Mayor Freddie O’Connell is pitching a $3.1 billion overhaul of Nashville’s transportation system with over $650 million committed to improving the city’s bus service.
Nate here: I wanted to get a sense of O’Connell’s Choose How You Move program would make getting from my house in the Whites Creek area to downtown easier.
- I tested two different bus routes to find out.
Details: The WeGo bus stop closest to my house is just under one mile away, marked by a pole in the ground next to a gas station.
- There is no sidewalk for much of the walk there. Since I virtually never ride the bus, I arrived about 20 minutes early to catch the No. 14 bus and waited in the heat on an extremely hot day.
Context: If I don’t feel like walking to catch the bus, I can take a quick 7-minute drive to a park-and-ride facility located in the Walmart parking lot off of Dickerson Pike.
- That’s how I took the bus in September along with Michael Briggs, O’Connell’s top transportation adviser. From there, we took the No. 41 bus south.
- During our ride into town, Briggs suggested we get out at a bus stop near the Rocketship elementary school at the intersection of Dickerson Road and Rock Street.
- After walking a few feet there’s no sidewalk, just like the bus stop near my house. While we waited for the next bus to come so we could hop back on, we saw two pedestrians cross Dickerson Pike without the aid of a crosswalk, dodging traffic like it was a game of Frogger.