Essay: Douglas Weinstein Essay:
ESSAY: DOUGLAS WEINSTEIN WALK BIKE NASHVILLE
My Service Scholar project was inspired by my combination of passion for biking and enjoyment of working with younger kids as a mentor. I partnered with Walk Bike Nashville (WBN), a nonprofit organization whose mission is to make Nashville a more “walk-able, bike-able, and live-able community,” with plans to run some of their biker safety clinics and camps for elementary school kids. These events are targeted at Metro Nashville students who otherwise would not learn to ride bikes as they may not have the resources to afford a bike. In this case, WBN also provides the bikes for the kids to ride during the clinics. However, this plan was thwarted when schools closed due to the pandemic. Pivoting, I found I could still accomplish my goal of helping teach kids how to bike, even if it weren’t the way I originally planned. Instead, my project involved expanding the infrastructure for bikers to support them when they were riding. Specifically, I installed bicycle FixIt stations and parking racks at local elementary schools and churches to support elementary school ridership and the entire cycling community. Part of my inspiration for getting involved with biking was my interest in addressing an alternative and healthier transportation method than driving cars: riding bikes! Over the past decade, Nashville has been one of the fastest growing cities in Tennessee and America. According to the 2020 Census, Davidson County’s population increased about 15%, Williamson County by 35%, and Rutherford County by 30% (Census). With its newfound growth, Nashville also started to experience some of the effects of expansion as it stretches the existing public transportation and highway systems. Citizens of Nashville experience heavy amounts of car traffic daily, causing congestion in our fast-growing city on a regular basis. With an underfunded and under-resourced public transportation system, the strains of Nashville’s meteoric growth were evident as early as 2015. By 2017, a $5.2 billion transit system bill was proposed to the people of Nashville, which would have expanded the public transportation system, including adding a light rail system connecting Nashville and adding tunnels for public transit. However, the bill did not pass. Additionally, Nashville’s aggressive real estate development strategy has added to the heavy congestion problem as well. Where one house stood, real estate developers tear it down and put up as many as six houses on the same lot (I lived in one of these houses when I first moved to Nashville!). These are frequently known as “tall and skinnies,” and with the density of neighborhoods increasing exponentially with newcomers moving to the city, it causes a marked increase in the numbers of cars in neighborhoods, saturating and overwhelming the traffic patterns. According to the Transit Center, the rapid growth and booming downtown tourism had ascended “traffic” to the top of Nashville residents’ list of concerns in 2017, surpassing even affordable housing and education (transitcenter). With Nashville’s transportation problem at an all-time high, citizens need to
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