Published as an Op-ed at tennessean.com

In Nashville’s low-density suburbs and surrounding counties, those who can’t drive have limited access to job opportunities and services – and they are poorly served by public transit. Those who can drive face commuting long distances during peak periods on highly congested freeways. The solution for these two commuter groups across Nashville’s seven-county regional area isn’t freeway expansion as proposed by the Choice Lane initiative, projected to consume five times the total state-wide annual budget of TDOT while only serving Southeast Corridor residents.

Expansion is too costly (as high as $95 million per lane-mile1), too slow, and doesn’t really work long-term: A few years after any highway is widened, traffic increases to fill new supply, a reality acknowledged by TDOT for decades. What’s required is an action plan that applies to the reality of right now, supports growth with courageous experimentation and political leadership. Nashville could realize equitable, sustainable congestion relief within five years, and best accommodate any building program, by activating multimodal travel options that are practical, proven, and self-financing — namely, Flexi-Choice lanes, cash rewards for smart mobility choices, and active traffic management with part-time shoulder travel lanes. These innovations require little or no expansion of the freeway footprint, thereby avoiding or minimizing lengthy impact reviews, permitting processes, environmental impacts, and construction costs.

WHAT ARE FLEXI-CHOICE LANES?

Flexi-Choice lanes are created by using existing HOV or regular lanes with variable tolls only imposed during peak periods of congestion, with net toll revenues financing investment and cash rewards. During peak periods drivers pay tolls, but transit buses and carpools use the lanes free of charge. During off-peak periods, all the lanes are open to all drivers with no tolls, consistent with existing federal and state laws. Flexi-Choice lanes with rewards and traffic management expand travel choices for all – not just for those who can afford to drive and may choose to pay a toll. Bundling Flexi-Choice lanes with cash rewards and traffic management, unlike road expansion alone, will increase regional and local accessibility for all commuters to jobs and other opportunities, yielding net gains for equity.

CASH REWARDS

Research shows a single car entering a congested freeway at the beginning of a 3-hour peak period creates a total delay to all vehicles behind it of 3.3 hours, valued at $56 in economic cost. That means incentivizing the driver of that vehicle to ride as a passenger with another commuter is worth as much as $56 per trip to everyone, at a tiny fractional cost. Cash rewards are cost-effective in inducing commuters to share rides in carpools or transit, especially in combination with free-flowing Flexi-Choice lanes that transit and carpool vehicles use free.

ACTIVE TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT WITH PART-TIME SHOULDER TRAVEL LANES

Shoulder travel lanes have been implemented in 16 states in the U.S. to provide inexpensive extra road capacity. Converting the right shoulder of Nashville’s freeways to a part-time travel lane, open to use only during congested periods when Flexi-Choice lanes charge tolls will reduce congestion to drivers in the free lanes during peak periods and maintain the same number of lanes for use, free of charge to motorists during periods when Flexi-Choice lanes charge tolls. The shoulder lane is reverted to a safety shoulder during non-peak periods when Flexi-Choice lanes are free.

To see congestion relief within 5 years, we must start now with:

1. Scenario planning.
2. Seeking Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Congestion Relief Program and P3 concession funding to begin prioritized Flexi-Choice and shoulder lane construction.
3. Enforcement of HOV lane restrictions (manually today while adopting proven automated technology tomorrow).
4. Incentivizing carpoolers, vanpoolers, and transit riders with matching grant funds through the Greater Nashville Regional Council.
5. One obvious construction policy change: fix the choke points first.

These proven traffic innovations dovetail with Nashville’s Choose How You Move initiative (currently on the ballot) by transforming the existing auto-centric freeway system into a more efficient, sustainable, and equitable multimodal system that is optimized for faster overall automobile transit times. It all happens on the same timeline as new Davidson County infrastructure comes online, offering greater utilization of high-quality transit service, with first mile/last-mile services to and from improved mobility hubs.