WPLN
Tony Gonzalez

Nashville transportation leaders got what they asked for this week: passionate public opinions — and plenty of complaints — about the current mass transit options.

But city planners also turned the tables, asking people to choose between different options as the city pursues a new strategy. The latest meeting as part of “nMotion 2015” — the city’s new transit planning process — took place in a downtown library auditorium. About 90 people were given pretend money and asked how they would spend it to reduce traffic.

But they only got so much, so they had to make trade-offs.

For example: spend more on transit throughout the region, or pay for a better bus system only in Nashville?

“Considering I don’t live in Davidson County and I sit on the interstate, I’m highly invested in regional. Even to get here. You know, it would be nice to have come on a bus,” Mauri Lenderman, of Williamson County, said in a small group discussion. “And if you’ve sat on (the interstates) at 8 a.m. or 5 p.m., you know that problem.”

Next trade-off: More frequent bus service, or new routes that run on nights and weekends?

“For it to be a viable option to taking your car, you don’t want to have someone standing for 30 minutes waiting for the next bus,” said architect Gary Everton.

Yet homeless advocate Karri Simpson leaned more toward extended spans of service.

“I’m split because we have to remember a lot of our low-income residents, they work on the weekends and they need to get to and from work, more than just Monday through Friday, 9 to 5,” she said. “So we absolutely need to have a focus on weekend hours too.”

Perhaps the biggest tension that runs through the nMotion plan is whether to improve existing service or expand transit into areas that aren’t currently served.

“Improving connections to downtown, that’s really important,” said Chelsea Lafferty, who assists international refugees with Catholic Charities. “But … there’s a large pocket in between Murfreesboro and Nolensville that’s not serviced. At all.”

The churn of contrasting ideas happened often. But city transit chief Steve Bland said these public discussions will shape the changes that the city will support — and be willing to fund.

“What people around the country have seen is if we can do this kind of grassroots conversation — that identifies what our values are, what our priorities are — provide people with a series of choices … come up with something that we can bounce around with the public … then we will figure out a way to pay for it,” Bland said.

One area where people tend to agree — in recent surveys and at the community meetings this week — is in a high desire for Nashville to create “premium” transit services, such as bus rapid transit, a streetcar system, or light rail. Although planners caution that those projects take the most time and money, they’ve remained popular in the planning process.

Still others, like Oasis Center youth engagement specialist Vanessa Lazon, worry that not all possible transit riders are being heard in the nMotion process. Lazon, who works with at-risk youth and many immigrant families, filled out a comment card and requested future meetings be held in other parts of the county, not just downtown and East Nashville.