A new “spotlight” report by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (and which accompanies another report focused on measuring sustainable mobility) has some recommendations for Nashville. Their ‘long-term’ recommendations include:
- Expanded pedestrian network (which will happen, with still-newish Sidewalk law, thanks to the efforts of Walk Bike Nashville and others — so it’s more a question of how fast)
- Frequent bus network redesign (~in the planning process), and
- Curbside management policy to prioritize [more sustainable, space-efficient modes than single-occupancy cars].
I laid these thoughts out on Twitter first — here’s the original thread
On this last one Nashville may be setting itself up to fail. Metro is reviewing proposals to “modernize” street parking (they were due in September). “Modernize” appears [not wholly, but largely] to be a euphemism for “monetize” in this case — the revenue from this plan is, damningly, already included in Metro’s budget for 2019.
A similar program in Chicago is a well-documented disaster, which makes a giant swath of the city’s sustainable transportation goals harder to achieve, because as a result Chicago’s control over its own curbspace is heavily constrained.
As I helped document (in a different context) with TransitCenter, this kind of program isn’t “privatization” per se, and it can be weilded for good — but you have to be careful about how you go about it.
An effective RFP would:
- Clearly establish the program goals and associated metrics by which the contractor will be evaluated, and
- Mention any hard constraints in program design, in order to
- Encourage bidders to give you the best deal under those circumstances
I haven’t seen the RFP itself, but Metro Nashville’s own FAQ for the project doesn’t inspire confidence. There are a handful of goals in clear tension with each other, for example keeping it easy and affordable to park while also pursuing sustainability and “TDM” goals. This won’t pencil out in the long-term.
It’s also utterly baffling that Metro stated its request for payments — $15M in first and second years — up front. Why on earth would you do that?? If the bidders judge the financial opportunity to be bigger than Metro estimates, this up-front request makes it dumb for companies to offer more. If they judge the financial opportunity smaller, it forces bidders to nonetheless craft a plan around those payments, which will be less favorable to Metro in the long-run.
Most importantly: by including the revenues in this year’s budget, Metro has effectively removed all incentives for bidders to seriously compete on price and revenue sharing. The winning bidder will have Metro at its mercy, because they’ll know Metro can’t live without the money.
So again, I haven’t seen the RFP and don’t have insight into the ongoing review process — but the care necessary to make this parking program work well for Nashvillians isn’t apparent. Want a new bike or bus lane? An on-street ‘mobility hub’? Talk to the company whose goal is money, not improving transportation options in Nashville. Something tells me they won’t be very sympathetic.
Ultimately if Metro mishandles this RFP and the ensuing contractual negotiations, the RFP’s stated sustainability, transportation, and even “modernization” goals risk being replaced entirely by the goal of filling a short-term revenue gap — which could also come at the expense of long-term revenues if Metro isn’t careful — with at least a decade of implications for local transportation planning and policy, namely in terms of Metro’s ability to reimaginei and redesign Nashville’s streets.
Hopefully these concerns are ill-founded, and the folks running this process at Metro already know what they’re doing. But perhaps I can be forgiven for worrying that short-term budget incentives might be putting long-term transportation goals at risk once again.
Zak Accuardi 