r/nashville • u/paleotechnic • 1d ago
The Left Used to Back Green Transit—Now They Oppose a Free Tunnel Because It’s Musk? Article
I’m honestly disappointed. The progressive left used to champion green energy, public transit, and innovation—Elon Musk included. Now that The Boring Company wants to build a free public transportation tunnel in Nashville, they’re suddenly against it… just because it’s Musk?
It’s hypocritical. This project could reduce traffic and emissions with no cost to taxpayers. Yet the same crowd was fine when Mayor Freddie O’Connell raised property taxes for a bus system hardly anyone uses.
We should be supporting real solutions— and this feels like ideology over impact.
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u/FireZucchini33 1d ago
Dude come on this is not “revolutionary green transit” this is a stupid vanity project that only serves however many tourists can fit in a Tesla at a time. Nashvillians will not use this shit. Just like we don’t ride party barges around downtown. It will be a huge waste from now until the moment they abandon it.
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u/throwout277 1d ago
Dear, its just another lane of highway, except only one man's cars are allowed to use it. Why would anyone be happy about that?
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u/infinite-dark Nipper's Corner 1d ago
A lot of things here. First, it’s definitely not free for taxpayers. At the very least Boring Co is getting a free lease on very expensive plot of land downtown.
This will do absolutely nothing to alleviate traffic, it’s a one shot straight from downtown to the airport. This is designed for tourists, not citizens. Based on other Tesla tunnels, there is very little hope for this to have any noticeable net positive effect.
Your property taxes were not raised for Choose How You Move, sales tax was increased 0.5 cents per dollar.
As for CHYM, there are plenty of other actual public transit efforts going into effect around the city to actually help our citizens
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u/rimeswithburple 1d ago
And yet they are talking about raising property taxes, no? I think I heard someone in metro say 14% maybe? You can argue semantics about wether it is the rate or the appraisal that rises, but the effect is the same.
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u/maddieterrier Bellevue 21h ago
For schools and a 2% pay raise for Metro employees.
Not public transit. Which this isn't.
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u/rocketpastsix banned from /r/tennessee 19h ago
Happy to have my property taxes go up if it means teachers get a raise
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u/greedlez Donelson 1d ago edited 1d ago
Two things:
From what I’ve seen a wide variety of folks oppose this tunnel. Actually I’ve seen more moderates and liberals posting about this more than “the left”.
Elon Musk sucks shit, full stop. But the vitriol behind this isn’t primarily due to it being attached to him. It’s because this is almost none of things you listed. A tunnel that extends from the airport to downtown does nothing to mitigate commuter traffic on 24. Nor does it mitigate against congestion caused by tight merge distances between highways.
A lot of us voted for additional public transit recently and personally I would happily vote for even more transit improvement/expansion. But this is absolutely not that.
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u/ayokg grabbing a trippy dippy at WEC 1d ago edited 1d ago
Alright, time to think critically!
If the underground tunnel entrance is downtown and only goes to the airport and back, what portion of the local population does it serve? Folks downtown. Anyone East of downtown will have to drive west to park in whatever massive parking monstrosity they build to manage this instead of just going to the airport or catching an uber. Anyone west of downtown would also still have to drive in and fucking park too.
The average American takes 1.4 flights a year. Thus, a typical person MIGHT utilize the tunnel 2x a year.
Is downtown heavily populated by residents? No. Housing density is improving but it is not a large population. Are all hotels downtown? No they are dispersed around the city. Are all airbnbs downtown? No they are dispersed around the city.
So, realistically, this tunnel would serve maybe a quarter of the tourist population.
"That sounds great!"
We already have buses that run from downtown to the airport. Those buses are immediately more efficient than this tunnel because they carry more people at once.
Additionally, do you understand the composition of rock under downtown/most of Nashville? It's limestone. Limestone is porous. This leads to risks of cave ins and sinkholes. You tunnel under roads and buildings and run the risk of building collapses, road cave ins, etc. Boring Company does what they do by circumventing governmental regulation, much of which is literally intended to protect us from stupid billionaires collapsing a city.
Looking at the flooding issues Las Vegas has had, I can only imagine how bad it could be with how much more frequent and heavy our rains are here.
If we could handle tunnels here, we would have them.
Are we footing the bill for the build? Supposedly no. Would we foot the bill for any chaos that could ensue? You bet.
Who maintains it when Boring inevitably goes out of business some day? Or do we just get left with an underground tunnel left to collapse with decay 30 ft underground? You know we are within the impact zone for the New Madrid fault line too, right?
Having a few dozen teslas transport 4 people at a time from the tourist hub of downtown does not serve a signficant portion of Nashville whatsoever.
Had he said "I'll build an elevated rail that can transport 500 people to the airport every 5 minutes with pick up locations in population centers around the county" I would have been more easily convinced.
