CityTHINK

Please join us for the Nashville Civic Design Center's March CityTHINK, which will feature a presentation by Transit Now entitled “Infrastructure Investments for a Sustainable Downtown
Nashville - the Circulator.” The presentation is on Tuesday, March 10, 2009, from 11:30 am – 1:00 pm at the Music City Central community meeting room. The MCC is located on Charlotte Avenue between 4th and 5th Avenues.

$72 million for Tennessee

A preliminary analysis by Federal Funds Information for States estimates that Tennessee will receive $72 million in transit capital grants from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. $51 million of that amount is for urban projects while $21 million is for rural projects. Tennessee will receive an estimated $573 million for highway and bridge projects and an overall total of $4.2 billion in ARRA money. The estimates do not include the tax incentives received by individual Tennesseans.

The PBS program NOW recently had a segment called "Stimulus Roadblock?". The segment discussed mass transit's successes and roadblocks it faces in the United States. The majority of the segment was devoted to the successes and difficulties of the Charlotte LRT system. Like the NOW segment we posted earlier, it is worth taking the time to watch. I was glad to see that it stressed the importance of designing the cities along transit corridors so that they work together and the need to plan proactively for the certain future growth of our urban areas. Transit alone is not the answer, but it is a piece of the economic success of our region.

-Brian

Update: The Economic Incentive Package and Mass Transit

Just a quick note on the status of the Senate vs. the House versions of the package as it relates to mass transit. According to an analysis by the National Conference of State Legislatures (www.ncsl.org), the Senate version gives more money directly to Amtrak ($850 million vs. $800 million) but less in grants for intercity passenger rail ($250 million vs. $300 million). The Senate version has no money designated for Rail Modernization, while the House has $2 billion; however, the Senate version designates $2 billion for the High Speed Rail Corridor Program, so this may be just a terminology difference. Where the House breaks up its other grants between $6 billion in supplemental public transit grants, $2 billion in rail transit improvement grants, and $1 billion in New Starts grants, the Senate lumps them all together in $8.4 billion in supplemental grants for public transit. Assuming a final bill passes this week, I will post a quick snapshot of the final provisions and discuss what they might mean for Tennessee.

-Cliff