Priorities
A reader of Shade Parade wrote yesterday to say 'Metro spent $75 million on the new Sounds Stadium & is offering Bridgestone $56 million in tax abatements to build an office building' (links below). Accounting for the money a city spends does show where our civic priorities lie but my hope is that this will not be for much longer. With strong leadership (i.e.) a mayor who will fund the sidewalk plan - there could be a significant change and quickly.
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A major goal of this blog is to raise awareness of how Nashville compares to similar cities in regards to walkability. It is important to understand that Nashville, compared to other cities, has a true deficit in sidewalks.
A major goal of this blog is to raise awareness of how Nashville compares to similar cities in regards to walkability. It is important to understand that Nashville, compared to other cities, has a true deficit in sidewalks.
The city of Nashville has just under 1/2 mile of sidewalks on one side of the street for every mile of roadway for a population of >600K. This statistic is ONLY for the Urban Service District and does not apply beyond where the statistic takes a rapid nose dive going from bad to worse.
By comparison, Minneapolis has almost 2 miles of sidewalks to 1 mile of roadways for a population of 400k. To better understand what this means is to know they essentially have sidewalks on both sides of the street on every road in the city.
A visual of this would be:
http://shadeparadenashville.blogspot.com/2014/09/a-comparison-of-nashvilles-sidewalk.html
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Linking back to city spending, the budget for sidewalks this year was increased from 18M to 25M. Half has to cover existing sidewalks and repairs. The other half goes to new sidewalks. Sidewalks average $350 per linear foot making the 12.5M for new sidewalks create exactly 6.75 miles of new sidewalks. I am thankful for the increase but I cannot accept that this is true funding for sidewalks. 6.75 miles in a city of 600,000K with the second largest land mass in the nation, totaling 533 square miles? I think we need a leader with a REAL PLAN.
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