Nashville is a city built for cars.  It has expansive, wide roads with the city at the intersection of two main interstates that get flooded with cars every single day.  If you don’t have a car in Nashville, you can hardly get anywhere — or so I thought.  Coming back from London, I’m spending the month of June in Nashville without a car.  Here are my thoughts on the first week.

Transportation

By some amazing fortune, I am a 15-minute walk from work and a 10-minute walk from shopping centers.  This saves me a huge amount of money on gas and a ton of time cutting my commute to a leisurely stroll.  Also, Nashville’s public transit is much better than I thought.  Nashville has a way more comprehensive bus system than I imagined.

I think the main reason the perception is so bad, though, is because they lack any useful signage at many of the stops.  This makes the bus stops look desolate and abandoned, a stark contrast to London’s extremely well labeled stops featuring electronic displays, maps, and timetables.  Nashville MTA has been doing a good job on the virtual side, getting the bus system integrated with Google Maps, and posting a great deal of content about the routes on their website.  But that’s not where the work needs to be done.  It needs to be done on the streets to make the transit system worth taking.  They should work on providing timetables and maps on-site, not online.

Exploration

Without a car, I am removed from the parts of Nashville that I know the best: the surrounding Vanderbilt area and downtown.  This means it is significantly more difficult to fall back into routine, visiting the same old restaurants from the last few years.  But with tools like Yelp and Urbanspoon, I discovered there are a multitude of good restaurants just a few minutes’ walk away.  The city feels much bigger and unfamiliar, a refreshing feeling in a city that is smaller than Seattle and pales in comparison to London.

Limitations

The freedom that a car provides is certainly missed.  No Longer can I zip over to my favorite lunch spots, or to friends’ places without a moments’ notice.  It means life requires a little more planning and a little less spontaneity (not a good thing).  Errands also have become limited by their distance and my friends’ schedules if a car is necessary.  These shackles haven’t been in place since before I had my drivers’ license, rekindling a small piece of teen angst and further wander lust.  Also, one can’t underestimate how nice a car’s roof is on a rainy day!

A Balance

After living in London, and traveling around Europe, I have seen public transit working at its best.  With reliable, comprehensive, and timely service, public transit can completely replace the car by providing the same level of freedom, spontaneity, and convenience.  But most cities in the US fall well short of European public transit systems.  That’s why we as Americans have to strike a bit more of a balance.  Public transit for work, while continuing to use a car for personal use is the balance we should have while waiting for the US to catch up.  Using the buses/trains/whatever for work makes sense because our work schedule is already planned out - all we need to do is find the right route to take each morning and evening.  This doesn’t limit us in anyway so long as the service is available.  Until US systems have the reliability, comprehensive coverage, and timely schedules, of their European counterparts the car will remain the best and easiest option for less planned personal trips, however.

Apologies for the perhaps lackluster quality of this article - sleep deprivation initially induced by jet-lag, made worse by an inhumanely (self-imposed) busy schedule have taken their toll.  Thought I should write something though, even if it’s drivel. —Riley