An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service and Safety in Nashville
Mayor O’Connell is committed to creating a modern transportation system that reduces Nashvillians’ transportation costs and helps them get where they need to go. To support this work, Mayor O’Connell is pursuing a dedicated funding source for transportation and mobility projects in November 2024. Metro activities supporting this initiative are collectively referred to as Choose How You Move – An All-Access Pass to Sidewalks, Signals, Service, and Safety in Nashville.
After Mayor O’Connell took office, he commissioned one of his three transition committees to study how Nashville moves. One of their recommendations was for the Mayor to pursue dedicated funding for the city’s transportation systems.
For the majority of February and March, Mayor O’Connell will seek public input, feedback from Metro Council Members, and work with two advisory committees to craft a plan that works for Nashville. After that period of ongoing engagement, Mayor O’Connell will unveil a plan and continue the citywide conversation with Nashvillians about how we make our city easier to move around.
Mayor O’Connell is moving with urgency to addresses Nashville’s transportation and mobility problems, but studying how to improve transit in Nashville is not new. Below is a history of transit planning that dates back more than a decade.
Transportation Planning in Nashville
The need to invest in a modern, multimodal (meaning by driving, walking, riding transit, or bicycling) transportation system is not new to Nashville. In fact, the city has spent most of this century analyzing how to improve its transportation systems. Now, Mayor O’Connell is focusing on implementation.
There are over 70 neighborhood, community, citywide, and regional plans created over the last 15 years that support expanded and enhanced transportation and mobility infrastructure. The topics of these plans are diverse, oftentimes outlining a strategy that links our neighborhoods as they grow and change to improved multimodal transportation by addressing sidewalks, bikeways, bus service, public safety, streetlights, technology, sustainability, public health, open space, recreation, aging populations, and much more. Links to several of the more significant and foundational citywide and regional plans follow.
NashvilleNext established a community-oriented vision for future growth linked to multimodal transportation options, including high-capacity transit along several major corridors, and linking to centers throughout the county. This established updated community plans for all of Davidson County and re-oriented transportation around a multimodal vision for complete streets with Access Nashville: 2040 Major and Collector Street Plan (2015).
nMotion builds on NashvilleNext to outline a more robust local and regional WeGo Public Transit system. It identified three scenarios with a recommended plan outlining light rails on several major corridors, rapid bus transit, and improved bus frequency. A version of this plan was carried forward in 2018 for implementation to voters and was not funded. Two scenarios evaluated during the development of nMotion outline improvements to essential transportation infrastructure such as sidewalks, signals, and improved transit frequency with hubs across the county. (2016/2018 vote)
WalknBike Plan is a blueprint for sidewalks and bikeways linking neighborhoods to transit to make Nashville safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Projects are prioritized based on safety of people walking and biking, connectivity to existing networks, equity and presence of vulnerable communities, and access to transit. (2017/2022)
Vision Zero Action Plan orients around the safety goal of achieving no fatalities on Nashville’s streets with investments in transportation safety, improvements by identifying high crash corridors, and focusing on proven strategies that reduce fatalities and injuries. (2022)
Connect Downtown aims to improve mobility and address traffic congestion in the downtown core by identifying projects, programs, and policies to help better manage increasing congestion and make it easier for people to get around by all modes of transportation. (2024 draft)
Middle Tennessee Connected was adopted by mayors and transportation officials as the Regional Transportation Plan for the seven-county area, setting forth collective transportation goals for city and county governments, transit agencies, and TDOT for the Middle Tennessee region (2021).
Given a strong foundation in planning and clear recommendations from Mayor O’Connell’s How Nashville Moves transition committee, Choose How You Move draws upon these plans to develop a proposed project list with dedicated funding.