Quote:
Originally Posted by arkitekte
Preach.
I'm not the biggest fan of BRT, at least as a primary form of rapid transit (I think that in Nashville's case it would be much more efficient in the long run to introduce street cars or light rail now rather than later), however AMP would have implemented the idea of rapid transit along West End which is what will be needed eventually.
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I always thought the best part about AMP was the fact that it wasn't a regional system. It wasn't designed to get people in Madison or Bellevue or Antioch out of their cars, which is kind of a futile attempt at making suburbanites want to use public transport. Its elegance was that it focused on the city and only the city. We can all debate whether it should have been rubber or steel wheels (fair enough), but I think its route was fairly good. It didn't end in Belle Meade, it ended at White Bridge Road, which is a collection of midrise hospital and residential facilities. It was the viable end point, as would have been Green Hills if it chose that route.
The problem going forward is how to deal with the extremism coming out of the state government. They did pass a law (which I think if challenged in court could be thrown out, btw) that made it literally illegal to build public transport in the middle of a street. This is an entirely different layer of roadblocks to transit that had nothing to do with local, municipal opposition from the country club types on West End Ave who didn't want a bus getting rid of their turning lane (which many of those were probably Democrat for all I know, I doubt many of them care about the politics of transit per se, they just wanted their extra turn lane come hell or high water).
The biggest problem with the AMP failure - because of the state gov't's extreme action - is I worry how it affects other cities in Tennessee. Memphis already has a central rail circulator that is in process of renovation, it needs funding YESTERDAY since the trolley renovations aren't yet complete. LOL At least they can't retroactively create a law that makes a form of transit that already exists to be illegal... Since the state government has become a corrupt house of anti-government radicals, you can bet that any future transit project in Nashville, Memphis, Chattanooga will not follow traditional development models. It used to be 25/25/50 for a long time between local/state/federal spending. Transit projects in Tennessee will likely follow a 50/50 model: 50% local/municipal-county spending, 50% federal. That means higher property taxes are coming to Tennesseans across the board just on this issue alone, not even thinking of other issues.
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