Nashville is ready to build back its roads and infrastructure stronger | Opinion

• State Rep. Harold Moses Love, Jr., P.h.D., is the pastor of Lee Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church.
• Faye DiMassimo is the senior advisor for transportation and infrastructure to Nashville Mayor John Cooper.

America is talking a lot about how to come back, stronger than before.

After a grueling year, we’re asking ourselves: how do we create communities that are more resilient and work for everyone?

A major part of that answer is found in our transportation strategy.

Transportation is a powerful influencer in peoples’ lives.

Our roads and bridges take us to work and family.

Bike lanes and buses prevent further pollution of our communities and offer more options to connect to the places we want and need to go.

And construction projects put our contractors and tradesfolk to work.

In other words, what we build, where we build, and how intentional we are about building it can lift communities up — or let them down.

Federal transportation matching money should benefit North Nashville

With the INVEST in America Act as a core piece of President Biden’s American Jobs Plan, the House has called for a $547 billion investment in our nation’s infrastructure. The INVEST Act pours resources into the nation’s surface transportation assets to also create jobs and tackle the climate crisis.

Earlier this month, we traveled with Mayor John Cooper to Washington to advocate for bringing those federal dollars home.

Nashville has a plan to build more resilient, better connected infrastructure.

And we would begin in North Nashville.

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In 1967, the U.S. Department of Transportation built the I-40 Freeway through this area. This concrete python created a “heat island” in a beautiful community, suffocated a thriving business and music district, and forced nearly 1,400 people out of their homes.

Using INVEST dollars, we would reconnect the community by expanding Dr. D.B. Todd, Jr., Boulevard over I-40 into a 3.4-acre, publicly owned “cap and connector.”

Just fewer than 2,300 residents would be within a ten-minute walk of this pedestrian platform, which would feed into Nashville’s greenway system and connect to the incredible Historic Black Colleges and Universities in the area.

Residents and business owners of North Nashville would design what the top of the connector looks like. It could house public amenities, such as a park or community center, pedestrian connections, and celebrations of the area’s history.

This project would help reduce air and noise pollution in the area.  It would also bring additional safety improvements to a nearby interchange known as “Trucker’s Curve,” where 24 truck-related crashes occurred in 2019.

This funding will complement Metro's Transportation Plan

We have a powerful, overdue opportunity on I-40.

We also have a Metro Transportation Plan to make 1,961 other traffic and multimodal improvements in 300 neighborhoods across Davidson County.

That plan includes a traffic management center, where we’ll use smart-city technology to better sync traffic signals and address congestion on our busiest corridors.

It calls for a local department of transportation, to consolidate everything Nashville does in transportation for quicker, accountable, more cost-effective delivery – including more sidewalks.

We have a plan to come back stronger, right here in Nashville. Let’s use the transportation dollars President Biden is putting on the table to pay for it.

State Rep. Harold Moses Love, Jr., P.h.D., is the pastor of Lee Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, State Representative for the TN House District 58 and vice president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators.

Faye DiMassimo is the senior advisor for transportation and infrastructure to Nashville Mayor John Cooper. She has 40 years of multimodal planning, development, and delivery experience in the public and private sectors.