Tag: John Cameron

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Greenline Western Extension: Should Emphasis be on Bridge or its Amenities?

CREDIT: City of Memphis

City of Memphis

Rendering of possible bridge design over active railroad

Two alternative designs to the Shelby Farms Greenline western extension project were presented to the public Thursday by the City’s Division of Engineering and its consultants.

The project, which would extend the Greenline west by about a half of a mile, connecting it to Tobey Park via a new bridge was first introduced to the public in October of last year. After assessing the public’s feedback, the City’s bikeway and pedestrian program manager Nicholas Oyler says those comments and concerns were taken into consideration when developing the alternative design options.

The City, along with its consultants at Neel-Schaffer say the current big question for the public is do they want the emphasis to be on the bridge or the bridge’s amenities.

Option one, officials say, would focus on architecture of the actual bridge, budgeting the majority of funding to make the bridge “iconic.” This  “aesthetically pleasing” option, says John Cameron of Neel-Schaffer, would be more visible to passerby, as it would include lighting structures, as well as vertical elements, “some even higher than the trees,” he says.

This, though, he says would limit the amount of funding for amenities along the trail, such as benches and water fountains.

Option two focuses on the amenities along the bridge and at the proposed Tillman and Flicker trailheads, while leaving the bridge design simple and more consistent with other bridges along the Greenline.

Cameron says the cheaper bridge allows for additions and enhancements on the bridge, such as higher-grade pavement, landscaping, bike racks and repair stations, water fountains, benches, and possible shade-providing structures.

Additionally, he says there would be “fun stuff,” like porch-style swinging benches, art, and plazas at both trailheads with space for gathering, food trucks, and live music at the Flicker end.

Oyler says the City will accept public comment on their preferred design option through September 1.

However, Oyler says because the project is mostly federally funded, there are several steps and “hoops to go through” before construction on the bridge can begin.

He says he expects construction to begin five or six years down the road, but in the meantime, there will be continued collaboration with the public.

As County officials discuss plans to possibly extend the Greenline further east to Houston Levee, Oyler says the City will eventually consider plans to connect the Greenline to the Fairgrounds, Midtown, and beyond.

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News The Fly-By

Memphis Officials Make Plans For Fixing Sidewalks

Ten years. $200 million. That’s what city officials say it will take to fix the city’s sidewalks.

That’s not even the city’s entire stock of 3,429 miles of sidewalks, which if lined end to end would stretch from Texas to Hawaii. The program proposed last week to the Memphis City Council would only fix about 18 percent of sidewalks, though about 33 percent require immediate repair, officials said. 

Star Ritchey, the owner of Midtown running group Star Runners, said Memphis sidewalks are “absolutely dangerous.”

“Motorists often get annoyed that runners are in the road, but what they don’t realize is that many of our sidewalks are in such bad shape, you couldn’t use them if you wanted to,” Ritchey said. “The majority of the sidewalks in Midtown are a mess, either broken up due to tree roots, or construction or whatever.” 

The city’s engineering department began work on a plan last year to fix sidewalks, with priorities placed on sidewalks near schools. The School Safety Action Plan, which was unveiled last week, would benefit students walking to and from school as well as to parks, community centers, and libraries.

“As the public infrastructure in the city, including sidewalks, continues to grow older, the need to be proactive in maintaining this vital transportation network remains high,” said Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s bicycle and pedestrian coordinator.

If Memphis sidewalks last 60 years, the city should be spending $19 million each year to maintain them, according to city engineers. City leaders typically budget $100,000 each year for sidewalk maintenance and have spent $334,000 over the past 10 years for their repair. That amount would allow a stretch of Memphis sidewalk to be replaced every 11,000 years, engineers said. 

But in Memphis, sidewalk repair is the responsibility of property owners. That fact is thanks to a city law passed in 1967 that says owners of properties abutting any public street are “required to provide and maintain adjacent to his or her property a sidewalk.” It’s the same in New Orleans, Atlanta, Charlotte, and Nashville, though all of those cities easily outspend Memphis on sidewalk repair.

