Town Hall Meeting on Transit

We are holding a town hall meeting on June 4th at the Civic Design Center from 5:30pm to 7:30pm to discuss our transportation future. Help us shape a new future for America’s transportation system, one that recognizes our need for safe, clean and smart transportation options.

Transportation for America is gathering input across the nation that will be used to influence transportation dollars being spent in our communities from both the economic stimulus bill
and the next federal transportation bill.

This Town Hall meeting is one of the few being held in the Southeast - Come join us, and let the President and Congress hear your voice and your vision for the future of transportation.

Click here for flyer

The Summit for American Prosperity Presentations

In his presentation titled "Driving Competitiveness", Rob Puentes, a fellow with the Brookings Institute, outlines the state of our national transportation system and offers a three part solution for addressing the issues affecting it. Here is the link to the page. For some reason, I can not directly link to the video. You will need to click on the video to start it. It is well worth taking the time to view it. The link to the Brookings Institute Report "A Bridge to Somewhere: Rethinking American Transportation for the 21st Century" can be found here.

-Brian

Nashville’s Transportation Peers

You have probably heard someone ask, “Why can’t we have light rail? Denver does. Charlotte does.” People like to look to their peer cities for examples of ways to improve their hometown. The trick is finding which cities really are peers—which cities are most like our own. Picking the right peers partly depends on what topic you are considering—our sports peers will not necessarily be the same cities as our tourism industry, education, or arts peers. In order to help move the transportation conversation along, I have done a quick and dirty analysis to identify five likely peer cities for Nashville in transportation potential and needs. These are not necessarily the cities that have transportation systems the most like ours—rather, they are the cities that are most similar to us in a few of the demographics key to transportation services. By examining these five cities over the next several months, I hope that we can identify some great ideas for us to emulate.

When I say peer cities, I’m really talking about regions. I compared the 23 combined statistical areas (CSA) and metropolitan statistical areas (MSA) closest to Nashville in total population and chose those that were most similar to the Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Columbia, TN CSA in the land area, population, population density, and labor force located within the counties that are at least partially in a 25 mile radius of the center of the core county. This comparison was possible due to an excellent Internet application provided by the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University (www.stats.indiana.edu). I also compared the regions by the population of the core county of the MSA or CSA.

So, who are our transportation peers? They are Raleigh, Greensboro, Louisville, Grand Rapids, and Jacksonville. Next month, we will explore Jacksonville, taking a look at their Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plans, their commuter rail study, their planned multi-modal transit center, their waterborne transit study, and the overall status of their regional transportation planning. Over the next several months, we will examine each of the other peers. Feel free to contact me at cliff@transitnownashville.org if you would like more details on my methodology.

-Cliff