This week, for the first time since the Music City Loop airport-to-downtown tunnel was announced in July, officials with The Boring Company met publicly with Metro councilmembers — and the tension between the two bodies at Thursday's meeting was evident.
At a special-called meeting of the the council’s Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, councilmembers drilled Boring officials with questions and concerns surrounding the tunnel’s impact on the environment, traffic, roads, water quality, accessibility and safety. An announcement at the meeting’s start noted that The Boring Company was available for only 90 minutes.
Throughout the meeting, many councilmembers expressed frustration with what they feel is The Boring Company’s lack of communication and transparency since the project's announcement.
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“You say that you want to build trust and be transparent,” said Councilmember Clay Capp. “It’s not productive of trust or transparency to limit the timing of questions in the way that you have. It’s not productive of trust or transparency to try to file our questions off into emails that the public will not see. It’s not productive of trust or transparency for so many of my colleagues who have asked you direct questions you’ve given indirect answers to."
Boring Company Vice President Davis Buss said the company prefers using blog posts and “personal and small group meetings” as methods of communications instead of interviews with media or making formal appearances.
At-Large Councilmember Zulfat Suara asked if the company could give a list of communities and organizations that they have spoken to and engaged with regarding the Music City Loop. She specifically asked about immigrant communities and residents who live along Murfreesboro Pike, the road under which much of the tunnel will run.
Buss described their community outreach as “broad based” and said there have been “hundreds of conversations” with businesses, individual residents, charities and church organizations.
The company continued to give what council representatives felt were vague and noncommittal answers to questions surrounding revenue sharing, potential negative impact on community safety, impacts on groundwater and legal inquiries.
Thursday’s meeting came after a $34 million agreement featuring a 50-year contract was reached between The Boring Company and the Metro Nashville Airport Authority the previous day. The company has said it needs about 45 permits and approvals to construct the roughly 19 miles of tunnels, not including OKs needed for the 20-plus stations to be situated along the route.
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Negative feedback from the councilmembers Thursday came as At-Large Councilmember Delishia Porterfield is sponsoring a resolution opposing the tunnel project, which will be considered at the council’s March 3 meeting. And while a majority of councilmembers expressed opposition and disdain for the project, a select few made their support known — including Jeff Eslick, Bob Nash and John Rutherford.
During a limited public comment period, several Nashvillians spoke out against the Music City Loop, many of them advocating for alternative transit solutions.
Charles Robert Bone, managing director of real estate investment at Southwest Value Partners, approached the podium to back the tunnel project. Bone maintained that the development could be an exciting opportunity for the business community and hospitality industry and that the council should put politics aside when discussing the project.
“Throughout Nashville’s history, we have succeeded when we remained open to innovation,” said Bone, who also participated in an online town hall event with The Boring Company in November.
After Boring officials left the meeting, many members of the public and councilmembers continued to make their stance against the project heard before adjourning.
At-Large Councilmember Quin Evans Segall, who chairs the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said she thinks that fulfilling promises made in Mayor Freddie O'Connell's Choose How You Move initiative should remain at the forefront of the council’s mind when making transit decisions.
“We, I believe, have a duty, an obligation in this body to see through the Choose How You Move initiative to the extent that the voters approved it overwhelmingly,” said Evans Segall.
“Many of them did so on the premise that we would have better transit on Murfreesboro Pike. And that was the vision that we sold to this county and that we sold to the people who agreed to spend their own hard-earned dollars in order to do that.”
This article was first published by our sister publication, the Nashville Post.
