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Whatever Happened To: the Greenline Extension From Tillman to Tobey Park

Whatever happened to the project to extend the Shelby Farms Greenline west from Tillman? 

For the third installment of our occasional series, called “Whatever Happened To,” we’re checking in on that project. The $5.3 million plan was announced in 2016, nearly six years ago, and no construction has yet to begin on it. 

Here’s how the project was described by the city of Memphis Bikeway and Pedestrian Program’s website in October 2016: “The scope of this project is from the Greenline’s current terminus at Tillman Street to Flicker Street. Due to the necessity of crossing an active railroad, the city will construct a bicycle and pedestrian bridge in between the Union Avenue and Poplar Avenue viaducts. 

“Additionally, the city intends to build a new trailhead at Flicker Street, under or near the Union Avenue viaduct. Once complete, the bridge will allow the Greenline to one day push through Tobey Park, into the [Mid-South Fairgrounds], and possibly beyond.”

Since then, three different people have occupied the White House, a two-year pandemic changed the world, and The Fairgrounds is now called Liberty Park. 

For answers on the delay, we turned to Nicholas Oyler, manager of the city’s bike and pedestrian program. 

Memphis Flyer: Whatever happened with this project?

Nicholas Oyler:  This one is also federally funded. So, it’s also beholden to those same environmental clearance requirements [as the Poplar-Cooper Connector] and there are some other formalities that must be met. 

Ah, okay.

There’s also acquiring a formal railroad right of way. The project involves building a bridge over an active railroad. Anytime there’s a railroad involved, there’s even more legwork that has to be done, more boxes to check.

(Credit: City of Memphis)

We’ve been in that environmental review phase ever since the project started. The good news on this one is that we received that environmental clearance just last August. 

So that cleared the way for the project to proceed with design work. The engineering design consultant has finished 60 percent of the construction plans, so we have the preliminary plans. Those will get reviewed by the state and by us internally. 

We will be meeting with project stakeholders probably in the next three to four months. We’ll start talking about more of the amenities, the landscaping, opportunities for public artwork, and that sort of thing.

Kind of similar to [the Poplar-Cooper Connector], we anticipate we’ll be reaching construction mid-2023. 

Have the plans changed?

 Currently, the Shelby Farms Greenline stops at Tillman Street on the west side. This project will push it further to the west. So, it’s going to continue past Tillman, where it currently ties in with the Hamp Line. 

A conceptual drawing of how the bridge could look. (Credit: City of Memphis)

It will continue past Tillman, go under the Poplar Avenue viaduct, and then kind of rise up, become elevated to go over those active railroad tracks that the Union Avenue viaduct goes over. It will come down and then land at Flicker Street, near the skate park and Tobey Park. 

It is moving forward. Like I said, we expect construction to begin on this in mid-2023. 

A conceptual drawing of new life under the viaducts under Poplar and Union. (Credit: City of Memphis)

Is there anything I left out or anything you’d like to add?

On a related note, we have since received a separate federal transportation grant that allows us to start studying the feasibility of continuing a connecting path. It probably won’t be the Greenline as we know it, meaning it won’t necessarily be a separated, off-street path. 

 But we’re developing some kind of connection for people walking and people biking to continue from Flicker Street farther west to Cooper Street in Midtown. This one is just starting. It’s much earlier in the whole process. At this point, it’s just a feasibility study. But that’s another exciting connection that’s underway. 

A conceptual drawing of a bike and pedestrian bridge over East Parkway to help connect the Greenline to Downtown. (Credit: City of Memphis)

The bigger picture here is we have this Greenline project in the works already. Then, like I said, there’s the segment between the Greenline and Flicker that is [coming together]. Then, you have the Peabody Avenue project, which is going to link up with the existing bike lanes on [Martin Luther King Avenue] that we did a couple of years ago. 

One day, once this Cooper and Flicker segment of the Greenline is finished, we’ll have a continuous, seamless corridor running all the way from Downtown out to Cordova. It’ll be a corridor about 30 miles long.

