Seven candidates for mayor responded to our candidate questionnaire, answering questions about building more sidewalks, the 12 South bike lanes, advancing equity in transportation planning, achieving Vision Zero, dedicated funding for transit, and their vision for making Nashville a car-optional city. Here’s a synopsis of the more straight-forward responses. Candidates go deeper in their full responses, which can be found here.
Where candidates agree
All candidates support engineering our most dangerous roads to lower speeds. The majority of all traffic fatalities in Nashville occur on just six percent of our roads. Much of this High Injury Network (HIN), however, is on state roads, making the next administration's ability to collaborate with TDOT vitally important in achieving Vision Zero.
All candidates support a configuration of the East Bank Boulevard that includes bike lanes. No candidate listed the original rendering of the East Bank Boulevard, with a BRT lane and two car travel lanes on either side, as their preferred configuration. All candidates strongly or somewhat agree that the new 12 South protected bike lanes should set the standard for bike lane projects in Nashville. Senator Campbell would “like to see the bike lanes elevated for greater safety”.
Where candidates differ
Six out of seven candidates are committed to securing dedicated funding for transit in their first term, but each will take slightly different approaches. Sharon Hurt did not commit directly, stating that she is, “interested in finding an avenue to fully fund our public transportation system but [her] team will have to look at what is politically feasible. We were only able to raise the hotel/motel tax through approval from the state”.
We also asked candidates about modeling a e-bike rebate program after Denver’s, which offers a $300 general rebate and $1,200 income-qualified rebate for e-bikes purchased from local bike shops. Three candidates are very likely to support a rebate program with public dollars: Heidi Campbell, Jim Gingrich, and Freddie O’Connell. Three more are somewhat likely to support e-bike rebates: Sharon Hurt, Vivian Wilhoite, and Jeff Yarbro. Matt Wiltshire says he is very unlikely to support an e-bike rebate program with public dollars.
Some specifics
We've heard a lot about candidates' broad visions, including at our own mayoral forum. We want to highlight some specific ideas related to walking, biking, and livability form each mayoral candidate.
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Heidi Campbell
"Because of the inequity that’s been created by past decisions, we must actively prioritize neighborhoods that are struggling the most. We just passed the largest transportation plan in the history of our state and it includes significant funding for multimodal connectivity. My administration will actively pursue projects in our most underserved neighborhoods."
"My administration will also explore relocating CSX-owned Radnor Yard rail facility (currently near 100 Oaks) to open up the city’s existing rail lines for commuter and multimodal use, and I support light rail connection from downtown to the airport."
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Jim Gingrich
"My administration will be nimble enough to respond quickly to emerging problems among the ongoing maintenance and construction across the city. One way we do that is to reallocate money from expensive consultants, and rely on in-house sidewalk designs, using the savings to increase the number of sidewalks and our maintenance plan. A court ruling restricting requiring sidewalks on new developments weakens our ability to respond and is detrimental to everyone living here - something I would fight should those court rulings work against Nashville."
"For far too long political insiders, the wealthy, and white neighborhoods have been prioritized and every other community has been shut out of decision making. Nashville's government works best when decisions are made by ALL people who live in our diverse city. My administration will have a Head of Community and Stakeholder Engagement whose sole purpose will be to join me in engaging with organizations, individuals, advocates and neighborhoods to build plans together..."
"We have had multiple transit studies. Yet, today our congestion is worse than ever, because those studies have gathered dust rather than created action.
I will focus on three things: First, last year, we had 49 pedestrian deaths. That is unacceptable. We must fix dangerous intersections, accelerate traffic calming, and invest in sidewalks. Second, let's get the basics right. Keep our roads in good repair, get our traffic lights synced, increase the frequency of buses and invest in rapid bus service on high volume routes. Third, let's recognize that 90% of our population growth as a region in the past five years has been in the surrounding counties. We need a regional solution, an effort I will lead."
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Sharon Hurt
"Let's start out by stating a fact: people are dying on our streets. The first step to this problem is allocating enough money in our budget for sidewalks. And the second step after that is prioritizing building sidewalks in areas with the most pedestrian traffic – this means roads near public transit stops, and on busy, fast highways. This means low-income neighborhoods where kids have no choice but to walk on a road with no speed bumps to get to school and adults have to cross a four-lane highway to get to a bus stop. I am open to creative ideas, including quick build materials like flex posts and cheap curbs to quickly and affordably build until we get around to more robust infrastructure. We can also decrease costs by leveraging sidewalks into other infrastructure projects. For example, we can find where Metro Water has to replace a sewer line, and then when they rebuild that line, make sure sidewalks are included in the renovation. We can make sure sidewalks don’t get sidelined by keeping their construction affordable."
