When Erica Gilmore announced her candidacy for mayor on March 28, she did so as a supporter of the massive transit plan at the center of a public referendum next month. Two weeks later, she's switched sides.
Gilmore, an at-large Metro Council member who sponsored the ordinance scheduling a referendum on financing the massive transit system, announced at a press conference this morning that she "can no longer support this current plan."
She said the reversal is not motivated by campaign strategy, but by conversations with citizens who have brought her "new clarity." Reading a prepared statement, she sought to frame her new position as a natural progression from the concerns she already had about the plan.
"For months now, I have sounded alarms about the current transit proposal and it only having bus services and not light rail in our city's areas of greatest need," she said.
Gilmore also cited a trip to Seattle to learn about implementation of mass transit there as a reason for withdrawing her support for the plan in Nashville.
"[We noticed] those areas that do not have light rail lines but only bus routes, they are underserved, and it does not contribute to development. So areas like Dickerson Road, Clarksville Highway and I-65 and Antioch, which is our fastest growing community, would still be underserved in this current plan."
Asked what she would do instead, Gilmore says she would implement bus rapid transit lines all across the city. She also suggested scaling back the plan to try light rail in one area, like from the airport to downtown.
"Just implementing the whole plan is too expensive to not even scale it down and just see one example of how we could model the program to see if it's successful or not," she said.
Questioned about what prompted the change, Gilmore said, "I think I was definitely trying to make this plan work, but as I talk to more and more citizens — and I have talked to groups of citizens, I've talked to them individually — they are not in favor of this plan."
With the mayoral campaign underway and Mayor David Briley running for office as the new face of the transit plan, Gilmore's newfound position certainly has the look of a strategic move to differentiate herself from Briley and perhaps attract some transit opponents to her side. But she said this theory of the case is false.
"As a candidate for mayor, and I've been going around this city, I've always been a proponent for listening to citizens and listening to input," Gilmore said. "As I shared earlier, I think there is a certain risk when you change, but to me citizens are important in what they have to say. So I would say that is not true. We always want to do what's right by the citizens of Nashville, and I think they are definitely speaking out there, and they're saying that this particular plan, that they are not pleased with."
