Long-term Nashville airport plans grapple with short-term traffic gridlock

From her black SUV, Amy Elrite watched, astonished, as travelers ditched gridlock and hiked toward the terminal while she waited nearly three hours.

As she inched closer to the Nashville International Airport terminal, more and more people jumped out of vehicles with frazzled looks on their faces hoping they could outrun the traffic with their luggage in tow.

Elrite and her son kept calm, even laughing at the situation.

"We've traveled back and forth between California and Tennessee for the last four years, so we know how it is and left our house with plenty of time," Elrite said. "But we were definitely in awe of the droves of people just leaving their cars and running to get to their flights."

It was Nov. 30, 2025, the fourth time BNA traffic seized up in three months, preventing many travelers from making flights.

After dropping off her son at the terminal, Elrite watched newly arrived visitors trudge down Donelson Pike in search of their Uber.

"I definitely think (Nashville airport) is just putting out fires as they arise," Elrite said. "Rather than looking ahead to see what types of situations could happen and having solutions in their back pocket."

The Metro Nashville Airport Authority has spent years planning for growth, projecting passenger demand through 2037 and a second terminal by 2070. It's the immediate problems, critics said, demanding more attention.

MNAA moved to reexamine its traffic mitigation plan in 2025, including an ongoing $300 million roadways expansion and emergency response timelines.

"We're preparing for today and the future," MNAA President and CEO Doug Kreulen said.

He likened the complicated nature of renovating the airport while continuing regular operations to the Tennessee Titans trying to build their new $2.2 billion Nissan Stadium while playing games daily.

"If this were the airport, we're playing a football game every day, and since 2017, it's like you've got to build a new stadium on top of this one while they're playing a football game," Kreulen said. "That's probably what people don't understand."

What caused Nashville airport gridlock in 2025? Overburdened roads, breakdowns and accidents

Following the series of major traffic disruptions in 2025, airport officials reevaluated plans.

“Every time we have a problem, we do an after-action," Kreulen said. "We had to figure out what was going on with Uber and Lyft because we didn’t know why these cars were there. We checked with everybody and their brother. There was no super 400,000-person convention. There was no NFL Draft. So why did this happen?"

MNAA reported 116,047 passengers on its busiest day in 2025, Oct. 5, and about 8,000 travelers arriving and departing from BNA per hour in peak times. Meanwhile, airport roads can handle 3,500 cars per lane each hour, and there are two lanes for most of the drive from I-40 up to the terminal.

That means the number of passengers trying to come in and out of BNA during peak hours in 2025 exceeded car capacity by up to 1,188, according to MNAA data.

Airport officials said those numbers could be manageable in the right circumstances with constant movement, multiple passengers per vehicle, no excess rideshares on site and no car accidents. But if anything goes wrong or continues to interrupt traffic for an extended period of time, it results in gridlocks like those that occurred Sept. 15, Oct. 5, Oct. 9 and Nov. 30.

On Sept. 15, BNA said too many rideshare drivers showed up at once and caused a bottleneck that compounded on itself. In October, multiple cars broke down or were abandoned in one afternoon, and in November, a car accident led to I-40 closures and airport backups.

Even though BNA only sees its peak traveler numbers combined with traffic interferences a few times a year, Kreulen said the roads need to be built as if they're going to sustain that number of travelers every single day.

MNAA began construction on its roadways and parking expansion in 2021 that now tops a $300 million budget, including adding four miles of new roads and new parking garages. It's part of the airport's $3 billion renovation phase called New Horizon, and in addition to the $135.9 million overhaul of the I-40 interchange at Donelson Pike and the new diverging diamond interchange.

That plan has been in place for years, but MNAA is taking a closer look at how it handles day-to-day traffic amid construction.

After involving seven different federal, state and contracted entities, running 50 traffic models and conducting a independent review, BNA Vice President of New Horizon and engineer Traci Holton said she wholeheartedly believes that the airport is equipped to manage the thousands of cars entering and exiting every day.

"Since Sept. 15, we've spent several meetings recreating that event in our model to determine the best way to mitigate it. It happened, and we reacted. We did the best we could that day," Holton said. "Now, we have fine-tuned, from an existing perspective, what that mitigation plan is."

Traffic backing up at BNA? Officials implement 'Donelson Dump'

Once something stops traffic on airport property, BNA engineers said they have between 4 to 5 minutes to correct the issue before traffic begins to cascade and create a standstill. MNAA confirmed this data ahead of a Jan. 29 traffic modeling meeting.

A Southwest Airlines flight taxis over Murfreesboro Pike after arriving at Nashville International Airport in Nashville, Tenn., Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026.

For this reason, MNAA will occasionally hire an on-call tow truck— in instances of winter weather or worsened road conditions — to sit on property just in case it's needed. During the January snow and ice storm, BNA had a tow truck on property for four days straight, 24 hours a day.

"That's how critical it is that the roads have to stay open for us," Kreulen said.

The Nashville airport's go-to strategy to resolve traffic buildup is what Kreulen and Holton call "The Donelson Dump," proven effective through multiple traffic models.

Essentially, there are three main roadways at play around the airport: the one-mile loop that circles in BNA called Terminal Drive, Donelson Pike and I-40.

When a traffic backup starts on airport property, officials will freeze traffic leaving the airport via Terminal Drive and force everyone to exit onto Donelson Pike for 10 minutes. Then normal traffic will resume for 20 minutes, giving outbound drivers the option to take Donelson Pike or Terminal Drive, followed by another 10 minutes of pushing all cars onto Donelson Pike. Traffic officers will alternate back and forth until the backup subsides.

"If we catch it within that first hour, it dissipates," Kreulen said. "If we don't act right away, then it builds onto itself, and it will take you even more time to get rid of the people."

Inside the airport's $300M plan to accommodate heavier traffic by 2029

BNA launched its multi‑million‑dollar roadway plan in 2021. Between then and the end of 2025, the airport increased its annual passenger projections by 6.3 million, while roadway capacity stayed largely the same.

"We've been hamstrung," Holton said. "We haven't been able to add a lot because we had to get Donelson Pike out of the way."

Bit by bit, crews got rid of the old Donelson Pike to make room for more parking, a new rental car facility and a widened Terminal Drive. The existing Terminal Drive is a one-mile, two-lane loop around BNA, and it will be expanded to a two-mile loop with up to seven lanes in some areas.

Donelson's Pike's realignment has been set for an August 2027 completion, but MNAA put $6 million in incentives on the line if contractors can get it done any sooner.

The larger roadways improvement project will also include the construction of a consolidated rental car facility fit for 4,700 vehicles, another new parking garage with 3,000 spaces and a new employee parking lot.

Overall, the goal is to build roadways that can handle up to 40 million annual passengers, which airport projections show will be accomplished around 2037. At that point, Nashville's airport would be servicing 179,500 passengers on its peak day, a 54.7% increase from BNA's 2025 peak.

Once the entire project is complete, Holton said BNA's roads will meet the federal standard for at least a B rating, and eventually, an A. Currently, BNA roadways have a C rating.

"Typically, design of roads is to a level service D," Holton said. "We're going to be better than that."

The terminal roadways expansion is on track to make its debut in 2029. Considering the long-term plans in store for Nashville's airport decades down the road, Kreulen said it's a high-speed race to get it done.

Hadley Hitson covers business news for The Tennessean. She can be reached at [email protected]. To support her work, subscribe to The Tennessean.