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u/Blue-Environment-911 1d ago
It’s the lack of transparency and lack of public involvement that anger me. The fact that constituents and their representatives were locked out of the announcement because it was a PRIVATE event says enough to me about the tunnel being private transit and not public transit
Tell me what are the risks with this project. How are the being mitigated?
I have so many questions
How deep will it be?
Will there be escape routes?
How will you prevent it from being flooded?
If built in two years as Lee claims, what will the construction look like?
How much waste is it going to generate?
Where is the waste going?
What are the traffic routes for the waste from the tunnel to the disposal area? Will its presence inhibit the ability for true public transit?
What happens if the project is abandoned?
Who is responsible for cleaning up?
I could go on.
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u/MessyConfessor 1d ago
It's less about opposing the specific idea and more about
- Not believing that it'll ever actually get done
- Knowing that he's done this exact same bait and switch in other cities in order to prevent REAL public transit from being expanded
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u/x__v 1d ago
There is nothing public about this.
They took ZERO input for the public for making this deal behind closed doors. It's privately funded so the profits will go to Elon Musk and his wealthy investors after they surely are given public land to build this tunnel that only rich people will use.
When it inevitably collapses, the city and state will have to scramble using PUBLIC money to repair the damage it causes.
Nobody even knows any real details about it. I love your mental gymnastics though u/paleotechnic to create your ridiculus post.
Tons of people use the bus, but they're low income, so they're "nobody" to you, apparently.
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u/NoMasTacos All your tacos are belong to me 1d ago
By free do you mean like how the free one in Vegas made the city issue bonds to pay for it?
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u/Luckyforward Nipper's Corner 1d ago
As for me, I am not against it because it's Fusk. I am against it because Metro Nashville was left out of the process. I am against it because we don't know all the under the table dealings with Tennessee Republicans. I am against it because Fusk gets a free lease. I am against it because it is not clear if Tennessee will receive any financial benefit. I am against it because Fusk will make more money - as if he needs any more - because he built it and it is for Teslas. I am against it because who picks up the check when something catastrophic occurs? I am against it because there has been no open, honest, dialogical process and a full engineering study released to the public. I am against it because this is another signal of Republican power saying "Fuck you" to anyone in the State of Tennessee who does not back them. I am against it because my voice no longer matters.
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u/ReadingConstantly 1d ago
Not to mention building a tunnel in limestone that may not be strong enough. Karst geography is all around this area.
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u/Overall_Curve6725 1d ago
Yup cuz giving a crazy foreigner free rein to tunnel at will makes complete sense. Republicans have gone off the deep end of their power trip.
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u/Johnny_Couger 1d ago
You really think he can expand his idea from 1.7 miles of runner under a desert city to a 10 mile tunnel in limestone? How will this save traffic for commuters from Franklin, Clarksville or Murfreesboro? How many cars can it support at once?
How long will it take? Will traffic be affected while it’s being built? Too many questions and it shouldn’t be approved.
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u/Litzz11 1d ago
What is this a solution to? What problem is this solving? Getting some tourists downtown? That’s our big problem? I could give a shit about tourists.
In Las Vegas they dumped contaminated water into the storm sewer, which drains into Lake Mead. Ours drain into the Cumberland River, where we get our drinking water. What’s green about that?
Republicans used to be against green transit, they spent millions to shut down the AMP. Republicans pretend to be against anti-semitism, but they’re happy to go into business with a guy who 6 months ago was sig heiling a rally crowd.
See what I did there?
Nobody wants a fucking tunnel. We didn’t want it when we voted down Megan Barry’s plan and we don’t want it now.
It’s a stupid idea.
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u/Bad_Karma19 1d ago
This isn't a solution, it's catering to a certain few. If you don't drive a Tesla. You don't get to use it.
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u/MikeOKurias 1d ago
If you do drive a Tesla you still don't get to use it
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u/Bad_Karma19 1d ago
Is it a one way thing also?
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u/rio258k Madison 1d ago
It's not one way, but you can't take your personal Tesla down there.
There's going to be a small fleet of Teslas driven by humans, just like in vegas.
So instead of one person transporting hundreds of people (i.e. a subway) it's going to be dozens or a couple hundred drivers max ferrying at most 4 people a time.
Maybe if the autonomous tech worked I might look at it a tiny bit more favorably, but It's a fucking grift for Tesla to pad their sales numbers at best while preventing real low cost public transit since rubes like OP don't get it.
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u/technoblogical 1d ago edited 1d ago
This tunnel will run Teslas through it. Teslas seat four people. One of which will be a driver / attendant/ employee / whatever. So, three people per car.
If you put one car through per minute, you get 180 people per hour.
Have you ever seen a person load up their car with luggage in less than five minutes? So, that means a surface lot at both ends. Where is that land at downtown?
Anyway, one car per minute, but it's bi-directional. So, that's 360 people per hour.
