The Metro Nashville Council has accepted millions in federal grant funds that just a year and a half ago were tied up amid a legal battle with the Trump administration.
On Sept. 15, the council rubber-stamped a resolution accepting a $9.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Transportation for the East Nashville Spokes project. It requires a local match of about $8 million, which according to this week’s council agenda will be allocated from funds for Nashville’s Choose How You Move transportation improvement program.
The project aims to increase bike and pedestrian infrastructure along Woodland Street, South Fifth Street, South 10th Street and Union Street in East Nashville, and will include the installation of separated bikeways and high-visibility
crosswalks.
The project has been in the works since spring 2023, and seemed poised to keep moving ahead after Nashville won the competitive $9.3 million grant under the federal Active Transportation Infrastructure Investment Program in January 2025. But its future quickly became mired in uncertainty as the Trump administration implemented freezes on congressionally-approved federal funding after the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
That led to Nashville joining five other cities and nearly a dozen nonprofits, led by the Southern Environmental Law Center, in filing a March 2025 lawsuit seeking to halt the funding freeze.
The suit noted that both the East Nashville Spokes project and a project upgrading and expanding Nashville’s electric vehicle charging infrastructure were caught up in the freeze. Planning for the latter project was thrown into disarray, according to the lawsuit, and the East Nashville Spokes project “languished in uncertainty” despite being incorporated as part of the larger Choose How You Move plan.
Two months later, U.S. District Judge Richard Mark Gergel issued a ruling prohibiting federal officials from freezing or terminating a majority of the grants reflected in the lawsuit, including Nashville's, and ordered the funding to be restored.
From here, the Spokes project still has some steps ahead before it comes to fruition. According to a project timeline on the city’s website, the Nashville Department of Transportation anticipates kicking off design work toward the end of this year, after required federal environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act is finalized.
Construction, meanwhile, is anticipated to begin more than two years from now in 2029.
Austin Hornbostel is the Metro reporter for The Tennessean. Have a question about local government you want an answer to? Reach him at ahornbostel@tennessean.com.
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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: After battle over federal funding, East Nashville bike project advances
