Transportation and Land Use Reform in Tennessee
For years, the Tennessee Department of Transportation's aggressive highway building damage the environment, public health and many communities. The agency at times evaded federal and state laws, limited public participation and did little to reduce impacts from its projects. On one project outside Nashville, TDOT and its contractors buried streams and springs in mud, temporarily shut down a public water supply, and were fined millions of dollars.
SELC has become a major player in bettering the way Tennessee plans and builds highways, and redirecting the state toward more sustainable transportation. Our legal work with local and state groups to defeat the proposed 185-mile outer beltway around Nashville helped highlight the profound problems with how the Tennessee Department of Transportation (TDOT) operates. As a result, efforts to reform the agency have moved to the top of the agenda at the highest levels in state government. The current governor, Phil Bredesen, was elected in part on his pledge to fix TDOT, and one of the first changes under his administration was the appointment of the agency's first Chief of Environment and Planning.
Trip Pollard, director of SELC's Land and Community project, is in frequent dialogue with officials in TDOT. He was appointed to TDOT's first Environmental Advisory Commission, and also to the steering committee that is overseeing development of Tennessee's first long-range multi-modal transportation plan.
SELC continues to work in close partnership with citizen groups to keep momentum going for this extraordinary effort, including serving on the executive committee of Citizens for TDOT Reform and on the board of the Tennessee Environmental Council. In addition to ensuring that TDOT adhere to the state's new guidelines to reduce water pollution from future highway construction (which resulted from the Nashville 840 work), we are advocating that TDOT:
- increase funding of transportation alternatives, particularly transit and freight rail,
- design and build future highways in a manner that sensitive to the environment and cultural resources, and
- broaden public participation in transportation planning.
