Why People Don't Ride Public Transit in Small Cities

Booming regions like Charlotte and Nashville are stuck: Residents love their cars, so support—and justification—for expanding bus and rail systems is hard to find.

Alana Semuels | 10:27 AM ET

NASHVILLE—This is one of America’s booming cities. An average of 82 people move here every day, amounting to a growth rate of 12.7 percent between 2000 and 2013. ... And, as is the case in many booming cities, the traffic is terrible.

Congestion costs the average Nashville auto commuter 45 hours a year, according to an annual Urban Mobility Scorecard prepared by Texas A&M. There’s little public transit in Nashville, and most people get around by car: Drive around one of the city’s hot areas—The Gulch, Germantown, Downtown—on just about any night and you’ll see parking lots chock full of giant cars and people driving around in automobiles, looking for places to put them.
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But, even if the city could find the money for a new light-rail line, would people use it? Like most Americans outside the biggest cities, people in Nashville are accustomed to using their cars. According to Census data from 2009, fewer than 3 percent of workers in the Nashville metro area used public transit to commute to work, making the city less public-transit-friendly than Houston, Richmond, Memphis, Tampa, and Kansas City, to name a few.

Evidence from other cities indicates that even if Nashville somehow finds the money to put into light rail or bus rapid transit, it could be challenging to get people to use those systems. And though transit may reduce congestion temporarily, commuters will return to the roads once they see traffic is down.