Nashville Mulls Funding Ideas for its $6 Billion Regional Transit Plan

Joey Garrison digs into "the most crucial, yet elusive, question that could determine whether Middle Tennessee will build a new regional transit system any time soon."

The Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority and the Regional Transportation Authority of Middle Tennessee announced the 25-year nMotion regional transit plan in August, and now the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce is leading the effort to figure out how to pay for the $5.97 billion price tag to build out the plan's ambitions.

So far, the chamber's Moving Forward initiative as identified seven funding possibilities, and called for further study of each of them. "Ideas for transit funding are from sales taxes, property taxes, wheel taxes, tourist services taxes, parking taxes, local gasoline taxes and land value capture taxes," according to Garrison.

The chamber is aware, however, that many of those ideas would face stiff political resistance. "In fact, five of the seven ideas — including a local sales tax dedicated solely for transit, a local gas tax and a land value capture tax — would hinge on enabling legislation from the Republican-controlled Tennessee General Assembly, which has shown strong resistance to tax increases of any kind in recent years."

The article, however, begins the work of examining each of the proposed ideas, which are all very speculative at this point, but at least they are already available for the public to consider.