Imagine an analog clock face. Draw a line from 12 o’clock to 6 o’clock. Draw another line from 11 o’clock to 5 o’clock. Now draw the third and final line from 9 o’clock to 3 o’clock. Now we have completed simplifying the highway system of Nashville.
At 12 o’clock is Hendersonville, Gallatin etc. while at towards 6 o’clock is Brentwood, and Franklin. At 11 o’clock is Clarksville while 5 o’clock is the direction of LaVergne, Smyrna, Murfreesboro and all of Rutherford County. At 9 o’clock is Fairview and Dickson, while towards 3 o’clock is Hermitage and Mt. Juliet. These I mention are just some of the 12 counties of suburbs and bedroom communities of Nashville and not including eventual destination areas served by these highways.
Now, let’s put 1.9 million people in these areas. many of whom have jobs and have to travel to work on one of these three highways. And the jobs usually begin and end each day at roughly the same time. Stir in a little cowboy in each of us who are on the road, and there you have got it – a traffic reporter’s dream!
In Nashville, we have people, from time to time, who come up with a commuter rail plan like those which have worked in other cities. We had one recently make it so far in the approval process, that the public had the chance to show their support of the plan and the taxes it would cost them. They didn’t want it.
If we took a train, where would we leave our pick up trucks, and how would we carry our saddles?
But this is just an occasional minor irritation. The only reason I bring it up here is because sometimes tourists and visitors to our city remark about our traffic. And yes the traffic is always worse on Friday. People get paid, and sometimes stop at the grocery store on the way home.
It’s been like this for a while. In 1895 H G Hill had a grocery store downtown, but by 1906 he had 12 around Nashville. Mr. Hill shrewdly began putting a grocery store at the end of the trolley lines, so on Fridays folks wouldn’t have to carry their groceries on the ride home. This explains the placement of may of the stores.
Unfortunately now, many of the H G Hill stores have closed, and the trolleys have, too, the first failure of a light rail system in Nashville. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that Hill soon discovered the real estate on which the stores sat was a much more profitable business than the grocery trade. In future days we will prove this theory with discussions of the Hill mansion and a lot of the commercial real estate here in town.
