Music City Central

BOOOOOO! The airport bus «express» just blew by the Courtyard stop after I’ve been waiting for half an hour. Guess Nashville really does wanna make money off the tourists! Über time!

Okay, let’s get down to business. The buses aren’t my beef here; they’re almost always on time. It’s the building and the drivers that I can’t stand at times. Let’s knock out the drivers first: MTA is supposed to have drivers that are COMPLETELY focused on the road in order to get passengers to their destination safely and I find 49% of Route 55 drivers honking at old friends or random people on the side of the road while the bus is in motion. If they’re going to be doing that, they need to do it on their own time or when there are 0 passengers on board their assigned buses for that day. Some drivers just plain don’t like their jobs; I hear stuff like «I can’t wait to get off this bus» or «I can’t wait until my break» when I jump on some Routes. Also, some of the drivers downright discriminate against you, laughing at you when you hop on the buses with a full grocery load in tow (Route 15 on weekend nights). Some of the drivers make me sick. I don’t care what they say about me after their shifts, but they don’t need to be doing all these things if Metro’s Code of conduct is to get passengers to their destination safely. On to the building: the only major complaint I can launch about the building itself is that the bathrooms are a disaster, especially the stalls. Some of the Men’s stalls need to be repaired as quick as possible.
This is my review of the MTA system. I gave it ²⁄₅ stars because the cruelty and the recklessness of some drivers and the poor maintenance of the restrooms. Fix these problems, Metro Transportation, and you and I will be very good friends.

Clean, well-​organized, and the buses that I have caught here have been more on-​time than other stops in the city. I think this is where they do a bit of schedule-​adjusting if they are running a touch ahead. Very convenient to lots of downtown locales.

Christmas Day bus ride to Sperry’s from the East Side. All went smoothly, bus change here, bays upstairs and downstairs and a nice warm toasty waiting room with screens telling you how many minutes and what bay your bus will come into. Restrooms were clean, did not see anywhere to get a coffee or snack but was not really looking. The buses were on time and the drivers all very helpful and chipper. It would be nice if transfer tickets were cheaper like other cities but no matter it was all a rollicking adventure for us.

The best part about Music City Central is the Dunkin Donuts. I actually miss riding the bus because of my morning stopover in their store. They really had it down to a science. As for the bus terminal it’s nice, they tend to be on time in the morning and overall they are getting better. At night it gets a little sketchy but they do police it quite well. My big complaint isn’t about Music City Central per se, it’s the fact that I can’t get on a bus on the east side and ride it over to the west side, or Vandy, or whatever you want to call it, without stopping over. I need the 56 Limited to skip Music City Central and keep going straight down West End, or Hillsboro. Sigh, a girl can dream.

Music City Central is the hub where all of the MTA buses start/​terminate. It’s a convenient place to transfer to your next bus. Just keep in mind that there’s an upstairs section for the buses you don’t see downstairs. And you should probably use an app or hit Google Maps which tells you which parking bay your next bus is awaiting you. Each bay is numbered, but that number will not necessarily represent the number of your bus. Other than that, I honestly would not know where to go if I hadn’t come prepared. Perhaps there is an information desk upstairs, which I did not need to use during my few times here.
Although it’s open air, the place gets hot (at least when I was here during the summer), even though it’s a covered location. There are a handful of seats for each bay. And at least at my bay, there was a wall filled with all of the other buses’ schedules. There is an electronic sign letting you know when your bus is *supposed* to get there. It was only my second time using the bus when my bus came roughly 15 minutes later than it was scheduled.
There is a waiting room with extra seats at one end of the station. But I personally don’t see the convenience of it if you’re time-​conscious and like to hurry when your bus comes around.
Outside of the station on Charlotte Street, I believe there is a Dunkin’ Donuts.

I take the bus to and from work almost every day. It’s relatively clean and the drivers are– for the most part– nice. They have a Dunkin Donuts inside.
I just wish they could clean out the buses more often. The seats tend to have stains on them and I’d rather not sit on a seat that looks like that. Considering I was told they pay the cleaning people $ 20/​hr, I don’t think they do a very good/​consistent job.
Overall, if you need a quick, inexpensive way to get around, this is it.