Tag: bike-share

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Welcome to It City

CREDIT: Lawcain | Dreamstime.com

A few short years ago, once you got south of Earnestine & Hazel’s on South Main, you entered a barren urbanscape of abandoned warehouses, dusty railyards, and weedy, empty lots. Now the streets are lined with row after row of apartment buildings. Hip restaurants like Loflin Yard and Carolina Watershed are repurposing old industrial spaces in creative ways. South of South Main is booming, inhabited by thousands of mostly young Memphians who live, work, and play Downtown.

Will it last? Can a neighborhood built on young folks wanting to live Downtown sustain itself? Well, it can, but only if there is a steady stream of fresh young folks wanting to live there in the coming years. Here’s hoping there is. Otherwise, well, that’s a lot of apartments to fill.

That’s because as those young Memphians grow older, they’ll form relationships and maybe — as tends to happen — decide to have children. At that point, they’ll usually want the customary accoutrements of family living: a house, a yard, a mutt.

The closest neighborhoods to Downtown are already feeling the pressure of the influx — from Downtown and from older suburbanites moving in. If you want to buy a home in Midtown, East Memphis, Cooper-Young, etc., you’d better be pre-approved for your loan and be ready to pounce when a house you like comes on the market. Memphis’ core is a hot housing market right now.

In recognition of that, developers are moving in, buying distressed properties, doing teardowns, and putting up two or more new houses on what were once single-family lots. These new homes are often what are called “tall skinnies,” because, well, that’s what they are. Another name for them is “infill homes,” and they are going up all over Cooper-Young and elsewhere in Midtown. (The Flyer‘s Toby Sells has done numerous stories on infill housing, with more to come soon.)

On the plus side, more housing is being created in core city neighborhoods, meaning a bunch of fresh residents, bringing more businesses, new restaurants and retail, and, hopefully, new students for neighborhood schools. On the down side, there is a danger our old neighborhoods will lose their historic charm as older homes get torn down, trees get removed, and residential parking gets more difficult. Try finding a parking spot around the new Nashville export, Hattie B’s, on Cooper.

In fact, if you want to see where all this could be going, drive up to East Nashville and behold the glut of tall skinnies on street after street. Behold the young hipsters with strollers. Behold the bicyclists and coffee shops. Behold the new urbania. It’s coming, for better and for worse.

In Memphis, all the attendant paraphernalia of an “It City” — the bike lanes, the bike-share program, the Bird scooters, the moving of musicians here from Austin and Nashville, the booming South Main, Overton Square, Crosstown, Broad Avenue, and Cooper-Young entertainment/restaurant districts, the Railgartens and Urban Outfitters and Hattie B’s — it’s all developing under our very noses. Something’s happening here, Mr. Jones, and we’d better pay attention.

Case in point: We’re increasingly seeing plans for new apartment buildings springing up in Midtown, with the city offering the usual PILOT plans to “encourage” developers by allowing them to avoid taxes for an agreed-upon period of time. Whether or not those deals make sense is an open question. What shouldn’t be in question is a requirement that in order to get a PILOT, developers should have to build structures that reflect the character of the surrounding neighborhood.

Traditional Midtown apartment buildings — the Gilmore, the Kimbrough, the Knickerbocker, the apartment buildings along Poplar near Overton Park — seamlessly integrate with the cityscape and their neighborhoods. In contrast, many of the new apartment designs being given PILOTs are stark, cheap-looking boxes, seemingly built only to take advantage of the housing boom with no consideration of the visual impact on the character of our historic streetscapes.

Again, go visit Nashville — specifically, the Gulch, just south of Downtown — if you want to see how quickly these cheap-looking boxes can redefine the character of a neighborhood. Memphis needs to put serious design restrictions and guidelines in place before giving out tax breaks to developers.

If we don’t do it, “It” is going to do us.

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News The Fly-By

Bike-Sharing is Caring

CREDIT: Joshua Cannon

I peddled the three-speed B-Cycle, a prototype made available at a demo hosted last Wednesday by Explore Bike Share, through Overton Square’s bike lane. Then, I hit Cooper Street, and, oh my god, cars everywhere. I’ll die here, I thought, and turned on a side street. After mustering some gusto, I looped back around to the temporary station where project manager Sara Studdard told me, yes, it’s intimidating to ride a bike down city streets for the first time — but it gets easier.

My experience may be typical for a first-timer, but if all goes as planned, Explore Bike Share’s planned bike-sharing program will help newbies like me become more comfortable cycling on the streets.

“A big part of Explore Bike Share’s programming will be bike education and bike safety,” says Studdard, who’s ridden for two years. “Not just how you ride a bike-share bike, but how you ride a bike in general. We’ll go over the rules of the road, and we’ll host group rides to encourage folks to feel more comfortable riding on the street.”

