Nashville Mayor John Cooper announced his new $1.6 billion transportation plan on Tuesday.
The plan, which was guided by 11 public listening sessions throughout Davidson County and through discussions with stakeholders and all 40 metro councilmembers, proposes investment in mass transit, neighborhood infrastructure, roads and bridges, traffic operations, and signals and safety.
“Projects within the plan will be advanced via individual, opportunistic funding strategies, while more comprehensive, dedicated revenue streams—via the IMPROVE Act’s authorizing mechanism for referendums or other available legal framework—can be pursued in a future year once America’s economy recovers from the pandemic-induced downturn,” Cooper said in a cover letter to his plan. “This plan offers the transportation choice and options for any post- COVID-19 scenarios that may develop.”
Cooper’s office said the strategic approach to the plan would create a “right size” level of investment that places approximately 92 percent of the population and 94 percent of jobs within a half-mile of an improvement.
Projects include a bicycle/pedestrian-accessible Interstate cap to reconnect the bifurcated west and east sides of Historic North Nashville at Jefferson Street; a dramatic increase in the frequency and span of service for the bus system, part of the WeGo’s Better Bus proposal which would include up to ten Neighborhood Transit Centers that would enable access to new crosstown routes, and “test bed” corridors for green infrastructure/ sustainability along Gallatin Pike, and for innovation/emerging-vehicle technologies along Charlotte Pike.
The plan would spend $825.9 million on transit and $818 million on traffic/multimodal/safety projects.