"I have ambitious plans for expanding commuter rail, light rail and bus-rapid transit."
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Freddie O'Connell
"I plan to prepare my administration to revisit a community-based dedicated [transit] funding plan eyeing a November 2024 [referendum]."
"First and foremost, I would ensure that Metro Legal takes steps to challenge any ruling that says Nashville doesn’t have authority over our own infrastructure requirements... But we know what the box is, and we should think inside it. If we drive down the cost of sidewalk delivery, we deliver more miles of sidewalk. While the long legal process is still going on, I would absolutely take every opportunity to ensure safer pedestrian routes are built in our city. WalknBike is still our strategic plan for sidewalks and bikeways, and it includes anticipated costs, and we should move swiftly to deliver on our priority sidewalk network and improve our dangerous intersections, which we’ve know about for years... We should be shovel ready for as much of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act federal money as possible to deliver safety. It turns out we often can’t make our rail crossings safer for pedestrians or cyclists because of a lack of investment at grade. We should fix as many of our at-grade rail crossings as possible to the benefit of pedestrians, cyclists, transit users, and motorists using one-time infrastructure dollars."
"I have a bill on the table right now that would reconstitute the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee established by Mayor Dean. This important multi-departmental body brought together Metro staff with community leaders to ensure that designs and priorities were aligned."
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Vivian Wilhoite
"To increase the number of safe walking paths we must take an assessment of where the unsafe walking paths exist and the locations of where we want to influence walkability and also assessment areas where sidewalks exist but are not connected. This means that we must prioritize sidewalk implementation and establish a long range Sidewalk Implementation Plan. With the recent court ruling where we have the authority to require sidewalks on new development, we may need to take a look at property owners shared responsibility coupled with government support."
"I want NDOT and TDOT to work together on the maintenance, technology implementation for traffic lights and signage, implementation to install sidewalks on these state routes of high speed corridors to make it safer for pedestrians and doing what is necessary to reduce the occurrence of traffic fatalities."
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Matt Wiltshire
"Nashville needs to work quickly and smartly to build complete streets and greenways to improve our multimodal transit system which protects our pedestrians and increasing number of bike commuters. Nashville has healthy plans in place to build out our greenway system with Plan to Play, a ten-year plan put forth by Metro Parks, and also has plans in place with Walk Bike and NDOT to build complete streets. I would pull plans from the departments and encourage collaboration to grow in this critical area."
"In order to increase public trust in communication we will publicize the ranking system of proposed side-walks. This will give citizens insight into where their priorities sit on the list of future construction."
"Metro also needs to be more engaged in the Metropolitan Planning Organization to make sure that Nashville’s needs are reflected in the MPO’s priorities. Further, I will leverage my relationship with the current TDOT commissioner to benefit Nashville."
"First, in my first month in office we will start the process of building a dedicated lane BRT between the airport and downtown. I believe this will help us develop a culture of mass transit in Nashville. Further, there are a number of operational improvements we can make, such as extending hours and frequency on our highest ridership bus routes."
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Jeff Yarbro
"We should approach the task of building sidewalks more strategically. Rather than thinking about sidewalk construction one piece at a time, we should have broader procurement efforts to achieve greater efficiency, a lower price per foot, and fewer unconnected sidewalks."
"We need developers undertaking construction to be part of the solution. That means revisiting our land use and zoning ordinances to address the complications created
by the recent litigation. It also means Metro should work creatively and collaboratively with developers on the mechanism, but with an insistence upon sidewalks and pedestrian mobility being incorporated into new development projects."
"Dedicated funding for transportation infrastructure should not necessarily be limited to transit infrastructure, but should also extend to the pedestrian infrastructure that ultimately supports transit across the city."
"We cannot make safe walkways entirely dependent on the progress of doing the stormwater and grading work necessary for sidewalks. There are alternatives that can and should be explored – from the construction of separated pedestrian lanes to weekend closures of selected neighborhood streets to create car-free zones for adults to walk and kids to play."
"Greenways are an essential part of the pedestrian infrastructure of the city and should be treated as such. That means a greater focus on connecting greenways to one another and ensuring safer neighborhood access to greenways."
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How multimodal are the mayoral candidates?
We asked the candidates how often they walk, bike, ride transit, drive, use scooter/bike share, and use rideshare companies to get around town. Here’s what they tell us.
Candidates that walk daily:
Heidi Campbell, Jim Gingrich, Freddie O’Connell, and Jeff Yarbro
Candidates that bike often:
Heidi Campbell, Jim Gingrich, Matt Wiltshire, and Jeff Yarbro
Candidates that sometimes take transit:
Heidi Campbell, Freddie O’Connell, and Jeff Yarbro
Candidates that drive often (all other candidates drive daily):
Jim Gingrich and Freddie O’Connell
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