Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell has announced he will move forward with a process to place dedicated funding for transportation and infrastructure projects on the November ballot.

After getting the green light on both legal and financial aspects of the process, the administration is putting a referendum in front of the voters Nov. 5.

“I think most of you know how deeply personal this issue is to me. My start in public service was my appointment to the Nashville MTA board of directors. Access to transit and commuting by bike were the keys to my own pathway to homeownership,” O’Connell said at a Feb. 15 news conference. “More people deserve that opportunity because this isn’t about me. It’s about the people who live here and whether they can afford to stay here. The cost of transportation is nearly equal to the cost of housing in Nashville – and it’s past time we tackle our transportation issues so that Nashville becomes a more livable city. A place you want to stay.”

“Choose How You Move – An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service and Safety” is the collective name of all Metro activities around promoting, passing, and implementing a transportation improvement program. The mayor and his team will engage with the community, Metro Council, and two advisory committees to craft a TIP in the weeks ahead.

Nashville has more than 70 plans and studies informed by more than 65,000 pieces of input from the community developed over the last 10 years. After taking office, Mayor O’Connell commissioned one of his three transition committees to consider How Nashville Moves to quickly bring the best ideas from these plans to life. A recommendation of the committee was for the mayor to pursue dedicated funding for the city’s transportation systems.

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Nashville SC, WeGo expand partnership

Nashville Soccer Club has announced an expansion to its partnership with WeGo Public Transit to improve the ridership experience to and from games. The partnership is part of WeGo’s Community Impact Partnership (CIP) program.

Starting with Sunday’s home opener against New York Red Bulls, on regular season home weekend games passengers can ride for free all day on routes 52 Nolensville Pike and 77 Thompson/Wedgewood.

Additionally, route 84 Murfreesboro will be available from Murfreesboro and Antioch park and rides for $2 each way. Riders must use QuickTicket or exact cash.

NSC is also a WeGo Ride partner, an employer sponsored program which provides employees the option to use public transit as an alternative to driving to work.

“Since opening GEODIS Park, we have partnered with WeGo to provide our internal part-time staff full-year transportation cards for WeGo allowing them the ability to travel to and from the stadium,” says Nashville SC VP of Operations Frank DePizzo. “With this expansion, we’re now inviting everyone to Ride with WeGo, making attending matches easier for our supporters and fans and underscoring our commitment to community engagement and environmental sustainability.”

3 Nashville locations on worst bottleneck list

The American Transportation Research Institute has released its 13th annual list highlighting the most congested bottlenecks for trucks in America, and seven Tennessee locations made the top 100, including one in the top 10.

“Tennesseans depend on trucking to deliver everything from food to fuel to clothing,” says Tennessee Trucking Association President and CEO Donna England. “But when congestion brings those trucks to a standstill, we all pay the price. ATRI’s bottleneck analysis provides a road map for infrastructure investment to address the most critical chokepoints and keep our economy moving forward.”

The 2024 Top Truck Bottleneck List measures the level of truck-involved congestion at 325-plus locations. The analysis, based on an extensive database of freight truck GPS data, uses several customized software applications and analysis methods, along with terabytes of data from trucking operations to produce a congestion impact ranking for each location.

ATRI’s truck GPS data is also used to support numerous federal and state freight mobility initiatives.

The 7 Tennessee bottlenecks are:

• No. 10 Nashville: I-24/I-40 at I-440 (East)

• No. 23 Nashville: I-40 at I-65 (East)

• No. 47 Chattanooga: I-24 at US 27

• No. 61 Chattanooga: I-75 at I-24

• No. 65 Nashville: I-65 at I-24

• No. 69 Knoxville: I-40/I-75 at I-140

• No. 74 Knoxville: I-40 at I-275

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NFL Alumni, American Flag Football partner

In anticipation of its inaugural season launch in April 2024, the American Flag Football League announced a strategic partnership with the NFL Alumni Association, Inc.,

Under the partnership, retired AFFL players will be recognized as Pro Football Legends and will receive benefits that inform, assist, and serve AFFL players in their post flag football careers.

The partnership also includes building out comprehensive community programs around NFLA’s Caring for Kids and Caring for Our Community initiatives and joining the NFLA Enterprise Initiative in each of the AFFL markets (Boston, Dallas, Las Vegas and Nashville).

