Opinion | Nashville’s Transit Plan will Improve our Health

Bill Frist | Opinion

Operating on a heart — opening the chest cavity, sawing through the breastbone, placing the patient on heart-lung bypass, and finally cutting into the body’s most vital muscle — is always the last resort.

As heart surgeons, we tell our patients they can avoid such drastic surgery by acting to prevent heart disease.

If Nashville’s roadways were my patient’s arteries, I’d tell her there are still preventive steps to take — but we need to act now. The alternative is to die of a heart attack or at best need painful surgery later.

Investing in a transit plan today is our preventive medicine. But if we vote down the transit plan on May 1, we are headed for total gridlock — the equivalent of a heart attack — and we will never be quite the same.

Read more in The Tennessean.