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Whatever Happened To: The Cooper-Poplar Connector to Overton Park

Whatever happened to that project to add a pedestrian and bike entrance at Poplar and Cooper to Overton Park?

For the second installment of our occasional series, called “Whatever Happened To,” we’re checking in on a proposed street-improvement project intended to make Memphis more bike- and pedestrian-friendly. Announcements for the Cooper-Poplar Connector — the project to make a bike-and-pedestrian-friendly crossing from Cooper across Poplar and into Overton Park — came as early as 2014, nearly eight years ago.

In March 2016, the project won a $25,000 grant from the First Tennessee Foundation (the bank has changed hands twice since that announcement). The grant was set to help the project unlock federal funds, which it did.

Credit: Overton Park Conservancy

At the time, we reported that the Connector “was designed by Ritchie Smith Associates and calls for a second crosswalk on the west side of the intersection, a protected bike crossing at the traffic signal, a new landing pad on the park side for bikes and pedestrians, and a new path that will connect to the park’s trail system.” To get an update on the project, we talked to Nicholas Oyler, Bikeway and Pedestrian Manager for the city of Memphis. — Toby Sells

Memphis Flyer: Whatever happened with the Cooper-Poplar Connector at Overton Park?

Nicholas Oyler: Let me make sure we’re on the same page of what this project is. It’s targeting the intersection of Cooper and Poplar. We’d be building a new entrance plaza to Overton Park on the north side of Poplar. It would have a new, little paved area with some minimal landscaping. There would be a paved path that connects this plaza over to Veteran’s Plaza and other existing sidewalks that lead into the park.

It would also improve pedestrian and bicyclist crossings on Poplar so that you can be able to get across Poplar a lot safer and more comfortable than you can today. The city just installed bike lanes on Cooper leading up to Poplar. Then, they kind of stop abruptly. Once this plaza and that connection goes in, it will be made more seamless and it’ll feel a lot safer getting across.

Thank you for the refresher, sir. So, what happened with this project?

It’s received a federal grant to cover 80 percent of the costs. Anytime you have federal funds — and I am very grateful for the funding source; it really helps us out — it comes with a lot of hoops we have to jump through, a lot of paperwork.

On this project, we were caught off guard a little bit by the requirements we had to go through for the environmental review. The Tennessee Department of Transportation determined that we would need to do … more work on the environmental review than we had originally had anticipated, because it is in a park. So, that added to the scope a little bit and just another box we had to check. So that slowed it down.

But the good news is that we do now have the environmental clearance. We’ve received that in late 2018. Since then, the project has been in the design phase. At this point, we anticipate breaking ground in mid-2023.

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City Will See About 20 Miles of New Bike Facilities in 2020

Since 2010, the city has added approximately 212 miles of bicycle facilities to the city of Memphis, and has plans to continue upping that mileage for the foreseeable future.

Nicholas Oyler, bikeway and pedestrian program manager for the city, said moving into 2020, the city has several projects in the works that with continue to grow Memphis’ bikeway network.

City of Memphis

Over the next several years, Oyler said the city will likely continue the trend from previous years, adding an average of 20 miles worth of new bike facilities each year. The majority of newly installed facilities are included in routine street-resurfacing projects.

“Rather than setting a goal mileage for bikeways in the city, our ultimate goal is to have a street network that works safely and conveniently for everyone, whether walking, bicycling, accessing public transit, or driving,” Oyler said. “This means that just as we have a connected network of streets for cars, with multiple routes possible between points A and B, we need similar network for walking and bicycling.”

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Oyler said the city is using the Memphis Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Mid-South Regional Greenprint and the Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan to guide what the eventual network will look like.

