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WeGo and NDOT outline transit upgrades tied to growth; Choose How You Move to fund sidewalks, signals and transit corridors
Summary
Public transit operators and city transportation staff told a community meeting that improving transit service and street infrastructure is central to accommodating projected housing growth; they described cross‑town routes, a new transit center in North Nashville and investments enabled by the voter-approved Choose How You Move program.
Felix Castredad, a WeGo operations official, and Marty Sewell, transportation planning director for Metro Nashville Department of Transportation and Multimodal Infrastructure (NDOT), described how transit service and street investments must link to where the city adds housing.
Castredad said WeGo carries a little more than 8 million rides a year and that roughly 75% of ridership is concentrated on major corridors. He told the community that some areas with higher transit propensity — measured by lower incomes, 0-car households and other census indicators — fall outside the agency’s frequent-route network and have seen ridership declines as housing costs pushed people to the county edges. To address gaps, WeGo has been adding cross‑town routes that avoid the downtown-oriented hub pattern and creating transfer points such as the Dr. Ernest Reed Patton North Nashville Transit Center, where service changes increased access to jobs and services. Castredad said access to jobs within a 30-minute trip area around that center rose from roughly 13,000 jobs before service changes to about 64,000 after the redesign.
Sewell described how the voter-approved Choose How You Move program will fund a mix of transit service and street upgrades that NDOT expects to connect growth areas. He said the program will enable modernizing about two-thirds of the city’s traffic signals, construct about 86 miles of sidewalks on the priority sidewalk network, deliver roughly 54 miles of all‑access corridors that prioritize transit, and advance about 39 miles of complete‑streets projects. Sewell also cited NDOT’s Vision Zero action plan and the department’s high‑injury network analysis, saying the Choose How You Move investments would transform nearly 80 miles of road that account for most severe injuries and deaths.
Why it matters: Transit frequency, safety and connected sidewalks affect where denser housing can function without large new auto travel demand. Both presenters tied service design to equity: Castredad emphasized station-area access and safer transfer locations in neighborhoods with transit-dependent residents; Sewell said multimodal analysis for site development now includes safety and mitigation measures beyond car-focused traffic impacts.
Implementation notes: Castredad and Sewell said many improvements are underway or planned; some are expensive because they require right-of-way, signal work or topography-related investments. Sewell noted limits imposed by court decisions and state law on assessing impact fees for development but said the multimodal transportation analysis (MMTA) guidelines aim to ensure new development contributes appropriate mitigation such as sidewalks, bus stops or signals.
