Steven Higashide and Jon Orcutt

The Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority’s nMotion proposal offers an inspiring vision of a city and region reconnected by public transportation.

The $6 billion plan calls for high-capacity bus and rail lines within the city and connecting Nashville to Murfreesboro, Clarksville, Gallatin and more. But if the public debate focuses entirely on the giant price tag and impressive-looking lines on a map, it will be to the detriment of more subtle and important changes needed to make Nashville more transit oriented.

Nashville should start by ramping up frequent bus service in busy neighborhoods, and creating welcoming, safe streets for pedestrians. The good news is that nMotion already recommends both. But these shouldn’t be seen as two recommendations in the laundry list. They are absolutely fundamental to transit’s future in Nashville and should be given far more emphasis. These principles are the cornerstones for translating nMotion’s multi-decade vision into an action plan for building transit use in Nashville now.

Why this initial focus? Research that spans the country tells us that the way to increase transit ridership isn’t necessarily through big-dollar projects. It comes down to providing fast, frequent transit service, concentrated in walkable areas.

Earlier this year, TransitCenter released Who’s On Board, a national opinion report based on data from focus groups and a survey of 3,000 transit riders in 17 metro areas. Respondents prioritized transit frequency and travel time over everything else, including lowering fares, eliminating transfers, reducing crowding and adding Wi-Fi. Transit that arrives every 10 or 15 minutes and gets people to destinations with direct routes, efficient boarding and speed enhancements like signal priority and dedicated lanes is transit that attracts riders.

Comfortable and safe sidewalks, crosswalks and bus stops also matter because most people who take transit typically walk to it, and 80 percent of those who use transit most often, for more than just commuting, typically reach it on foot. Riders in our survey also highly valued station or stop shelters. These connections and amenities are about safety and dignity. If people find it impossible, unsafe, or unpleasant to walk to and wait at a bus stop, many won’t do it.

What Nashville doesn’t need now are more examples like the Music City Star, the low-ridership and relatively expensive commuter rail service serving sparsely settled areas east of the city. While Denver is often cited as an example for Nashville to follow, Denver’s emphasis on rail connections to bedroom communities far from downtown has left major transit gaps within the city, sacrificing opportunities for greater connectivity and development in urban neighborhoods. It would be unfortunate if Nashville built rail links to the region’s edges, but still forced people to drive between areas like 12 South and Downtown.

Nashville can avoid that problem and build transit ridership quickly with accelerated focus on a frequent network of transit routes in the relatively dense areas of downtown and nearby neighborhoods, paired with improvements to the pedestrian environment. The nMotion plan calls for a frequent transit network but poses it as a future development, primarily involving rail lines and “bus rapid transit” routes that may take years to implement. But an increasing number of cities across the country — Houston foremost — are reorganizing bus systems to improve service and gain riders in the near-term.

The efforts refocus bus service away from periodic, meandering coverage into grids of frequent service.

It’s important to remember that Nashville is starting from low levels of transit use. According to the MTA, per capita transit use is nearly twice as great in Charlotte and nearly three times as high in Austin. Most people in Nashville have no experience navigating their city by transit. Building transit use with basic steps now can provide a foundation for more aggressive projects in time.

As it is, elected officials and civic leaders must be prepared to make the case for transit in the debates to come, both large and small. Each attempt to add bus lanes to busy roads, every effort to increase budgets for shelters and sidewalks, and each change to the transit network will require strong, active leadership. Demonstrated success with early-action measures will build momentum and make such debates easier to resolve in favor of developing more and better transit services.

Experience and data from cities across the country show that the keys to more useful, appealing transit are simple and straightforward, and can begin to be applied now.

Steven Higashide and Jon Orcutt​ are senior program analyst and communications direct for TransitCenter, a New York-based foundation dedicated to improving public transportation.