The Greenprint plan, developed in 2015, is a 25-year plan to create 500 miles of greenway trails and 200 miles of bike paths across parts of Tennessee, Mississippi, and Arkansas. The Regional Bicycle and Pedestrian Plan, created in 2014, focuses on safety, connectivity, accessibility, and transportation mode shifting. The plan identifies and recommendations for ways to improve the bicycle facilities in the region.

The PDF below shows the city’s existing bike facilities as of this month and those slated to be constructed generally within the next two years.
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Down the Road

The Hampline, a project nearly nine years in the making, is slated to be completed in early 2020. The approximate two-mile long corridor will “seamlessly” connect Overton Park and Shelby Farms, “via a neighborhood that has long witnessed disinvestment and a lack of access to opportunities,” Oyler said.

Facebook/Bike Ped Memphis

The Hampline in Binghampton is nearing completion.

Later in 2020, Oyler said the city will look to Jefferson Avenue to begin “long-discussed” improvements between Front and Cleveland. The design process for this has already begun, and in early spring the city will begin the public engagement phase.

Another project Oyler looks forward to in 2020 is the installation of 500 new federally-funded bike racks around the city in partnership with the Memphis Area Transit Authority. The racks will be primarily located near existing bus stops to “encourage synergy between using transit and bicycling for the last- and first-mile connections.”

Finally, Oyler anticipates the launch of a public safety education and awareness campaign around walking and bicycling. The effort will be funded by revenue collected from the city’s Shared Mobility Program, which officially launched in July.

“We have made great strides over the last several years in terms of infrastructure improvements, but this campaign will be some of the city’s first efforts to improve education and awareness among the general public in terms of street safety,” Oyler said.


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City Expects to Collect $500K from Scooter, Bike Operators Over Next Year

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Three little Birds


Memphis officials project that the city will collect about a half a million dollars from scooter and bike operators during the first year of its Shared Mobility Program.

The program officially launched here last week at the same time the dockless scooter company Spin, joining two other operators here, Bird and Lime, brought 150 scooters to Memphis.

Spin is slated to increase its fleet to 500 scooters over the next few weeks. Also, this month under the shared-mobility program, another company, Bolt, is expected to add its scooters to the city’s fleet. Early next year, Explore Bike Share is planning to roll out a new fleet of e-bicycles.

Together, Spin, Bolt, Bird, Lime, and Explore Bike Share are slated to operate 3,300 shared-mobility devices in the city once the program is fully in place.

Dan Springer, the city’s deputy director of media affairs said the city anticipates collecting about $500,000 from the operators during the first year of the program.

Per the companies’ agreements with the city, the for-profit operators are required to pay the city an initial permit application fee of $10,000 and then an annual renewal fee of $1,000.

Additionally, each year for-profit companies must pay $50 for every non-electric shared-mobility device they have in the city and $365 for every electronic device.

Non-profit operators, like Explore Bike Share, are required to pay $1 per non-electric device and $10 for every electric device each year.

Officials said that the fees collected from each operator will be used to support targeted safety and educational programs. Nicholas Oyler, the city’s bikeway and pedestrian program manager, said the content and structure of those programs is yet to be determined.

Generally, he said the programs will target all users of the street in an effort to improve the safety of walking, as well as riding a bike or scooter. Oyler said this will include instructions on safe riding and walking, as well as a focus on the laws applicable to drivers as it relates to sharing the street with other users, such as the requirement for drivers to stop at crosswalks.

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The fees collected from the operators will also go toward improving and expanding the city’s bikeway network. Oyler said with the increase in shared-mobility options, there will be an increased use of bike lanes.

“Providing separate space on the street where people can comfortably operate these vehicles, without vying for room on the sidewalk or in travel lanes, enhances everyone’s safety,” Oyler said. “Widespread adoption of these new mobility technologies will depend on a safe and connected network of on- and off-street spaces to ride and reach destinations.”

Specifically, Oyler said improvements could mean installing new bike lanes entirely or upgrading the physical separation from automobile lanes along existing bike lanes. Additionally, Oyler said the city will likely install scooter parking spaces and racks in high-density areas.

