Street View is a monthly column taking a close look at development-related issues affecting different neighborhoods throughout the city.
Junior Garcia works at an auto shop on Nolensville Pike, and he’s been living nearby for most of his life. “This street is my bread and butter,” he says.
Like many people who live and work near Nolensville Pike, Garcia says he sees one to two car accidents on the busy road every week. That isn’t surprising. Nashville’s 2022 Vision Zero Action Plan named Nolensville Pike one of nine streets in its “High Injury Network,” a collection of the city’s most dangerous roadways. According to one estimate, 48 crashes on Nolensville Pike resulted in serious injuries or fatalities between 2017 and 2021. Thirty-seven of those crashes involved pedestrians at night.
But that could soon change. In December, the U.S. Department of Transportation awarded Nashville a $13 million grant to improve Nolensville Pike. The funding will go toward the Nashville Department of Transportation’s We Are Nolensville Pike initiative, a plan to improve a 2.5-mile stretch of Nolensville Pike between McCall Street and Haywood Lane. According to the USDOT funding website, the grant will help build new sidewalks, easier crossings, better lighting, safer bike lanes and improved bus stops.
Having grown up near Nolensville Pike, Garcia says he’s used to dangerous drivers. Crossing the road’s busy lanes is no problem for him, though he says it would probably be daunting for a newer Nashville resident. “Nolensville Pike is pretty much known for everyone driving crazy,” he says. “But I mean, I do feel safe. Growing up around this area, I’ve gotten used to it.”
But for others, it’s not as easy. Metro Councilmember Sandra Sepulveda represents District 30, which borders Nolensville Pike and contains part of the USDOT grant area. When asked how the current road design affects her constituents, she brings up John Bull, who is visually impaired and regularly volunteers with the unhoused community. Bull rides the bus every day, Sepulveda says, and is “acutely aware of how dangerous certain intersections can be.” Sepulveda references another constituent as well: Christian, a teacher and “avid bike rider” living in District 30. “He feels that it’s too dangerous to walk the 0.2 miles from his house to the bus stop because of the lack of sidewalks to Nolensville Pike,” Sepulveda says.
Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston represents District 26, which also borders Nolensville Pike and contains a portion of the USDOT grant area. “This project is important to all communities,” Johnston says. “But with the emphasis on pedestrian safety, those populations that are limited to walking and public transit especially benefit. Making all forms of modality as safe as possible helps facilitate a better quality of life for everyone.”
Nolensville Pike represents a structural challenge for Nashville. A 2017 joint study from Conexión Américas and Transportation for America calls it a “stroad” — a street/road hybrid that isn’t really suited for either use. Nolensville Pike is a wide arterial highway connecting Nashville’s downtown to its suburbs, but it also contains traffic lights, residential areas and other features of a street. Because of this, the study argues, it “does a poor job of either efficiently connecting two distant places or serving as a framework for creating lasting value and encouraging local trips.”
While Johnston tells the Scene Nolensville Pike — a state road — wouldn’t look different if the city owned it, Sepulveda believes otherwise. “If we purchased Nolensville Road we could design it with the community and safety in mind,” she says. “Can you imagine the 12South design on Nolensville Road? We’re talking about protected bike lanes, more bus shelters, safer pedestrian crossings — heck, we can also address language access when it comes to transit while we’re at it. The sky’s the limit.”
Nolensville Pike is also in what policymakers call a “vulnerable area,” meaning people facing discrimination and social disadvantages are more likely to live there. A Vision Zero case study found that people living in the Nolensville Pike area are more likely to be “renters, people of color, Hispanic, [or] live below 200% of the federal poverty line” than Nashville’s averages.
Nearly all over the city, Nashville’s most dangerous roads and intersections disproportionately affect vulnerable people. The Vision Zero study found that more than 30 percent of all dangerous and deadly collisions occur in vulnerable areas, despite these areas making up just 20 percent of the city’s population. These are figures for all modes of transportation, but for pedestrians, the numbers are even more striking: The same study notes that pedestrians walking near a bus stop in highly vulnerable areas are eight times more likely to be killed or severely injured than someone walking in another part of Nashville.
The area around Nolensville Pike is beloved for its diversity and culture. It’s central to one of the largest Kurdish populations in the United States as well as many of Nashville’s Latinx residents. Community groups like Conexión Américas have been advocating for improved local road infrastructure for years, arguing that a better Nolensville Pike would boost the local economy and make life around the road safer for everyone.
For some Nashville residents, the We Are Nolensville Pike project will make life easier: With better streets, taking a bus or walking to work or the grocery store will become more convenient and less dangerous. But better infrastructure ultimately benefits all Nashvillians. Relying less on cars means less stress on Nashville’s roads, fewer accidents, less traffic and better air quality. Nashvillians overwhelmingly support the kind of infrastructure improvements the USDOT grant promises too — more than half of the respondents in Metro’s Vision Zero study supported strategies to make walking and biking safer.
While the timeline for improvements to Nolensville Pike has not yet been released, NDOT documents shared with the Scene show a proposed four-year strategy, with design and planning happening from 2024 to 2026, and bidding and construction planned for 2026 to 2028.
Whatever is in store for Nolensville Pike, USDOT’s grant will help Nashville’s infrastructure keep up with its growth. This change can’t come soon enough. When safe infrastructure happens sooner, fewer people die in preventable car accidents.
