Nashville Learns from... the Most Ridiculed Plan in Cleveland?
Last week, city officials from Nashville traveled to the shores of Lake Erie to study the most incompetently run town in America. That would be Cleveland, Ohio.
They arrived to examine the city's new rapid bus line, which consists of little more than a rebuilt street with dedicated bus lanes, a lot of expensive cement, and some newly planted trees. Total cost: $200 million.
Among Cleveland residents, it's the most ridiculed project in town -- and this is a city with a lot to ridicule. It's literally just a slightly faster bus line, running 100 blocks or so from downtown to the city's east side. And at a pricetag of $200 mil -- which mostly came from the feds -- it's largely viewed as the latest, greatest monument to government waste.
Nashvillians were likely drawn by Cleveland's claims of instant prosperity. The Cleveland Plain Dealer is estimating the project will generate $4 billion in economic activity, according to this report by Nate Rau in The City Paper. Others have claimed it will create 7,000 new jobs. How a simple bus line will do all this has yet to be explained.
Worse, it probably wouldn't work in Nashville. A line from downtown to the West End might be the most plausible option. But the Cleveland project runs through roughly 50 blocks of abandoned ghetto, making construction easier and less disruptive. And it still managed to kill many a business. In the prosperous West End, elongated construction would be a death sentence to businesses and make traffic a nightmare for years to come. And at the end of the day, all we'd have for our troubles and our $200 million is a slightly faster bus line.
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