Oyler said as the program continues, the city will determine where to make these infrastructure improvements based on data collected from the shared-mobility operators.

Per the city’s agreement with the operators, the companies are required to submit real-time usage data to the city. Oyler said if the data shows that certain streets are commonly used for routes, then that might justify infrastructure improvements on those streets.

To ensure the program is equitable, the city is also requiring each operator to do the following:

• Provide a service area that includes low-income communities

• Implement marketing and targeted community outreach plans to promote the use of shared-mobility devices in low-income communities

• Offer cash payment options or other strategies to ensure equitable payment options

• Provide options for Spanish-speaking users and those with special needs to access the programs and memberships

• Redistribute and re-balance devices daily and in order to not “discriminate against communities of low and moderate income” and to help promote equitable access to and from these communities

For riders, the city encourages:

• Wearing a helmet. (It’s required for users under 16 years old)

• Riding scooters on the street, bike lanes, when available, and on bike paths

• Yielding to pedestrians on crosswalks and sidewalks and to bicycles on the street or in bike lanes

• Parking devices upright on hard surfaces in the furniture zone of the sidewalk, in a bike rack, or in another area designated to bike parking.

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The Big Jump: Making Bicycles a Part of Daily Life in Memphis

In 2010, Memphis was the 18th-largest city in the country but had only 1.5 miles of bike lanes. Now, just seven years later, the city is on track to have 400 miles of bike-friendly thoroughfares.

Memphis has the chance to be a great biking city. That’s what the city’s Bikeway and Pedestrian Manager, Nicholas Oyler will tell you. That’s in part, he says, because of the city’s flat topography, its fairly mild climate — aside from July and August — and traditional street grids throughout the city that work well for biking.

Apart from recreation and exercise, Oyler says, biking can play an important role in the city’s transportation network. “In a city where a quarter of the people are living below the poverty line and might not have access to a car, biking isn’t just a fad or exercise, it’s how they get around, how they do their daily life.”

There are lots of big plans and innovative projects underway to help bicycling to become a part of “doing daily life” for many more Memphians — and in areas where safe bike facilities could really make a difference.

Sylvia Crum

Teen ambassadors in the Big Jump Program help lead the charge to make biking in Memphis safer and more convenient

The Big Jump

The Big Jump: Making Bicycles a Part of Daily Life in Memphis

“That’s not right.”

That’s what 11-year-old Joshua told me as he reached over from his bike and adjusted my helmet straps for me. “You have to make sure the buckles are right under your ears, like this,” he said, pointing to his own helmet.

He learned that — among other biking tips — as one of the 11 young “ambassadors” of the Big Jump program, a three-year initiative aiming to make biking in South Memphis safer and more convenient.

Memphis is one of 10 cities chosen from nearly 100 applicants nationwide for the Big Jump program, sponsored by People For Bikes (PFB), a bicycling advocacy nonprofit out of Colorado. New York, Los Angeles, Austin, and Portland are among some of the other cities selected. The Big Jump aims to “achieve a dramatic boost in bike riding in specific focus neighborhoods within each of the 10 cities.”

One of the key components of the program is community engagement, and educating the teen ambassadors on all things biking is a large piece of that, Oyler says. “We can’t just put bike lanes on the street and expect that to be it. We really have to work with the people living in the neighborhoods.”

Sylvia Crum

The city, in partnership with The Works CDC of South Memphis and Revolutions Bicycle Co-Op, recruited the teens for monthly training sessions, in which they learn safe bike riding, maintenance, and community organizing skills. In March, once the training is complete, each teen will receive a bike with a lock, lights, and a helmet. More importantly, Oyler says, the teens will become advocates for the Big Jump program and leaders of regular community bike rides. The goal, Oyler says, is not only to empower the teens as they lead the rides, but also to acclimate people to seeing bikes on the street.

