Nashville Public Radio
Tony Gonzalez
As Nashville maps its transit future, there’s special attention on Nolensville Pike, where the city’s newest rapid bus “lite” route will serve a quickly growing corridor south of downtown. The area is home to many immigrants, including a contingent from Somalia, which met this weekend as urban planners continue a corridor study.
Instead of coffee and donuts, authentic Somali rice and goat meat set the tone, which was meant to draw out fresh perspectives from a group that isn’t always heard from on policy matters. They were urged to think about transportation, gentrification, and important gathering places.
“This project is to envision what this pike will look like in the years coming,” said facilitator Tasneem Grace Tewogbola. “Why do you live, work, and study on Nolensville Pike?”
Mostly Somali men and teenagers gathered around laminated maps to work through Tewogbola’s questions.
Several were taxi drivers with years of experience on city roads. Abdulkadir Gure, 36, said he remembered how fast Nolensville Pike had been to get downtown.
“To go to Vanderbilt, it used to be — honestly, on a rush hour — 8 minutes,” he said.
Now Gure co-owns a taxi business and a driving school that markets to newly arriving immigrants. He said he steers them clear of Nolensville Pike congestion, at least at first.
“It looks like the city is getting really overcrowded, and things will get messy if we don’t fix this ASAP,” he said.
Along with his cousin and business partner, Bashir Gure, 32, the men support more Nashville MTA rapid bus service, even suggesting that a route run down dedicated lanes along the pike — the kind of setup that failed for The Amp.
More: Route 52 BRT begins March 27 on Nolensville Pike
They said they don’t worry about their taxi business because they hope for a future of people who don’t own cars and who use a combination of buses and taxis.
But Bashir Gure did have two qualms about the plan for “BRT lite” — which gets the “lite” label because in Nashville the rapid buses don’t use their own dedicated lanes, like in other cities.
More: nMotion study on BRT
For one, he wants more crosstown bus trips that go to places other than the downtown Music City Central.
“Like Thompson Lane, to Murfreesboro Pike,” he said. “You need to have a crossing road … because if they are parallel to it, they both end into downtown.”
He’s also skeptical of the frequency, which will be buses that run every 20 minutes.
“You know, 20 minutes is a lot of time,” he said, laughing and doubtful: “It would be ideal if you could make it like five minutes, you know…”
Meanwhile, 19-year-old Tesfay Waldgabriel said he’d still prefer to be stuck in traffic instead of relying on MTA service — which also inches along amid the congestion.
On bad days, Waldgabriel commutes downtown twice — for work and to pick up his mother.
“So, basically, I waste all my time on this road,” he said.
Many shared his love-hate relationship with the pike. Tewogbola, who collected their comments, read them back out loud.
“Nolensville Pike … feels great, and then you all said, ‘Until 5 or 6 o’clock comes,’ ” she began. “Then you get nervous, stressed out. There’s congestion. And there’s no sidewalks.”
That summary drew chuckles before the group honed in on an area of agreement: the need for more sidewalks, they said, near gathering places like Coleman Park and the Al-Farooq Islamic Center.
The Somali input will be rolled in with feedback from a series of two dozen small group meetings that wrap up next month.
