Nashville's lack of sidewalks sparks campaign

Green lawns push directly up against the narrow, unmarked lane where Stacy Dorris lives in West Nashville. It leaves little room for her to go on a stroll with her kids through the neighborhood.

She learned that the hard way in October after she tried to walk to nearby Elmington Park. Cars came dangerously close as they zoomed past.

"We literally had to abort the mission," she said. "I feared for my life."

For Dorris, a pediatrician at Vanderbilt, the missing sidewalks in her neighborhood and across the city represent one of the biggest downsides for living in Nashville.

For years, the city has lagged behind some other cities in sidewalk building. The city's 2003 strategic plan for sidewalks and bikeways found that for every three miles of road, there was roughly just a mile of sidewalks. That was about on par with Charlotte, N.C., but it lagged behind Portland, Ore., and Indianapolis.

Since then, hundreds of miles of sidewalks have been built, and nowadays sidewalk miles amount to just less than half of the county's total road miles. But Dorris said the city is still having a hard time catching up.

"I feel like Nashville has so many good things about it ... and yet we're kind of missing one big piece of infrastructure," she said. "I feel like it's holding (the city) back."

Part of the problem, she said, is that it's cheaper for builders to pay a fee that waives the requirement to build a sidewalk than it is to construct one.

Developers have been required to build sidewalks since 1991, said Craig Owensby, a spokesman for the Metro Planning Department. In 2002, the city added a rule that allowed the developers to pay a fee to avoid building sidewalks.

The fee — which was set at $92 for every foot of sidewalk the developer would have needed to build — went to a pot of money set aside that the city could later spend on improvements.

But in a bid to encourage more infill development, city officials in 2012 made changes that effectively lowered the fee for developers, Owensby said.

The fee is now a flat rate, depending upon the size of the development, but the most a developer would pay for not building sidewalks is $500 to $1,500.

Dorris, 40, has called on public officials to reverse that decision and increase the fee to make it more attractive for developers to construct the sidewalks when creating new lots.

"A developer has very little incentive because they don't have to physically do it," she said. "All that stuff takes time and energy."

The low fees also have a hard time amounting to enough to cover the cost of sidewalks projects. The city collected about $42,000 in fees in 2013. A recent estimate to create sidewalks along Bowling Avenue at West End Middle School put the project cost at $1.2 million, Dorris said.

She recently highlighted the sidewalk waiver fee in her blog, which she started last fall in a bid to bring attention to the need for more and better sidewalks.

Her goal is to get more people talking about sidewalks in hopes that the conversation leads to improvements for Nashville's walkers, ultimately improving mobility and health in the city.

"I felt like no one was talking about it," she said. "When you have good sidewalks, you don't even think about them."

More attention to the need for sidewalks could also lead to an increase in pedestrian safety, she said. A report released in May by an advocacy group on pedestrian and urban design issues identified Nashville as the 15th most dangerous city for pedestrians.

As more people move to Nashville, the need for sidewalks will only grow, Dorris said, and it'll be cheaper to add them now than in the future.

"People are going to want that walkability, and if we don't do it now, it's going to get harder and more expensive," she said.

Reach Josh Brown at 615-726-5964 and on Twitter @joshbrownnews.

Nashville Sidewalks Facts

Total miles: 1,076

Ratio of sidewalks miles to roads miles: 0.45 to 1

Miles built in 2013: 33

Total miles built since 2008: 200

Source: Metro Public Works