Sidewalks came to the fore last year when city officials began aggressively enforcing the sidewalk repair ordinance. A complaint would be registered (typically through the city’s 311 system) and then code enforcement officials would inspect the sidewalk and issue a citation to the homeowner, who had to fix the sidewalk or be ordered to court.

Hundreds of citations were ordered in a few months until the council halted sidewalk citations altogether. Council members said the financial burden of fixing sidewalks was too great on many low-income residents. 

City Engineer John Cameron unveiled a plan to help those homeowners last week. It would offer financial assistance to homeowners (not renters or owners of multiple properties) who make less than $25,000 per year, are 65 or older, or are 100-percent disabled. It would also be offered to households that fall below the federal poverty line. 

Cameron said the program would cost $200,000 this fiscal year to help address the sidewalks of the 400 properties that now have outstanding citations. Next year, he projected the program would cost between $200,000 and $500,000. The total project could cost between $6 million and $9 million.

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News The Fly-By

The Latest on Parking, Permits, and Sidewalks

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Here’s an update on some of the stories that we began covering in 2014 and will continue to follow in the New Year.

• Overflow parking for the Memphis Zoo will continue on the Greensward at Overton Park for a period that could stretch until 2019.

Memphis Mayor A C Wharton said while his “clear preference” was not to use the space for parking, the experience of this past summer made it clear to him that the Greensward “will be an important relief for zoo parking until such time as a viable alternative is realized.” 

The news came in a letter from Wharton to Tina Sullivan, Overton Park Conservancy executive director, on Wednesday, December 31st. The sentiment is a complete departure from a Wharton letter in May that said the city was committed to eliminating Greensward parking by the end of 2014.

“We were very surprised and disappointed to receive this letter from the city a few hours ago,” read a Facebook post from Get Off Our Lawn, a group organized to fight Greensward parking. “The fight for a car-free Greensward continues.”

Going forward, Wharton wants zoo and park stakeholders to work together to develop a viable plan for parking that does not include the Greensward. 

He called Overton Park a “great treasure” and called the zoo a “tremendous asset.” Wharton wrote, “The city will allow parking on the Greensward, as may be absolutely essential to zoo operations, until a plan is implemented, [or] Jan. 1, 2019, whichever comes first.”

Brandon Dill

Naomi Van Tol and Stacey Greenberg protest Greensward parking.

• Special parking permits will be issued to some residents who live around the Overton Square entertainment district but not as many as originally thought. 

The move to start a special parking permit program there surfaced in April. Residents complained to Memphis City Council Chairman Jim Strickland that Overton Square visitors were blocking their driveways and alleys with their cars and sometimes even parking in their yards. 

The program was approved by the council in August. Petitions were sent to neighbors in the proposed new parking district, an area bound by Cox Street on the east, Morrison Street on the west, Union Avenue on the south, and Jefferson Avenue on the north. A section of Lee Place North was also included. 

If at least 75 percents of residents on the individual streets approve permit parking for their street, they would be placed in the special parking district and permits would be issued to them. 

In all, only 10 permits will be issued to residents on a section of Monroe Avenue between Cooper and Cox. The council approved those permits on an unannounced agenda item during its last meeting of 2014.  

“Basically, [Restaurant] Iris agreed to pay for half of the first-year of permits for 10 permitees who live on the street,” said councilmember Kemp Conrad. “The neighbors … and Iris have agreed to basically split the north side of Monroe in the middle of the street.”

• The moratorium on forcing residents to fix their sidewalks was extended in late December.

City officials began enforcing a long-standing rule last year to make homeowners either fix their sidewalks or be hauled into Environmental Court. 

The council passed a two-month moratorium on the enforcement of the rule in May. Once that expired, a six-month moratorium was approved. 

The council approved its latest moratorium to last either six months or until the Wharton administration officials could propose a viable alternative. City engineer John Cameron said he and his office are working on the project and should present an alternative to the council in the first two months of 2015.