Aside from community outreach, the Big Jump is unique in that it’s data-driven. “The city has done a great job in the past with building infrastructure and fairly quickly, but improvement is needed and what will be different about the Big Jump is data collection,” Oyler says.

As an early part of the initiative, the city’s first permanent bike counter was installed last month near Florida and Virginia streets, south of downtown. The counter sits under the street and counts each bike that passes over it, and eventually it will assess how that number changes over time as the street becomes more conducive to biking.

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Florida was chosen, Oyler says, because it’s one of the city’s few streets that serves as a good north-south connector between downtown and South Memphis. The data collected from the counter will not only help in decision making, but it will also validate and prove that people are riding bikes in the neighborhood, Oyler says.

“People have asked me, ‘Why South Memphis? People don’t ride bikes there. Why not Cooper-Young or Midtown?'” Oyler says. “But that’s wrong, and we now have data to show that.”

Since 2014, the city has been counting the number of cyclists riding through the intersection of South Parkway and Mississippi Boulevard. The first count, done prior to bike lane installations on South Parkway, showed an average of two riders a day. But, in the spring, the latest count showed around 122 cyclists each day. That’s about a 6,000 percent increase.

“To me, that says two things,” Oyler says. “One, when you put in the infrastructure to make it safer for riding, people will ride. And two, despite what some may think, people are already riding bikes in South Memphis.”

Big Jump sponsors, PFB, worked with Memphis in 2012 on the Green Lane project, which aimed to build protected bike facilities like those in Europe in U.S. cities. Oyler calls these facilities “all-ages infrastructure,” usable for all riding abilities.

But over time, the project showed PFB that a set of landmark bike lanes in a city is useless if they don’t make up a larger network in the community. “If you build one really nice bike lane that doesn’t go where people are trying to go,” Oyler says, “they aren’t going to use it.”

While the Green Lane project’s focus was city wide, the Big Jump concentrates on 20 square miles bordered by Mallory in South Memphis, Linden on the north, Riverside on the west, and Hernando on the east. In those designated neighborhoods, Oyler says, the aim is to improve connections and access to recreation, jobs, and education. “Obviously, bikes aren’t going to be the answer to everything, but if you can make it easier to get to these places by bike, then why not?”

Each of the neighborhoods will be used as a “proving ground” over the next three years, in which the city will try different approaches to make biking easier. The lessons that are learned in South Memphis will be carried to other neighborhoods around the city, Oyler says.

One of the next steps of the Big Jump will be to figure out how infrastructure improvements in the neighborhood should look, based on residents’ needs and preferences. Mississippi Boulevard is slated to be repaved with bike lanes in summer 2018, as the city works with the community to create a route connecting the south end of downtown to MLK Riverside Park, Soulsville, and other South Memphis locales. Forming the connection will begin next spring, when signage will be installed that directs riders from one neighborhood to the other.

Over the next 12 to 18 months, Oyler says, the route will be upgraded and repaved with protected bike lanes. “I don’t want people to talk about this as a bike project or program. I really see it as a community development program. While maybe the focus is on bikes, it’s really much more than that.”

One and Only

After Joshua was certain my helmet was on correctly, I joined him, his brother (also a teen ambassador), executive director of Revolutions Sylvia Crum, members of The Works staff, and Oyler for a Friday-afternoon bike ride through parts of the Big Jump focus area. We took off from the back of the South Memphis Farmers Market, a storage space The Works reclaimed for a fleet of refurbished bikes and helmets from Revolutions.

As we headed down Mississippi Boulevard, I rode on the back of a tandem bike with Gregory Love of The Works. Riding through the neighborhood, we passed churches, beauty salons, and a boarded window that read “believe in yourself” before reaching a small building marked by a bike hanging from the lamp post out front. Located across from the Stax Museum, the salmon-pink building — with old bikes and their parts scattered about inside — is being converted into South Memphis’ only bike shop. It is expected to be open for business sometime in 2018.

