by Mark Bellinger
NASHVILLE, Tenn. - Baby boomers may face a public transportation crisis in Middle Tennessee in as few as four years. A new study lists the Nashville area as one of the worst in the country.
The study by Transportation for America was released Tuesday. Middle Tennessee is fourth on that list.
It predicts more than 85 percent of older adults won't have adequate access to public transportation in the Nashville area in just four years.
Downtown resident Gary Stewart understands the issue. He moved downtown, and gave up his car. Stewart relies on public transportation.
"I have learned I don't need the car, haven't missed it at all with all the car payments and the insurance," said Stewart.
He said giving up the car is easy downtown, but not out in the suburbs. Before he moved Stewart lived in Bellevue.
He rode an MTA Express bus downtown, but he needed to drive a car to a bus stop. Without a car he would have been in trouble.
"How would I have gotten there? I would have been stuck in my house and before moving here I would have been stuck in my apartment," Stewart explained.
The Transportation for America study said with thousands of baby boomers retiring and getting older more seniors will want to give up their cars, and without some changes to public transportation, many of them will be stuck at home.
"We want to live in the same place. We've paid off our mortgage. We've sent our kids to school and now we're empty nesters, and then we get to an age when we can't drive anymore or we can't afford the gas on our social security checks," Dave Keiser of Transit Now Nashville said.
In Nashville, there is a long range plan. RTA board member Ed Cole said planners are considering several options.
"This is urban street car on Broadway West and this is in Portland, Oregon. I think this is a real possibility," Cole said.
Planners are studying a proposal to put urban street cars on Broadway Avenue and West End Avenue and link them to Five Points in East Nashville.
Cole also said the Metro Planning Organization is studying ways to get mass transit out in the suburbs.
"It's a combination of looking at corridors like Murfreesboro to Nashville and Gallatin to Nashville and Lebanon to Nashville. We're adding express bus services," Cole added.
The RTA has added new service from Springfield to Nashville.
Stewart said they are steps in the right direction, but more needs to be done.
"If you live two, three or four miles from a bus stop how do you get there?" asked Stewart.
The rest of the list has Kansas City at the top. Then it's Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Nashville and Raleigh-Durham.
Services like MTA's Access Ride and the Mid-Cumberland Human Resource Agency provide service to eligible residents. In the last five years Access Ride rider ship has increased almost 30 percent.
Improvements take a lot of money. Traditionally most of the money has come from the federal government.
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