While most of the country was transfixed by the presidential vote earlier in November, voters in Nashville quietly supported a major transit plan by a 2-to-1 margin after roundly rejecting a similar one in 2018 by the same margin. It was part of a wave of mass transit-oriented measures that passed this election season, even as Republicans — who tend to oppose mass transit — won many up-ballot races.
Of the 26 transit initiatives, 19 passed for communities including Columbus, Ohio; Maricopa County, Arizona; and metro Denver, Colorado. All told, the initiatives along with other wins earlier in 2024 will raise roughly $25 billion, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
The widespread support reflects the broader reality that “people want to have good transit, they want alternatives, they want their workers to be able to get to their jobs reliably,” said Beth Osborne, vice president for transportation and thriving communities at Smart Growth America. Many communities are choking under growing traffic, and finding building more roads is actually making gridlock worse, but Nashville is a particularly stark case. Its residents have the worst commute in the country due in part to a lack of transit options, according to a 2023 Forbes Home analysis.
The city’s ballot initiative — which adds half a cent to the local sales tax — will raise $2.2 billion. “Nashville is really interesting,” said Yonah Freemark, a principal research associate at the Urban Institute, a social and economic policy research organization. “It’s in the South. It’s a large and growing city. It’s also a place that has historically not invested in transit.”
Ballot initiatives failed in seven locales, including in Georgia’s Gwinnett and Cobb counties, which are part of the metro Atlanta area. But overall, “transit ballot measures have done well at the polls,” said Osborne. “About 70% of them pass in any one year. However, it does take a couple of times at the ballot before they pass, and Nashville is definitely an example of that.”
That so many passed this year is notable given the national mood. Trump and House Republicans “have suggested that they want to cut or eliminate federal spending on transit,” says Freemark.
But transit ballot initiatives often succeed, because contrary to the stereotype of Americans obsessed with car-oriented transit, people like having other public options. “People tend to want to use things that are reliable and high quality,” said Osborne. “We give them unreliable, low-quality transit and then say, ‘eh, it’s a cultural thing — people don’t like using transit.’ But when they get the opportunity for better transit, they consistently say they want to pay for that.”
Mass transit is also critical to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and meeting U.S. climate goals. Nationwide, transportation accounts for 28% of greenhouse gas emissions, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Of that, nearly 60% comes from cars, SUVs and pickup trucks. Though electric vehicles can cut emissions, research by the California Air Resources Board and others has shown that electrification alone isn’t enough.
The success of these initiatives beyond the ballot, however, depends on federal dollars. Municipalities typically use a mix of local and federal funding. The Nashville ballot initiative, for example, only raises 46% of the plan’s budget. The rest is supposed to be matched with federal support, including through grants in the Rebuilding American Infrastructure with Sustainability and Equity (RAISE) program.
Despite Republican hostility, and even with control of both chambers of Congress and the White House, cutting federal transit funding may prove difficult. Osborne noted that when George W. Bush became president, he too wanted to cut transit. “Then they noticed that there was a ton of rural transit,” said Osborne. “They thought they were just cutting transit to folks in New York.”
In 2011, House Republicans also tried to cut transit funding by kicking it out of the Federal Trust Fund, an accounting method the government uses to track earmarked spending. Trusts guarantee funding for several years rather than requiring new approval each year. Republicans backed down after constituent outrage.
But there are other ways the incoming Trump administration can reduce transit financing. When Freemark’s team compared transportation spending between the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations within the major discretionary federal transportation program, “we found that the Trump administration spent almost half of the money in the RAISE program on expanding roadways as their priority,” said Freemark. “Whereas the Biden and Obama administration spent much, much less on that.”
