Nashville voters voted for a new transportation plan that includes improving buses, upgrading traffic lights, building sidewalks and more. Speaking at co-working space The Malin in the Gulch, O'Connell declared his victory after results of the first vote showed overwhelming support for the measure.

“There have been people carrying the torch for this conversation for so long,” O'Connell told his supporters. “We’ve all come together over the last few months to do something good, big, important and popular.”

The plan calls for $3.1 billion in spending over the next 15 years. The funds would go toward improvements to the WeGo public bus system, building sidewalks, upgrading traffic lights and more. The Choose How You Move plan is funded by a half-cent sales tax increase. The mayor and transit advocates say a dedicated funding source will help Nashville apply for and receive federal grants for transportation improvements in the future.

Since O'Connell unveiled the plan in April, the transit referendum has enjoyed widespread support, including from local business leaders and community leaders such as the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition. The campaign to transform public transit raised more than $2 million.

Opponents of the plan never mounted a concerted or well-financed campaign. Some local conservatives banded together, and some locals criticized the plan's reliance on a regressive sales tax to fund the plan — they said it placed a greater burden on Nashvil's poorer residents — but those efforts were grassroots and disjointed. While the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity helped prevent a transit referendum in 2018 — which, unlike Choose How You Move, included plans for light rail — the organization declined to challenge O'Connell's referendum.

The sales tax increase comes into effect on February 1st.