Modern Transportation Options

I spent many years as a Bicycling and Pedestrian advocate, serving as founding president of Bike Walk Tennessee, serving on the board of Walk/Bike Nashville. 

A Walkable and Bikeable community is a livable community. A place that's safe outside your car is a place where people can live a quality life.

Commuters!

I have been driving to Nashville to work every day since 2016. At first it was an hour to and from work back in 2016. It's now three hours round trip on most days. It takes time away from families and kids. It takes away from time from personal growth. 

We should continue to work towards regional transit. Every county commissioner should be working on this.

I believe that Rutherford County doesn't need another interstate lane as they'll just fill with more people. We don't need a priority pay lane that excludes financially struggling people. We need equitable transit. It's challenging but we should never stop working to find a solution.

When communities are well planned, walking and biking is feasible. The more communities sprawl, the more impractical it becomes. Walking and biking is inherently healthy. Can you take a long walk in your neighborhood? Can you walk to shop or dine? We used to call it "Healthy Communities by Design".

Kids should be able to walk safely to school

As a livable communities advocate, we worked towards Safe Routes to Schools. We should choose to build schools and grant construction permits and zoning variances for projects that include connectivity between neighborhoods and to schools. 

My district has a dense neighborhood behind an elementary school. The neighborhood has sidewalks, short distances to the elementary school, but they come to an abrupt end at the edge of the property before it reached school property! Every morning and afternoon there's a line of cars dropping off or picking up kids. It makes no sense.

Our neighborhood designs are breaking up communities

Culdesacs, dead ends, lack of interconnectivity between neighborhoods limits our sense of community. The house at the end of a culdesac could be a connection to the neighborhood or school next door. We should be working with developers and planners to work community connectivity into designs.

Learn more about walkable communities