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News The Fly-By

Sierra Club Proposed Alternatives to Shelby Farms Parkway

CREDIT: Courtesy of Sierra Club

Each weekday, rush hour traffic backs up along Walnut Grove and Farm Road inside Shelby Farms Park, turning part of the city’s largest urban green space into a busy and congested thoroughfare.

The proposed $38 million Shelby Farms Parkway, which is currently under review by the Federal Highway Administration, would divert that traffic around the western edge of the park. But members of the local Sierra Club Chickasaw Group say they have a simpler solution that would save the city millions of dollars and solve traffic problems sooner.

The Sierra Club opposes the Shelby Farms Parkway plan because they believe it takes away too much park land and feels too much like an interstate.

Last week, the Sierra Club held a series of public rallies near Shelby Farms to bring some awareness to the alternatives, which were first proposed by national traffic engineering consultant Walter Kulash of the Center for Humans and Nature in Chicago. Kulash was invited to Memphis last year by the Sierra Club to study alternatives to Shelby Farms Parkway.

Courtesy of Sierra Club

Right: Farm Road with right turn lane added

Those alternatives include: 1) building a longer left turning lane onto Farm Road from eastbound Walnut Grove, 2) building a longer left turning lane for southbound Farm Road traffic turning onto Mullins Station or adding a right turning lane, 3) creating a westbound auxiliary lane from Farm Road to Humphries, 4) extending the northbound merging lane from Farm Road to Walnut Grove, and 5) making adjustments to signal timing.

“When you are headed east on Walnut Grove and you get to Farm Road, that left turn lane is not long enough. It doesn’t hold enough cars, so cars end up waiting to turn left in a lane that should be a travel lane,” said Dennis Lynch, transportation chair for the state and local Sierra Club.

City engineer John Cameron said the Sierra Club’s proposals may provide some short-term relief but that they would only be a “Band-Aid for the situation.” He says traffic counts through the area will rise in the future and that the larger Shelby Farms Parkway project will be needed.

“If the parkway project moves forward, we don’t want to put a whole lot of money into Farm Road. What the Sierra Club is proposing would cost between a half-million and a million dollars just to turn around three to five years later and take it all out,” Cameron said.

Under the Shelby Farms Parkway plan, Farm Road, will be closed to through traffic and used as a pedestrian route. The Memphis City Council delayed a funding match for the parkway plan earlier this year, but Cameron said they’ll be seeking funding from the council again next year. Cameron said the parkway could be fully constructed in three to five years.

Laura Morris, executive director for the Shelby Farms Park Conservancy, said the conservancy is backing the most recent parkway design, which wraps the new road around the western edge of the park. Morris says it does not “damage the park and also relieves traffic.” Morris said she doesn’t oppose the Sierra Club’s ideas, but she doesn’t believe they’ll solve congestion in the future.

“We don’t disagree that temporary fixes like this could relieve some of the pressure right now, but we know that won’t be enough,” Morris said. “It might fix today’s problems but only by a small measure.”

Lynch doesn’t agree.

“We don’t think the parkway is needed and anything that can be done to keep it from being built is a good thing,” Lynch said. “I calculated that the cost to the people stuck in congestion. The value of their time plus the extra gasoline they’re using over five to six years comes to $32 million to $58 million. But it would only cost the city $1 million to make the improvements.”

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News The Fly-By

Sidewalk Struggle

The Memphis City Council approved a two-month moratorium forcing sidewalk repairs at the beginning of May. In the meantime, attorneys are drafting new rules that may help some property owners fix their sidewalks without hefty price tags or getting hauled into court.

Sidewalk repair is the responsibility of Memphis property owners. That fact is thanks to a city law passed in 1967 that says owners of property abutting any public street are “required to provide and maintain adjacent to his or her property a sidewalk.”      

Property owners own the land under the sidewalk. But the city has a right to order a sidewalk be built on top of it and that it be maintained at the owner’s expense.

