NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) — This time last year, Freddie O'Connell was one of several faces campaigning to become Mayor. Now, he is Mayor... and campaigning once again.
"We'd like to move faster. All over the city,” Mayor O’Connell proclaimed duringhis first State of Metro speech Tuesday. “We're going to need your help.”
Help... with a plan to tackle transit is an issue that's grown more important for Nashvillians — almost as fast as traffic jams form on roadways across town.
To learn more about the“Choose How You Move” plan, I met with Mayor O'Connell shortly after that speech just outside the Fairgrounds, where Walsh Road meets Craighead. The Mayor and his team picked this spot — a newly widened roadway, new bridge and new sidewalks -- for a reason.
"We're standing at a place with new infrastructure,” O’Connell told me. "One of my favorite things right now is when our Nashville Department of Transportation finishes something like this in a neighborhood where you get a new crosswalk, or you get a sidewalk that didn't exist, there is a sort of community joy that comes up out of that, where people can now walk safely without being in a literal ditch or on a shoulder."
That very real, relatable image is how, it seems, Mayor O'Connell plans to frame his message to voters. When I asked him for details, he was more than ready — eagerly offering facts and figures.
"We will finally be moving to have 24-seven, 365 transit service… We are gonna have corridors that right now are some of the most dangerous in the city... These corridors are going to be not only incredibly safe for motorists but for pedestrians where there are tough crossings right now, and they'll get transit upgrades,” he said. "If you want to go from Antioch to Green Hills, if you want to go from North Nashville to East Nashville, we want you to be able to do that in a way that's much easier.”
His plan includes 86 miles of sidewalk improvements, 54 miles of upgraded transit corridors, 12 connecting community transit centers, and new technology for almost 600 traffic signals across town. And that’s not the full list.
The full, estimated price tag? $3.1 billion dollars, with another $111 million in recurring, annual costs. Almost half of that would be paid for with a half-cent increase of the local sales tax. Mayor O'Connell's job now is to convince taxpayers it's a worthwhile investment.
"If you look today already, if you're within a quarter mile of a major transportation corridor in the city, your household cost of transportation is $200 dollars lower on average,” he said. "This is fundamentals. It's honestly not even a particularly expensive proposal over the long run."
He has a point. While this price tag is large, it's lower than the last transit plan pitched to voters, in 2018 — the "Let's Move" proposal was to cost almost $6 billion dollars. Voters overwhelmingly rejected it.Mayor O'Connell says Nashville has changed a lot in six years... and he thinks his scaled down proposal, focused on the basics — those very real, relatable images — will make for an easier sell.
"You look around at other cities and a lot of Nashvillians have been somewhere else that... So many people know that this is not an unusual thing for cities to do," he said.
What is unusual — to some, at least — is a person who's led a city for just half a year, already back on the campaign trail.
"This is a comprehensive transportation program. It's not just a bus program. It's not just sidewalks. This is, there's something in it for everybody,” he continued.
He’s selling the scenario of a city moving forward — and not one of cars, packing roads, just inching forward...
"Keep traffic moving, you're not stuck at red lights when nobody's coming the other way. Rush hour doesn't feel quite like rush hour. We're gonna try to give anyone in the city, time back,” he said.
Mayor O'Connell told me the state-required audit of the "Choose How You Move" plan was completed Tuesday morning. The Mayor's Office has until June 7th to present the plan to Metro Council members, with first reading expected not long after. Of course, we'll keep you updated.
What's something you want to know about the "Choose How You Move" plan? Email me at rhori.johnston@newschannel5.com .
There are still so many families in East Tennessee hurting following the floods from Hurricane Helene in September. That made this year's running of the Santa Train extra special for many families in the northeast part of the state. This special Santa Express has been making an annual run in part of Appalachia for over 80 years.
-Lelan Statom
