Report suggests how Metro can make quick progress on long-standing street safety issues

A new report is calling on Metro to make a number of quick changes to improve the safety of city streets for pedestrians and cyclists.

Local advocacy nonprofit Walk Bike Nashville released their “State of Our Streets” report Tuesday. It details wins and failures of city government.

The “win” is the 1.5-mile bike lane on 12th Avenue South, which the report lauds for the “high-level of coordination across Metro departments” to get it made.

The report also highlights Open Streets Nashville — a program that temporarily closes streets to cars on certain days — as the “most powerful tool” to help people reframe the way they think about public street spaces. While it was launched in 2015 as a partnership between Walk Bike Nashville and Metro, the report points out that the program operates today without city support.

Some of the challenges identified by the report range from the city’s struggle to secure a bikeshare contract in recent years, to the removal of cycling infrastructure on Ninth Avenue North in downtown. The report also criticizes the proposal to construct the future East Bank Boulevard near the football stadium as an “unsafe” six-lane highway, and encourages the city to pursue a four-lane alternative.

The report praises the passage of last year’s “Choose How You Move” transit referendum, but says its execution “will not be easy.”

“We’re trying to tackle the massive task of shifting our culture — the way people think about our streets. To be effective, Nashville needs to see some tangible wins that we can celebrate together,” Meredith Montgomery, Walk Bike Nashville’s executive director, told WPLN News. “The passing of Choose How You Move was a historic milestone, but transformative work takes time, and the actionable steps we are recommending are doable right now.”

The report makes six recommendations that Walk Bike says can be executed over the next 90 days. These include:

• signing a contract with a new bikeshare provider;
• constructing more walking paths — including sidewalks and alternative pedestrian walkways;
• establishing a line item in the Vision Zero budget for quick-build construction projects;
• starting to construct more bike lanes downtown;
• endorsing the four-lane option for East Bank Boulevard, and;
• hiring a dedicated policy lead to coordinate transportation work across Metro departments.

This final request — a dedicated policy lead — would be in addition to Sabrina Sussman, who was recently hired to lead the execution of Choose How You Move

Sussman told WPLN News she was “looking forward to digging into the report’s details.”

“Walk Bike Nashville has always been a great partner to the city, and we appreciate the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the work, and share their vision for a safe and inclusive Nashville,” Sussman said.