Joshua Cannon

Marcellus Benton, B-Cycle assistant, rides a bicycle at Overton Square’s Bike Share demo.

Bicycling magazine ranked Memphis one of the three worst cities for cycling just six years ago. The city is now on its way to housing 600 bike-share cycles and 60 stations in South Memphis, Orange Mound, Binghampton, Midtown, and downtown.

Here’s how it would work: Bikes would be rented for a certain amount of time, but users can replace the bike at any station around town. Those who expect to use the program regularly can buy memberships for $15 a month, but bikes can also be rented by the day. Riders will be able to pay with card or cash — making it one of the few bike-share programs in the country with that option. There’s also an annual “pay it forward” membership for $200 for those who’d like to donate a membership to a Memphian in need.

Doug Carpenter & Associates, LLC, has assisted with fund-raising for the program for nearly two years. Explore has raised half of the $4 million the bike share needs for initial start-up capital. B-Cycle, operated by Wisconsin’s Trek Bicycle, will then build the bikes and solar-powered stations. The bikes will fit a person from about 5’1″ tall to 6’6″, says Jake Higgin, a B-Cycle associate. Each bicycle will have a projection headlight and LED taillight as well as a front caddy to hold belongings.

A bike-share program will aid many transportation obstacles citizens face in the inner city, says Dwayne Jones, a resident of Orange Mound who sits on Explore’s board of directors. Johnson, who’s biked for six years, said access is the largest barrier to riding for many residents.

“A lot of people in inner city — predominately black people — ride bikes,” Jones says. “The bike-share sparked my interest because we needed more transportation opportunities in the city. We wanted to be connected to what’s going on in Memphis.

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News The Fly-By

Ad Firm Gauges Support for Bike-Share

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

There are more than 100 miles of bike lanes zig-zagging across the city, but they won’t do you much good without a bicycle.

Doug Carpenter & Associates is hoping to get bikes into the hands of more Memphians with a massive bicycle-sharing program that would place rentable bikes across the city.

The firm began looking into the idea of a Memphis bike-share program in June with a series of community meetings. Doug Carpenter, who heads up the ad firm, said the meetings were widely attended, and they got “tremendous feedback” on the in’s and out’s of how bike-share should work in Memphis.

They’re now launching a 30-day campaign to better gauge community support for bike-share.

“We’re asking people to join us, so we can create a list of people interested in bike-share beyond just those who came out to the community input meetings,” Carpenter said. “We’re working under a presumption that there’s a silent group of people interested in bike-share. We need them to express that online.”

Bianca Phillips

A tester model of a bicycle being considered for the bike-share program.

Carpenter is asking anyone who supports the idea of bike-share to submit their names and email addresses on ExploreBikeShare.com. The Explore Bike Share campaign street team will also be at community events over the next month, signing up supporters in person.

The bike-share program would place about 60 stations holding a combined total of 600 bikes in neighborhoods all over the city, including lower-income areas where bicycle transportation may be more needed. Those who expect to use the program regularly can buy memberships, but bikes can also be rented by the day.

The cost has not yet been set, but Carpenter says they’re looking at ways to subsidize bike rentals for those who cannot afford it.

“We can partner with community centers, the housing authority, or [partner with the Church Health Center to] write prescriptions for bike-share memberships,” said Sara Studdard, project manager of Explore Bike Share.

Carpenter believes bike-share will not only appeal to tourists and those in lower-income areas but also to devoted cyclists who already have their own bikes.

“We have found, from studying other markets, that even bikers who bike to commute find that, once they get to where they’re going and store their bike in a locker, it’s more of a pain to get that bike back out than it is to use bike-share,” Carpenter said. “This will not replace anyone’s Saturday long ride, but the bike-share bikes are more readily available. And you don’t have to worry about storage or fixing a flat.”

Checking out a bike would come with a time limit, although Carpenter says that limit hasn’t been set yet — maybe 45 minutes or an hour. The rider would check out the bike, and, although it could be ridden beyond that time limit, they would have to find another bike station and check the bike in before taking it out again.

“You can ride the bike as much as you want in a 24-hour period but at, say, 45-minute increments,” Carpenter said. “I could get a bike at the Peabody [Hotel] and ride to the Civil Rights Museum and plug it in. And then I could take another bike from the Civil Rights Museum to Central Station.”

The cruiser-style bikes would be equipped with GPS, so Carpenter says theft isn’t a concern. And the GPS will allow staff to restock bikes as stations get low.

“Because it’s so trackable, there will be an app. You can look on the app and see how many bikes are where and how many slots [are available at the bike station],” Carpenter said.

Explore Bike Share currently has a request for proposals out to companies that manufacture equipment and bikes for bike-share programs. Carpenter said the program will be funded through private funds and federal grants with no burden on the city budget.