Furthermore, the city has a right to order that sidewalk be kept clean of mud, weeds, grass, ice, snow, foliage, and tree limbs, that the sidewalk not become slippery, and even when and how sidewalks are to be swept (never between 7:30 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. and done “carefully”).

City engineer John Cameron said the city does have a sidewalk inspector, but he said his office isn’t actively patrolling for bad sidewalks. They come to the city’s attention mainly through the Mayor’s Citizen Service Center via the 311 hotline. If the city knows about a bad sidewalk but doesn’t act on it, Cameron said, then the city becomes legally liable for accidents that may occur on the sidewalk.

“If property owners don’t respond to our notice to fix the sidewalk, the city will have a contractor do the work,” Cameron said. “Those costs will be documented and will be assessed as a lien on the property.”

Those costs can range from $200 to more than $1,500, depending on the size of the sidewalk and the extent of the damage. 

The city saw a spike in sidewalk-related lawsuits last year, Cameron said, and began issuing more notices at the beginning of this year. Those who didn’t respond or couldn’t pay were sued and ordered to appear in environmental court. The city council was then “inundated” with calls from angry property owners, according to their resolution to delay further notices. 

“We want the statue repealed. Period,” Memphis resident Jose Hill said to the council in a meeting last month. “People jaywalk, and I don’t see us getting tickets for that. People litter, and I don’t see us getting tickets for that. Now all of a sudden you want to come to people who have owned homes for 30 to 40 years and tell us you’re going to put a lien on our house? No, sir.” 

A new sidewalk ordinance expected next month will likely make exceptions for property owners with financial hardships.

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News The Fly-By

Blight Battle

Besides keeping the city’s streets safe, Memphis police officers are also tasked with keeping streets clean.

Last week, officers from every local Memphis Police Department (MPD) precinct participated in a two-day course on how to identify and combat “environmental crimes,” such as littering, abandoned houses, illegal dumping, and water pollution.

The course featured lectures on battling things that negatively impact the community, such as blight, poor yard maintenance, noise violations, and pets running off-leash.

“The best way to resolve [environmental] issues is to inform uniform patrol officers how to enforce the statutes involving environmental crime,” said MPD officer Milton Bonds, a moderator for the training course. “We hope that we can make a difference and help rebuild the community.”

The training course took place Wednesday, March 12th, and Thursday, March 13th, at the Memphis Police Training Academy. The MPD presented the course in conjunction with Memphis Code Enforcement and the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation.

Wednesday’s session provided officers with an introduction to environmental crime and how to recognize and report occurrences. Blight, which impacts neighborhoods, businesses, property values, and crime levels, was the main focus.

“In certain cases, MPD officers are in areas where they see first-hand violations pertaining to environmental crimes,” said MPD spokesperson Karen Rudolph. “This training allowed officers the opportunity to see how taking strides to improve blight issues can also improve our community as a whole. Officers can address these issues within their respective areas and help to maintain a beautiful Memphis.”

On Thursday, officers were taught procedures for investigating environmental crime scenes, determining if a crime is civil or criminal, and how to organize a case for prosecution.

There was also a court presentation and mock court exercise orchestrated by Environmental Court referee John Cameron. Cameron focused on code violations, such as high grass and weeds, and illegally parked and inoperable vehicles.

“If you think of a city as an organism, neglected properties are like cancer cells,” Cameron said. “As they spread, they can even mass together like tumors. Any number of factors has caused the disease to spread, whether through foreclosure, lack of money, or persons making bad, and at times, criminal decisions. Whatever caused the problem, it must be dealt with for the health of Memphis and the whole region.”

Cameron said fighting environmental crime becomes more complicated every year, but Judge Larry Potter’s Environmental Court provides the city with a way to deal with the issue more quickly and effectively. People committing environmental crimes can be cited with ordinance violations or penalized with misdemeanor and felony charges depending on the nature of the offense.

“I don’t believe there is one solution to the cancer of blight attacking Memphis,” Cameron said. “If anything, the more people we have in the fight, the better. We all have a role to play.”