The New Year brings expanded bus service between Murfreesboro and Music City.  Two new bus routes and a number of other service improvements are in effect.

Murfreesboro Transportation Director Dana Richardson noted that many of the improvements directly affect this community.

The three bus routes are known as Route 84-X, which is the Murfreesboro Express; along with 86-X to Smyrna and LaVergne.

Richardson said, “We are definitely ramping up service between Nashville and Rutherford County. This is a three year experiment to see if expanded regional service between Murfreesboro, Smyrna and LaVergne is viable. Federal funding will underwrite a majority of the cost of this expansion which increases the traditional service of 16 trips per day between Rutherford County and Nashville to 31 trips per day. The expanded RTA service was also designed to provide connection between Murfreesboro’s Rover public transportation system and the RTA buses so that users of our local system can transfer to and from Nashville buses at the transfer center located at the intersection of Walnut and Burton streets”.

The Route 84-X Murfreesboro Express begins service at Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU), continues to a new Park-‘n-Ride lot located at the North Boulevard Church of Christ on North Rutherford Boulevard, and then continues on to Rutherford and Northfield boulevards and Northwest Broad Street then directly to downtown Nashville via SR-840 and I-24.

Besides MTSU, the Route 21 University Connector will provide cross-town service connecting six universities including Tennessee State University, Meharry Medical College, Fisk University, Vanderbilt University, Belmont University and Lipscomb University. 

In Nashville, buses will travel via the new 28th/31st Avenue Bridge every 30 to 60 minutes on weekdays and hourly on weekends.