I don’t commute via mass transit now because I walk to work, but at my previous suburban apartment, I didn’t use it because it was incredibly inconvenient and saved me neither time, money nor much gas/environmental harm. I lived in Cool Springs and work at Vandy, and had there been a commuter rail or express bus with a reasonable schedule out to Williamson County I would have been all over it. As it was, there was one bus into town from Brentwood per day, and I’d still have to drive six miles to catch it during the day’s heaviest traffic.

I moved here from Chapel Hill, NC (although I’m a native Tennessean), and really miss the Chapel Hill bus system. Granted, CH is an entirely different animal than Nashville, given that just about everyone is trying to get to and from one central place, but it does have a) generally convenient schedules and b) a web site that doesn’t make you give up in frustration trying to figure out a schedule. The couple of times I have thought about taking the bus in Nashville, I’ve given up just because I can’t figure out the web site that’s supposed to be giving me the information I need.

I ride the bus occasionally, but it doesn’t work well with a family.

The bus is only useful when it doesn’t matter what time I get home, since it adds almost 1.5 hours to my return commute.

Most parents with kids to pick up or ferry to practice can’t roll like that.

It’s all about the in-town transit. When the western leg gets done (of COURSE, it’s going to be last), I’d take the Star in a second if I could get TO my office near Centennial Park before 8:00. Or if I could get my kids TO their school in the Vandy area before 8:00.
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If I ever run for mayor, I would double the number of MTA busses, and hire the guy who runs the Disney transportation center. And I think Nashvillians would accept a tax increase to pay for it if it meant less donut county people on the roads.

What S & F said.

My work day ends at 6:00 p.m. in Sylvan Park; the last Music City Star train leaves downtown at 5:55 p.m. Sure, I could leave early, 1-1/2 hours early, walk to Charlotte Pike and 46th, take a bus to Deaderick and then catch another shuttle to the train station, to the Music City Star Hermitage station and drive the last nine miles home, but, it just seems a bit too inconvenient.

Did the math at Webspun Ideas, and for the amount spent on the Star, you could have bought every rider a $60,000 Hummer2. Or 2 1/2 Priuses (Prii?) I’d be willing to bet there would be similar results if you did the math for the bus system too.

Hell, I’d like a Prius or two. Not a Hummer, though, I’d go wrecking it into everything.

Hell, if Americans used modern gasoline scooters for just 10% of their travel, 14 million gallons of gas and 324 million pounds of carbon dioxide would be spared each day.

Think how many nice scooters all that moola would buy!
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How many buses could we buy if our tax dollars weren’t paying for highway maintenance?

I’m dying to take the Music City Star. I live in Hermitage and work at Vanderbilt so it would be perfect for me. There are two thousand nurses at Vanderbilt…not even mentioning the other hospitals in the area..and most of us get off at 7 or later.. If they extended the hours on the Star by a couple of hours, their numbers would go up.

I’ve been riding the bus some lately, and it’s just not very convenient or flexible. Last week, we had a work picnic at Centennial Park and the afternoon off. Had to catch a bus from the Park to downtown, then downtown to near home. The Park and home are <4 miles apart. The entire bus trip took ~2 hours (including waiting on each bus). I just don't think public transportation is going to catch on as long as the bus routes are so infrequent - who's going to wait >half an hour in the middle of the day just to get on a bus, unless they absolutely have to?

The Metro bus system was originally designed to take people from North Nashville and allow them to get to their house cleaning jobs in the affluent parts of the city. Although that has changed over the years, it still isn’t responsive enough to be able to et people from their homes to their work locations simply. Nashville has grown up too spread out and uncentralized for the most part. There are no busses that go within several miles of my work (and the trip is all uphill in the snow both ways) and at best 10 miles from my home.

I think they messed up putting the MCS to Lebanon first. Up until this last February, I was living in the boro. Many times I wanted to go see some friends in Nashville, and have some drinks, but didn’t want to stay the night, and couldn’t drive home. If the Star ran from the boro to downtown, I think a lot of college students would use it to go party in Nashville. Not to mention, that average commute time to downtown from Murfreesboro is over an hour during the morning drive.

What Justin said. I live in Murfreesboro (the freaking south side, too), and if the MCS ran from the boro to Nashville (ok, West End) I would be on that thing like white on rice. While I doubt I’d take it every single day, on the whole I’d rather spend two hours on a train than than two hours bitching out the crazy asshole drivers I have to deal with twice each day. Christ almighty, can you tell I’m getting fed up?!

