Crom Carmichael, Green Hills resident and original all-star panelist of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show, said the proposed upgrades and expansion plans for the WeGo Star, a commuter rail service which operates between Nashville and Lebanon, are “typical leftist ideas” that would not benefit Nashville taxpayers.
Upgrades to the WeGo Star are included in Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s multi-billion dollar transit plan called “Choose How You Move: An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service, and Safety.”
O’Connell’s plan, which will be presented to Nashville voters on the November 5 general election ballot, would be funded by a half-cent increase in the city’s sales tax to construct miles of new sidewalks, bus stops, transit centers, parking facilities, and upgraded traffic signals throughout Music City.
The transit plan also proposes improvements to the WeGo Star, with plans to “spread trips more evenly throughout the day rather than concentrating service during the morning and evening.”
The mayor’s transit plan details the following vision for the WeGo Star:
The WeGo Star isn’t just for commuters anymore; the service should support more travel purposes and serve those who want to travel to and from the city in the middle of the day. The [Transportation Improvement Program] proposes changes to service schedules to provide robust and reliable trips spread throughout the day and over the weekend as well as providing special services to more events. WeGo Star upgrades also include adding shuttles to Downtown and Midtown.
A recent review of the proposed changes to the WeGo Star by the Nashville Post found that the mayor’s proposed upgrades to the rail service would cost $6.5 million in addition expenses on top of the $5.4 million in current operating and management costs.
Carmichael (pictured above, left), however, said such proposals to expand the WeGo Star would not benefit Nashville taxpayers as a majority of riders use the service to commute to Nashville from other surrounding counties, as more than half of the WeGo Star’s current stops are located in Wilson County.
“That is a financial drain. If you go and add things like this, and Nashville pays the predominant share of it, who are they paying the money for? Commuters from another county. This isn’t paying for people to commute from Nashville to Lebanon. That’s the return trip,” Carmichael explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Carmichael went on to break down the financials of the proposed upgrades to the rail service, explaining how the service only averages approximately 400 riders per weekday.
“I’ve done the math. $2.2 million plus $4.3 million equals $6.5. So, just for the purposes of this, I’m going to round it down to $6 million because if I then take that and I tell you the number of months, that’s $500,000 a month of subsidy. $500,000 a month, and then for the number of workdays, which is when people ride it, the number of work days in the month It would be $24,000 per workday. And you say there’s 22 workdays in a typical month…So $24,000 a day is what it would cost to subsidize. There are 400 riders a day,” Carmichael explained.
“What these people who are for this want is the taxpayers to pay $600 a day for each person who wants to ride from Lebanon, and they want to charge those people $65 a month for unlimited use of the train,” Carmichael added.
Carmichael went on to call the plan a “typical leftist idea,” noting how the taxpayers would be paying for a service that only benefits a small percentage of Nashvillians.
“At least the gasoline and diesel tax covers our cost of roads and bridges. And you could describe it as a user tax. The people who use our roads and bridges are the ones who pay the gasoline and diesel tax. In this case, the people who pay the taxes are not the ones [who ride the rail service]. This is a typical leftist idea,” Carmichael said.
Carmichael added that WeGo Star riders could be given a “free car and the gasoline to operate” the vehicle for the price of upgrading the rail service.
“This is an example of local government looking at something that, when you look at the numbers, makes no sense,” Carmichael said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Crom Carmichael with Michael Patrick Leahy” by The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
