Reflections on Riding Every Nashville Bus Route

Most people have bucket lists full of their goals, aspirations, and adventures. Throughout high school, I curated what has since been dubbed the ‘bus-ket’ list: a checklist in my phone’s Notes app containing every bus route in Nashville with checkmarks beside ones I’ve ridden. My goal was to ride all forty-three before I graduated.

This quest soon caught the attention of a Nashville news station who profiled my passion for transit on the heels of Nashville's November 2024 Transit Referendum to provide the city with dedicated public transit funding through a sales tax increase. I got to share my experiences and what I had learned with a larger Nashville community while the topic of transit was at the forefront of our city's future. Admittedly, I struggled to articulate myself amidst the change and chaos of graduation season, but in the many months (and a semester of college!) separating me from that time of my life, I have had time to reflect on how the city bus has shaped not only my childhood but also the future that lays ahead of me. Below are some of those thoughts.

WeGo Public Transit's system map. The system consists of 43 routes (including a single commuter rail line to the east). Red routes denote frequent service, purple regular service, and blue commuter service.

Some of my earliest memories are on the city bus, traveling across Nashville with my mom. I jumped at any opportunity to explore my city through the windows of seldom-ridden WeGo buses. When I was four, my mom and I would take the bus to get a hotdog at Costco or to cookouts with family friends, which involved changing buses downtown.

I was mesmerized by the different buses pit-stopping at the station, like worker bees coming to and from their hive on a mission. I pointed them out as they passed me by: “caterpillar” double-length buses with accordions in the middle, buses that made loud noises when they braked, and the shortest buses, which I called “box trucks.” Despite my lifelong fascination with bus-riding, I often receive scoffs from the average Nashvillian who’s never once stepped foot on a “filthy/dirty/grimy” city bus.

In riding the city bus to and from school every day, I encountered a remarkable cast of characters riding the bus, like “Ms. Smiley,” who bared her teeth like a wolf at everyone on the bus, even as the bus rear-ended the car ahead of us. I met a man who worked diligently on some of the most intricate charcoal portraits I’d ever seen, despite the turbulence expected from the bus and Nashville's infamous potholes. I watched a guy valiantly struggle to tame the 60” flat screen television he boarded with, taking up three seats and part of the aisle. Most memorably, I met John, a native Chicagoan who talked with me for forty minutes about life, travel, and how small it feels to exist in such a large world. He concluded with a prayer, thanking God for leading him to such a kind young man – he didn’t believe in coincidences. His prayer transformed my view of religion, and I finally understood the comfort others found in God’s Creation, more so than I ever did when my Mimi explained it.

From a planning perspective, the hub-and-spoke model of the transit system gave me insight into the way that transit doesn't work for the majority of Nashvillians that don't work in the same neighborhood that they live in. Buses also gave me the ability to experience the urban fabric of Nashville and the facets of its built environment that give it such a unique sense of place. Taking routes around the outer loop of the city let me watch distinct neighborhoods morph into each other in a much more visual way than taking interstate exits that spit you out at your destination. Seeing gentrified 12th South morph into the affordable housing developments of Edgehill gave me a more refined understanding of how the city developed; it felt like driving back in time as high rise apartments gave way to boarded up warehouses and parking lots with weeds growing through the cracks.

Buses have championed my outlook on cities and fostered my career interest in urban planning by allowing me to see urban areas in a new light. Pursuing bus-ket list routes, I fulfilled my childhood wanderlust of exploring my city and experiencing new neighborhoods. I thank WeGo for transporting me beyond just my destination; I cherish the connections I made through interactions with strangers, and I’ll treasure my frantic sprints across the Music Garden to make the early Route 55 home on Wednesday afternoons forever.