I live in Lebanon so I know a little bit about the rail. It’s not that cheap ($10 a day unless you buy the monthly plan) and it’s not very convenient–two things Americans absolutely love. Also, it doesn’t run on the weekends (except for Titans’ games and other special occasions)and that’s when many of us would like to visit downtown.

I have always been a bus rider and probably always will. When the train was about to be functional, a friend at work was excited about it. She was going to start taking the train in from Lebanon everyday. I tried explaining that the schedule wouldn’t work for her. She thought I was just being negative. When the schedule came out she e-mailed me to tell me I was right. She would be getting home about an hour to an hour and a half later that she was now. I never had any intentions of riding it, because I knew it wouldn’t be time worthy. MTA has messed up their schedules also. I live in Mt. Juliet and have to go to Hermitage Plaza to catch the bus because we no longer have a Mt. Juliet bus. I work in Metro Center and it is a pretty long ride. There used to be busses that went straight from Hermitage to Metro Center without having to transfer busses downtown. Guess what?? They stopped that too so now we have to transfer. They keep talking about trying to get ridership up, but they do everything they can to make it harder and more difficult on the riders. They cut routes where they are needed the most and add routes where they are not needed. If they want ridership to go up, then they need to work with us and not against us.

I ride the bus because its good for me. But so is oatmeal

I see that there are now 3 morning inbound trains. Still, it’s hard for me to see why they couldn’t adjust the schedule slightly in order to have a fourth inbound train arriving by 8:50. Don’t most workplaces start at 9:00? Is there so little business near the station that everyone needs to take a connecting shuttle bus somewhere, so that 8:15 is the latest anyone wants to get downtown. Here in Chicago, I can’t even imagine a train schedule optimized around 8:15 arrivals. It looks to me like the 2nd inbound run could be turned and run back to Mt. Juliet for an additional run. The first train turns and runs back to Mt. Juliet, but it lays over at Riverfront from 6:35 to 6:58. If the second inbound train could be turned in 10 minutes instead of 23, and if it could then be turned in Mt. Juliet in 8 instead of 13, voila, you’ve got a 4th run arriving downtown at 8:55. Same could be done in the evening. It just seems like you’d want to optimize use of the equipment and the capital investment, not to mention staff time, since it can’t be worth paying an engineer and conductor to run inbound and back outbound once in the morning when you could get a 2nd run from them.

The other thing that I’d mention — commuters need service that help them adapt to the commuting lifestyle. In my experience, it’s really important to have a grocery store, day care and a dry cleaner right near the suburban station. This makes any time lost to the commute less of a big deal, because you gain it back by not having to make extra trips when you step off the train. If your car is parked at the station, you can grab your groceries and go. Or better yet if you live near the suburban station.

So commuter operations take some time for housing and business patterns to adapt to the new resource. If there’s anyone reading this, maybe you might want to consider opening such a business. In a decade, when the train-riding lifestyle has caught on, you’ll be sitting on a goldmine.

My personal view on commuter travel in and around Nashville may differ from some people, but living in Murfreesboro, in the proposed Southeast corridor, I must say that the bus system to Nashville is inconvenient, and reminds me of riding a greyhound bus… a really long trip, that I cannot control, with people I don’t know, that arrives hours later to my destination than needs be…
The little green buses that run around Murfreesboro are ridiculous, for now… they don’t go to the suburban areas (and I live less than 2 miles from exit 81A), and so I would have to drive to get to the little green buses, wait, and then ride all around town to get to my destination 5 miles away. By the way, only a small handful of riders can ride on each bus at one time… They can be helpful, perhaps, if a commuter rail system were initiated, but until then, they are useless. I would rather drive my car.
The commuter rail system idea, however, has some promise!! There are older stations already on the proposed CSX line that would be, or could be, utilized, both in Smyrna, and Murfreesboro, and rail systems tend to make a straighter shot through town to arrive at the ultimate destination, instead of making circles around town, and with a more timely schedule, and in co-operation with the “little green buses” here in Murfreesboro, shopping, work, and extra-curricular activities could be enjoyed by so many families like mine, college students at MTSU, and the general population in the fastest growing area of Tennessee… also, the money saved that is not burned up by sitting in traffic for over an hour on I-24 to Nashville every day would be good as well… also, maybe it is just me, but aren’t the train stations on the Music City Star line, as well as the trains themselves, so much more cheery and full of light, than the dreary buses and MTA stations of downtown Nashville??
My vote is for the Southeast Corridor to be completed for the Music City Star, and sooner, than later!!