There’s a piece of infrastructure in downtown Nashville that is about to go away. When it does, there may not be any clues left from a brief, fascinating chapter in the city’s transportation history.
Do you remember when WeGo had a fleet of super-quiet, all-electric buses running for free throughout downtown?
Bus commuter Joe Pagetta remembers. And he wrote to Curious Nashville — with vigor — with this question:
In the not-so-distant past, Nashville used to have a free electric bus circuit called the Music City Circuit, which connected downtown to Bicentennial Mall and the Gulch. And then it just disappeared sometime around COVID. I’m curious about that, but even more curious about the abandoned electric bus charging infrastructure that’s still standing … like dystopian props from Old Detroit in Robocop.
If there are no plans to bring the electric buses back, what is going to happen to that decaying infrastructure?
The question reached the right place.
I was there reporting for WPLN in 2015 for the first electric bus ride with officials.
‘Almost too quiet’
It’s generally not advisable to revisit one of your first radio reports from more than 10 years ago.
But the EV bus story holds up pretty well.
Nashville rolled out new downtown electric buses on Tuesday — a $7 million upgrade to the downtown circulator system that features zero emissions and a new level of tranquility for city transit.
The new buses are almost too quiet for Nashville MTA CEO Steve Bland.
“One went by me and you could hear the tires rolling on the ground,” he said, laughing. “That was essentially the discernible sound.”
“It’s really quiet,” said commuter Michael Briggs. “It’s almost like you’re missing some background noise, I think. It makes for an awkward situation at first.”
Bland and Briggs eventually helped break the silence during a ride alongside Mayor Karl Dean on one of the new all-electric models.
The mayor went on to call these buses “the ultimate.” The driver raved. A bus rider, too.
By 2021, just six years later, the buses were no longer in use.
Tony Gonzalez WPLN News (File)Everyone — officials, bus riders, and the bus driver — raved about the smooth ride of Nashville’s first electric bus ride in 2015.
‘Just urban decay’
Part of the change at that time was WeGo’s discontinuation of all of its Music City Circuit free downtown service.
But reports indicate maintenance of these buses was a challenge in several cities at that time.
And in 2023 the bus-maker, Proterra, went bankrupt. Without reliable servicing, Nashville’s nine buses became obsolete, according to WeGo spokesman Eric Melcher.
“The problem is that zero emissions vehicle technology is changing quickly,” Melcher said. “Transit use requires extensive mileage each day and there is increased wear and tear.”
As for the two charging stations, they’re not long for this world. In fact, not long after posing the question to Curious Nashville, WeGo happened to remove the charger downtown at Riverfront Station. The second station near the Nashville Farmers Market will be decommissioned in the coming months.
For Pagetta, our question-asker, that the technology is now “just urban decay” is amazing, considering how rapidly it happened.
“It really is very interesting the speed at which technology advances, is adopted and becomes obsolete,” he said. “We think about that in our personal and work lives, but I hadn’t considered it on the larger civic level.”
WeGo, meanwhile, is still considering zero-emission buses — “but are waiting to see how the technology improves.”
Tony Gonzalez WPLN News (File)In 2015, then-Mayor Karl Dean and WeGo CEO Steve Bland admire the charger for an all-electric bus. The technology is no more.
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