This section defines terms used in the part, including Authority, Board, creating municipality, executive officer, governing body, mass transit system, metropolitan government, metropolitan planning organization, regional transportation authority of Middle Tennessee, State, transit adjacent development, and transit oriented development.
As used in this part, unless the context otherwise requires: “Authority” means a regional transportation authority created pursuant to this part or reconstituted pursuant to § 64-8-203(b); “Board” means the board of directors of an authority; “Creating municipality” means any metropolitan form of government, city, town or county that creates an authority pursuant to this part; “Executive officer” means the mayor, county mayor or other chief executive officer of any creating municipality; “Governing body” means the chief legislative body of any creating municipality; “Mass transit system” means, without limitation, a combination of real and personal property, structures, improvements, buildings, terminals, parking facilities, equipment, plans, and rights-of-way, public rail and fixed guideway transportation facilities, rail or fixed guideway access to, from or between other transportation terminals, and commuter railroads and commuter rail facilities, or any combination thereof or addition thereto, used, directly or indirectly, useful or convenient for the purpose of public transportation by automobile, truck, bus, rapid transit vehicle, light rail or heavy rail; “Metropolitan government” means the political entity created by consolidation of all, or substantially all, of the political and corporate functions of a county and a city or town or cities or towns; “Metropolitan planning organization” means the federally designated regional transportation planning agency established for urbanized areas of at least fifty thousand (50,000) people to develop a long-range regional transportation plan and short-range transportation improvement program; “Regional transportation authority of Middle Tennessee” means the regional transportation authority created by part 1 of this chapter and composed of certain counties and the cities and towns contained in those counties, those counties being Davidson, Sumner, Williamson, Wilson, Robertson, Cheatham, Maury, Dickson and Rutherford; “State” means the state of Tennessee; “Transit adjacent development” means development near or next to a transit station that promotes or takes advantage of transit ridership but is not designed specifically around a transit station; and “Transit oriented development” or “TOD” means, without limitation, land use development centrally located around a transit station, sometimes part of the station or where the station is a prominent feature of the development, that has a mixture of land uses in close proximity to one another, including office, residential, retail, public and civic uses, occurring at a relatively high density. TOD is designed to be walkable and easy to navigate by bicycles and other nonmotorized modes of transportation.