Mayor John Cooper and 20 Council Members endorsed the Nashville Community Transportation Platform during the campaign season. 

Ten months ago, Walk Bike Nashville joined a group of committed advocates to articulate a shared vision for Nashville’s transportation future.  Together, we wrote the Nashville Community Transportation Platform, a collaborative, consensus-based effort. The organizations involved in the Platform believe that voices from low-income communities and communities of color facing the greatest transportation challenges should be at the center of Nashville’s transportation planning and policy-making process. The hope was the Platform would provide a starting place for a more inclusive public dialogue about Nashville’s transportation needs and near-term priorities. 

“We suspected there would be some interest given the increasing consensus about the inadequacy of Nashville's transportation system to meet the needs of a growing region and were thrilled with how candidates responded to the Platform,” said Eric Hoke of the Nashville Civic Design Center. “We are now calling on this new crop of elected leaders to move ahead with the principles, priorities, and actions outlined in the Platform, many of which are rooted in existing Metro Nashville plans. There is clearly more alignment than anyone had realized on what needs to be done to improve Nashville’s transportation options.”

In every race in which at least one candidate endorsed the platform, the winning candidate endorsed the Platform. In other words, the new mayor, 18 districts’ Council Members and two at-large Council Members endorsed the Platform. 

“Fully half of the incoming Metro Council and Mayor-Elect Cooper endorsed the Nashville Community Transportation Platform and its principles of safety, equity, resiliency, and quality,” said Angelique Johnson of Music City Riders United (MCRU). “With such broad agreement on these principles and our six priorities, Nashville’s elected leaders have a mandate to make this coming term the most productive yet in making Davidson County’s streets safer and more inclusive spaces for all.”

We hopeful about the change this next political season will bring.  

More about the Nashville Community Transportation Platform:

The Nashville Community Transportation Platform was developed through a round of meetings open to all of Middle Tennessee’s nonprofit community. The Platform proposes four guiding principles as the foundation for Metro Nashville’s transportation policy, and six Metro-wide priorities broken down into ambitious, specific, and achievable actions. We believe that a Metro government that pursues these actions will deliver the equitable, safe, resilient, and high-quality transportation system that all Nashvillians deserve. Read the full Platform: https://www.nashvilletransportation.org/

The Platform creators include: 

  • AARP TN
  • Conexion Americas
  • Conscious Conversation
  • Democracy Nashville
  • Music City Riders United
  • Nashville Civic Design Center
  • New Earth Matters
  • Tenant Power/Poder Inquilinxs
  • Transit Now Nashville
  • Urban League of Middle Tennessee
  • Urban League Young Professionals of Middle Tennessee
  • Walk Bike Nashville
  • Workers’ Dignity