A pro-cycling website, peopleforbikes.org, has released their list of 2014’s top 10 bike lanes, and Memphis’ new lane on Riverside Drive ranked number-three.
Rather than reopen all of Riverside following the Memphis In May festivities, the city left two lanes between Beale and Georgia closed to vehicular traffic, creating a two-way bike path and walkway that is protected by a median.
The road diet is a part of a pilot project, and no permanent decisions will be made about whether or not to keep the lane until Riverside is repaved this coming summer. At a July public meeting about the lanes, some voiced support of the new lanes, and other claimed that squeezing vehicle traffic into two lanes was dangerous.
But peopleforbikes.org is all for the Riverside bike lane. Here’s what they had to say:
In bike planning, Memphis is the anti-San Francisco. The city reasons that there’s no better way to make its planning process public than to rapidly get a project on the ground, listen to the ways people react to it, and adjust as needed. “Ready, fire, aim,” Memphis planner Kyle Wagenschutz says. Riverside Drive is a perfect example of that agile approach. Instead of reopening all four lanes to auto traffic after Riverside’s annual closure for the Memphis in May festival, the city restriped half the street to create two lanes of car traffic, a bidirectional median-protected bike lane and a walkway. Soon, this route will be the best link between downtown Memphis and the Harahan Bridge crossing to Arkansas.
To see what other lanes around the country made the list, go here.
