing

Transportation for America’s John Robert Smith — himself a former mayor — kicks off the briefing with a few remarks.