Transformational Mobility Improvements Tailored to Secure Communitywide Support

• HDR guided a multistakeholder effort to build communitywide support for the largest transportation investment in the history of Nashville.
• Planned investments include 54 miles of high-capacity transit, 285 bus stop enhancements, 592 smart traffic signals and 86 miles of new or upgraded sidewalks.
• Voters overwhelmingly approved the $3.1 billion funding plan during the November 2024 election.  

Nashville is one of the fastest growing cities in North America. The region is expected to gain about 1 million residents and reach 3 million people by 2045. Transportation infrastructure in the city has not kept pace with growing demand. For more than a decade, the City of Nashville studied and proposed transportation improvements to provide more reliable, safe and efficient mobility options but the plans were not fully funded or implemented and traffic congestion in the region continued to worsen.

In December 2023, the City of Nashville and the Nashville Metropolitan Transit Authority, also known as WeGo, asked HDR to develop a new transportation improvement plan (TIP) that would solve a broad spectrum of mobility issues and secure communitywide support for a long-term, 15-year funding plan.

New Transportation Plan Required New Thinking

We assembled a team of experienced transportation and community planners, engineers and professionals in infrastructure funding, public engagement and geospatial information management to deconstruct previously developed plans to better understand what stakeholders really wanted. At the same time, it was important to identify the cost basis associated with hundreds of potential investments and the broader impacts or value that these investments would bring to the community. 

Working with city officials and community groups, we assembled a new TIP program that was affordable, fundable, could generate communitywide voter support, and would deliver transformative mobility improvements to Nashville and Davidson County in the short term and during the course of its 15-year implementation. Our approach focused on a new transportation planning strategy that repackages, prioritizes and communicates proposed improvements based on the value delivered to the community at large, not just the benefits associated with one subset of mobility users.

Value-Capture Transportation Investments to Build Support

Nashville has studied and developed plans to improve public transportation within increasingly busy corridors for years. Our team studied the existing public transportation plan corridor by corridor, segment by segment to assess what improvements would be made, to what extent, how the various improvements aligned with each other and at what cost. By identifying, grouping, and valuing each core piece of the TIP, distinguishing which parts were most important to different community members, the team was able to better communicate the overall program’s value in terms that stakeholders would appreciate and be willing to support.

For example, a key part of the new transportation improvement plan included the addition of new bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors. BRT requires roadway and adjacent land improvements to support safe and reliable operation. These improvements include new smart traffic technology, new sidewalks and lighting, adjacent improvements to solve drainage issues and in some cases, creates new development and land use opportunities. By breaking down the proposed BRT program improvements into smaller parts, the team was successful in communicating the comprehensive benefits and how they aligned with community stakeholders’ needs. The result was a broad-based coalition that supported the implementation and funding of a defensible TIP.

Nashville Choose How You Move Transportation Improvement Plan

The 15-year TIP “Choose How You Move” plan was structured around four basic neighborhood building blocks — sidewalks, signals, service and safety. It includes 54 miles of “All-Access Corridors” featuring transit priority and significant roadway and signalization improvements. To identify and communicate to local and state officials how the improvements would be funded, HDR supported InfraStrategies in developing a financial model that outlines a long-term funding strategy to develop TIP implementation.

Essential infrastructure like 86 miles of upgraded or new sidewalks, 592 new or upgraded smart traffic signals, 39 miles of Complete Streets projects and 33 miles of additional improvements along high-injury corridors will make it make it safer for people walking, biking, riding or driving around Nashville.

Transit service is expected to improve with more frequent service, shorter wait times and later service hours. New routes will also connect destinations more efficiently. The plan also includes basic facilities required to run a reliable and efficient transit system, including 65 new buses, 285 bus stop enhancements, 12 new transit centers, 17 new park and ride facilities and two bus garages. Also, the plan provides for subsidized transit trips for low-Income residents of Davidson County who qualify.

Enhanced Communication Strategy Focused on Awareness & Benefits

Our strategic communications team helped build a communication plan, including the development of a brand identity for the plan initiative — “Choose How You Move.” A TIP document was produced to explain how the TIP will help all Nashvillians — not just transit users. A key factor in garnering communitywide support was incorporating the experiences of real people representing different groups within the community in the TIP document. We described how their lives would improve with the “Choose How You Move” plan, making it more relatable to a broad cross-section of Nashville and Davidson County. 

A timeline and graphic showed how Nashvillians, for the past decade, have consistently expressed in public meetings, surveys and workshops that what matters most are basic infrastructure building blocks like sidewalks. We embedded graphics that highlighted how many minutes Nashvillians can look forward to saving during their commutes and maps to show how the transportation improvements would transform Davidson County.

On Nov. 5, 2024, voters in Nashville overwhelmingly approved the half-penny sales tax increase to fund the “Choose How You Move” plan with 66% of the vote in support. Collection of the new sales tax began in February 2025 providing a dedicated source of revenue for Nashville to invest significant resources to resolve longstanding infrastructure issues in the fast-growing city.