New York transplant Becca Groner moved to Nashville seven years ago to pursue a career in health care. She chose the city based on its size and accessibility to the various array of services, programs, cultural offerings, and its growing Jewish community. Groner also liked that she could navigate Nashville without need for a car. “I’ve lived here seven years without a car and would love to live here more than that without a car.”
Lately, Groner says using public transportation has become even more challenging, with inefficient routes and often unsafe conditions at and around the bus stops. “I rely on the bus but walking after you get off the bus can be unsafe,” she says, “It’s not like you can just get on the bus and get where you’re going. You might need to cross the street 10 times just to find a sidewalk and now you’ve made your commute 30 minutes longer just for your own pedestrian safety.”
Come November, Nashville voters will have the opportunity to address concerns like Groners. Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s “Choose How You Move,” plan will cost an estimated $3.1 billion, and includes a half-cent sales tax increase. This year’s proposal is the latest in a string of failed transit initiatives, but proponents say this one has some significant changes that make it a more practical and realistic plan. Jeff Morris is Exectuive Director of Nashville Moves. He says, “When comparing this to previous versions of this type of transportation improvement program that the city has undergone in the past is the idea that this is not any one singular thing.”
Morris says that as Nashville continues to grow exponentially, citizens are specifically asking to address problems with traffic and affordability. “This plan is a holistic approach to how Nashvillians move around the city. This plan is about making it easier and cheaper to get from point a to point b.”
Specifically, Morris says the plan will update approximately 600 traffic signals. “Currently two-thirds of our signals are running on the equivalent of AOL dial up technology.” The new system will modernize and synchronize the signals through a new traffic management center. The result is real time feedback to accommodate traffic flow at peak times and following events.
Another key element of the plan is building more sidewalks. “We have a sidewalk problem,” says Morris, “Last year the city did just six miles of sidewalks. This plan accounts for 86 miles of new and improved sidewalks.”
Beyond those basics, Morris says, are additional service improvements. “Right now, our WeGo service does not account for the needs of a modern city.” He says current bus service ends too early in the evening, leaving not only tourists and visitors, but third shift workers stranded. “People who work late at night and would use our transit system don’t have the ability to.”
To address the needs of commuters, the proposed plan includes building 12 regional transit centers designed to move people around the city rather than through the densely populated downtown area. “Right now, we have a hub and spoke system,” says Morris, “If you want to go from Antioch to Lenox Village you have to go all the way into downtown to go all the way back out of town.”
This circuitous and often dangerous bus route is well known to Felicia Abramson who first lived in Nashville over a decade ago in the Bellevue neighborhood near the Gordon Jewish Community Center and commuted by bus to her job on Elm Hill Pike. At the time her now-husband was working at the GJCC and the couple only had one car. “We got that place because it was near a bus stop, and it was near the J. I would take the bus from there to have downtown and then transfer to the airport bus and then back. So, it was an hour and a half commute each way,” she says. The three-hour daily commute also impacted her ability to work. “I was never actually able to go full time because of when the bus came. I would get there by nine but would have to leave by 4:20 to get the bus back.” Abramson adds that if she missed the connection at the airport, she was out of luck because it was only an hourly bus.
Like Groner, Abramson cites lack of shelter and sidewalks at the bus stops as additional challenges. And Morris says safety is the final, key component of the transit plan. “2022 was the most dangerous year on record for a Nashvillian to simply cross the street,” he says, “We need to do more to make it safer for pedestrians and drivers to coexist with each other.” Morris adds that the vast majority of the city’s serious and fatal accidents occur on just six percent of the roads and intersections. “We know where those areas are and we need to improve them and invest in our city’s infrastructure.”
When it comes to financing the proposal, the idea is to raise sales tax in Davidson County by half a percent. The approach, according to Metro Council Member Jacob Kupin (District-19), is more straightforward than in previous iterations. “This to me is a much simpler version. We are just looking at local option sales tax. We know we are at 9.25%, it’s going to take us to 9.75%, which is the sales tax rate in Williamson County, in Rutherford County.” Kupin says the annual cost to families amounts to approximately $70 per year.
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In addition, says Kupin, there are additional incentives attached to the added funding stream. “We are one of four out of 50 cities that do not have dedicated funding for transit. So when the Federal government has Federal infrastructure grants, they’re not giving them to us because we haven’t taken the first step.” This means money paid to the Federal government leaves hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal funding to go to cities like Miami, which has a dedicated transit fund. “People say this won’t solve congestion. No, it won’t solve congestion, but it will give us the first step to exponentially grow our infrastructure dollars.”
Among some of the push back Kupin hears are complaints that the buses are currently empty, so why expand the service. “I use myself as an example. I live in Germantown and there is no bus that is a one stop shop that takes me from the top of our city to the bottom. So if I were to take the bus I’d have to walk or drive to the bus stop, get on the bus, take it to WeGo central, get off, take another bus to go back the way I came to go to the Bridgestone Arena.” He says the trip could take 45 minutes, but he could get there by car in eight minutes. But increased service and more buses would make the trip a no-brainer.
If the proposed initiative is successful at the November ballot, the plan will be fully implemented over 15 years. But Choose How You Move’s Morris says, “It’s important for people to know improvements will start as early as February of 2025 with sidewalks and signalization.”
For people in the Jewish community, the improvements couldn’t come soon enough. Groner says beefed up sidewalks and efficient signals will go a long way toward helping her be able to participate in the community’s many programs. “The JCC and The Temple are really hard to get to via sidewalk and intersections. They’re not safe. And I have taken the bus and tried to get there safely but it’s really only safe in one direction.” She adds that more people should try riding the bus, particularly before voting on the bill. “See what it’s like and think about how it could improve your life in other ways.”