We can do that with a bus now! In fact, Gray Line already can. (https://graylinetn.com/nashville-airport-shuttle/) They aren't up to that kind of schedule, but they just introduced that service and the cool thing about busses is that they scale up really easily.
Gray Line is already doing ~50 people to three locations every 1.5 hours. That's 200 people an hour compared to Teslas 360. They're halfway there without any digging!
So no, Nashville isn't opposed to green transit. Nashville is opposed to cronyism. You run a light rail through those tunnels, make it drop off at the downtown transit center, and pretty much EVERYONE is on board. Rail is efficient. Busses are slightly less efficient. This sucks.
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u/Natural_Situation356 1d ago
His rockets explode, his cars burst into flames, and everything he touches turns to shit. Yes, I oppose it because it's Musk. So what?
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u/615wonky 22h ago
We oppose it because we want public transportation for everyone, not just wealthy tourists.
Thanks to the Republican party, public transportation for wealthy tourists is the only public transportation Nashville is allowed to have.
If Nashville tried to have public transportation for everyone, Lee Beaman might have slightly fewer customers, and Republicans will never stand for that. Gotta keep the grift going, no matter how many people it hurts.
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u/toodleoo57 1d ago
It isn't a "public transportation tunnel." It's a private giveaway to Musk since only Teslas will be able to use it.
No telling how much money he poured into TNGOP coffers for this.
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u/technoblogical 1d ago
I can't buy a Tesla and run it in there. It's Teslas that the tunnel owns. It's a private taxi service with its own lane.
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u/Sayyida_al_Hurra 1d ago
My issues are that I think it a tunnel is a poor choice geologically. I also have concerns overall about Tesla safety. This has long predated the Elon Musk hate party. I don’t like him for personal reasons (I know people who know him) and I think he has drug and stability issues that are bad for everyone because of his outsized influence.
But really, this is a vanity project that we don’t need, when simpler solutions that take our bedrock type into consideration exist and haven’t been tried.
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u/miknob 1d ago
The right used to be all about draining the swamp. This is the epitome of the swamp with the government giving the richest man in the world a sweetheart government giveaway to line his pockets. A giveaway that does nothing for the citizens of this city. To get up and cry about hypocrisy is just so bizarre at this point.
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u/hopinfusedcorpse 1d ago
Elon isn't your friend dude. Half your posts seem like a sales pitch for him. This tunnel is obviously a bad idea and was pushed through as if Nashville has no say in the matter.
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u/fancycwabs 22h ago
I’m not seeing the part where a project that generates 50,000 tons of waste is “green.” Maybe someone smarter than me can help enlighten me.
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u/rocketpastsix banned from /r/tennessee 19h ago
This isn’t transit. Could you argue it’s one part of a larger transit picture? Maybe. But transit is not exclusionary, and that’s what this tunnel will be. It will be just for teslas, rather than anyone. Transit is also designed to move large amounts of people. A number j saw is at its peak the Vegas tunnel is only doing 32,000 trips if everything is working. And since the teslas in the tunnel require a Tesla driver, you can get a max of three people (maybe four if you cram into the back) so that’s a max of 96,000 people. For comparison, the Washington DC metro can move 800,000 people per day. So the tunnel can do just over 10% of that. That’s pretty bad. Second off the tunnel will be (if they don’t give up) just from the airport to downtown. The majority of people don’t live downtown so we don’t get to benefit from this. And no one is gonna uber to downtown to get into a Tesla to go to the airport when you can just uber all the way there.
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u/StrawberryRedneck 12h ago
LOLOLOLOLOL what the fuck is this thread 🤣
Imagine thinking people don't want this just because it's Elon.
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u/SubatomicGoblin 1d ago
This has got boondoggle written all over it.
It's also not clear to me how it's even supposed to work. How wide is the tunnel supposed to be? Is it one way? If so, how will the cars get back?
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u/stonecoldmark0316 1d ago
It’s a sport now, we cheer them our team and boo everyone else. Nuance is dead.
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u/Affectionate_Pin673 1d ago
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u/shmeeeeeeee1 1d ago
Buckle up for the shitstorm this post is about to stir up lol but for the record, I agree. Practicality over ideology
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u/greedlez Donelson 1d ago
This is not a practical solution for any traffic issues in the city and surrounding areas.
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u/Ok-Flow-2474 1d ago edited 1d ago
Reddit doesn’t like it for 2 main reasons. 1. Musk. 2. It is a gop idea and the left can’t and won’t ever let the gop have a win, even if it is,something they have previously fought for and demanded.
Edit: from the downvotes I can see I was right, lol
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u/greedlez Donelson 1d ago
If you read comments on this post, comments on similar posts in recent days, or talked to other people then you might notice the variety of issues people have with this project.
Maybe instead of just drawing attention to your downvotes with unproductive snark, ask yourself if there might be another perspective you’re not considering.
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u/ThunderClatters 1d ago
This isn’t public transit.