The decline of Nashville's mass transit.

As a Nashvillian who relies on the Metro Transit Authority to get to and from my jobs, I feel some responsibilty to preserve this important service in my city. Yesterday I attended a meeting led by a representative of the MTA, explaing to the public that city budget cuts leave it short about 2.9 million dollars. To get around this the MTA is considering several options:

Eliminating Service on the weekends.
Eliminating Service at night.
Eliminate about a third of the routes.

I ride the night bus home on weeknights. I ride the bus on Saturdays and Sundays as well. It is PACKED. If these bus routes are cut, that means all those people will be unable to get to and from work.

This budget cut comes at a time when more people are relying on public transportation than ever. From 2004 to 2006, the number of people who used Nashville's MTA increased by about 250,000 people. From 2006 to 2008, the MTA gained 1,500,000 new riders. That brings current ridership up to 8.5 million people.

Most cities have a tax that funds their MTA, giving it a steady source of income. Nashville does not. Only about half of the MTA's income comes from the city, and only twelve percent is from is from the state. These numbers are far lower than the national norm for busses.

Most of the city council members head wealthy families and the MTA does not appear to directly concern them. About 80% of the people that ride the bus come from low income families. When the budget was being drawn up, most of the concern went to

a) Education
b) Police protection
c) Fire protection

Most of the people affected by this change ARE NOT EVEN AWARE OF IT.

If you live in Nashville, please come to the Public Hearing on June 3 at 6:30pm at City Hall. Your very presence will weigh on the minds of those in authority.

Based on a childhood memory

I'm dabbling in a new style with this one. Drawing scratchy/messy requires a lot of confidence in what you're doing.

I originally thought I was taking most of the influence for this from Natalie Kocsis, an artist I only recently discovered online. Then I realized my high school pal Jobathan has been drawing like this all his life.



A new bill is facing congress right now called the U.S. Orphan Works Act of 2008. If it passes, it would require that artists register every single image they produce with a private company or their work becomes public domain. The bill also loosens the rules for creative property. This means if someone finds something you drew online, and the image is separated from your name, the finder can use it for his company and make lots of money from it, and the artist will never see a dime.

Our contemporary economy is driven by creativity; companies everywhere have realized this and now understand the need to catch their clients' eyes. If this bill passes, visual artists will be left with fewer rights than they already have.