Additionally, the AFFL will identify developmental opportunities for NFLA members to try out for the 2024 AFFL season as a player and similar opportunities for coaching, executive positions or team ownership.

The Nashville Nighthawks and the three other inaugural AFFL franchises begin play April 27 in Las Vegas. The teams will play twice in Nashville at Vanderbilt’s soccer/lacrosse stadium, May 18 and June 15.

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Redfin: Prices, rates rise, sidelining buyers

The median U.S. home-sale price rose 6.1% year over year during the four weeks ending Feb. 11, the biggest increase since October 2022, according to a new report from Redfin (redfin.com), the technology-powered real estate brokerage.

Mortgage rates are rising, too, exacerbating high prices to drive costs up: Daily average rates are sitting above 7%, up from 6.6% at the beginning of the month.

High costs are one factor keeping would-be homebuyers on the sidelines. Pending home sales are down 7.3% year over year, one of the biggest declines in over four months, and Redfin’s Homebuyer Demand Index – a seasonally adjusted measure of requests for tours and other homebuying services from Redfin agents – is down 18%.

In addition to high housing costs, several seasonal factors kept some house hunters at home this past week: extreme storms in Southern California, the Lunar New Year and the Super Bowl (none of which are accounted for in the demand index’s seasonal adjustment).

Sellers are a bit more active than buyers, with new listings up 8% year over year as some homeowners hope to take advantage of rising prices.

“The Super Bowl is like Groundhog Day for real estate economists; we usually have a read on how the market is shaping up by the beginning of February, and the read this year is that it’s looking sluggish so far, mostly because of stubbornly high mortgage rates,” says Redfin economic research lead Chen Zhao.

“This week’s hotter-than-expected inflation report confirms that the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates next month, which means mortgage rates will stay near 7% for now.”

VUMC part of major step toward precision medicine

An analysis of genomic data from nearly 250,000 participants in the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program has identified more than 275 million previously unreported genetic variations, nearly 4 million of which have potential health consequences.

The data, reported Feb. 19 in the journal Nature, constitutes a research resource that is unprecedented in its scale and diversity, as 77% of the participants historically have been underrepresented in biomedical research and 46% are from underrepresented racial and ethnic minorities.

“Collectively we anticipate that this work will advance the promise of precision medicine for all Americans. It is a significant step to addressing the health of the diverse population of the United States,” said the paper’s corresponding author, Alexander Bick, M.D., Ph.D., of Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

All of Us is a historic effort to gather genomic and health data from 1 million or more people of widely diverse backgrounds. VUMC, which has pioneered studies of genetic contributions to disease and why people vary in response to medications, leads the All of Us Data and Research Center.

Historically biomedical and genomic research has represented people who are primarily of European genetic ancestry. The exclusion of large groups of people from these studies has made it difficult to obtain a comprehensive understanding of human health.

As a result, estimates of the cumulative effect of multiple genetic variants, called polygenic risk scores, may not accurately reflect the true risk for developing certain diseases in underrepresented groups.

Belmont students offer free tax prep services

Students at Belmont University’s Jack C. Massey College of Business are applying their classroom knowledge and helping recipients of Belmont’s Family Wellbeing Program (FWP) receive tax assistance through the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program.

VITA provides free basic tax return preparation to qualified individuals while creating an opportunity for them to understand their taxes, and hopefully get a cash return in the process.

FWP offers a variety of wraparound programs, including being a VITA site for the last three years, to low-income families across the Nashville area in collaboration with The Store.

This tax season, professor Marilyn Young and students are partnering with FWP to provide VITA services.

“[Students] want to use what [they’ve] learned to help solve a problem in the community and serve someone in the community,” Young says. “It is one level of understanding to answer a question on an exam. It is another level of understanding to have to answer a question from a taxpayer that you don’t see coming. It’s uncomfortable at first, but the more you do it, the better you get. When you can explain it, then you’re an expert.”

VITA tax services are available to those who generally make $64,000 or less, have disabilities or are limited English speakers. Located at the Belmont Ministry Center (2005 12th Avenue S), VITA is open Thursdays 11 a.m.-4 p.m. and Fridays 10 a.m.-3 p.m. as well as noon-3 p.m. on the following Saturdays: March 2, March 16, April 6 and April 13.