The next stop on our ride was at a two-thirds-acre farm near Lauderdale and Walker. It’s the Green Leaf learning farm, a signature program of Knowledge Quest, a nonprofit serving as a “community social change agent in South Memphis.”

In step with the Big Jump goals, Knowledge Quest will incorporate biking into its community agriculture outreach. A community-support agriculture program will be launched in the spring; it will hire teens in the community to regularly distribute fresh produce to residents via cargo bikes. A grant for the bikes was submitted to the state’s health department in late November, but Oyler says “because it’s such a cool idea,” even without a grant, it will happen.

As the sun lowered in the west, we made our final stop at Ida B. Wells — one of 15 schools across the city expected to participate in Revolutions Bicycle Co-Op’s Fourth Grade Bicycle Safety program, launching next fall. In partnership with the Shelby County School System’s (SCS) office of physical education, the program will teach the students how to safely ride a bike on on the street, giving them a reliable transportation option to get to school.

“They can try it when they’re in elementary school, then when they go to middle and then high school — which might be farther — they’ll have a good, safe way of getting there,” Crum says. “I thought when we talked with [SCS], we would have to convince them to do bikes with kids, but they were like ‘Of course we should.’ They immediately bought in.”

Downtown Elementary and LaRose Elementary, also in the Big Jump area, are two more of the 15 schools set to participate in the program.

Revolutions, located in Cooper-Young, is a nonprofit started in 2002 whose mission is to provide all Memphians, particularly the working poor, with well-functioning bikes. The co-op offers bicycle education and repair classes, bike services, and leads community rides. Revolutions has a retail store that sells refurbished bikes for reduced prices, as well as other accessories and equipment. They also have bikes available for rent.

Justin Fox Burks

Roshun Austin displays serious skill — and enthusiasm — for safe cycling.

Bike Share

As the Big Jump ramps up, one of its partner organizations, the nonprofit Explore Bike Share, is set to launch a bike-share system by spring 2018, in partnership with the B-Cycle Dash System, which operates 1,250 bike share stations with more than 10,000 bikes in 50 communities in the U.S. B-Cycle will bring 600 bikes to Memphis. They’ll be equipped with high-tech amenities, such as GPS systems with route recommendations and turn-by-turn directions.

Explore Bike Share, whose mission is to provide an inclusive and accessible bike-sharing system, plans for its 60 bike share stations to service high-demand areas such as Midtown and downtown, as well as developing biking communities like Binghampton, Uptown, Orange Mound, and parts of the Big Jump focal areas in South Memphis.

“From its inception, Explore Bike Share has vowed to prioritize neighborhood needs, utilizing the system to serve all of Memphis — not just where the city sees density on a map,” says Roshun Austin, executive director of the Works and an Explore Bike Share board member. “We are proud to execute equity-oriented strategies such as bike safety education, ambassador programs, and workforce development partnerships.”

By 2019, Explore Bike Share plans to add 300 bikes to Memphis’ fleet at 30 additional stations, thanks to a $2.2 million Congestion Mitigation Air Quality expansion grant.

Maya Smith

Potential Trails

The Path Forward

Oyler said he hopes as more Memphians are riding bikes throughout the city, the riders will be more “representative of Memphis’ population.”

For many Memphians living below the poverty line, bicycles can provide transportation equity, Austin says. “You may be initially getting on a bike for varying reasons, but when we did our community ride, people were coming from different backgrounds. Some were walk-ups from the neighborhood. They saw us and got excited and wanted to participate.”

Crum agrees, adding that cycling has to become more visible, with slow rides, group rides, and rides that connect from one neighborhood to another. “It helps all of us see people out on bicycles. And when residents see people who look like them out on bike rides, then the mindset starts to change to ‘Hey, maybe I could try that out.'”

If the goal is to get more people biking in Memphis, Austin says the city has to create a larger system of safe bike facilities. “You don’t build a house without a foundation. And infrastructure is that foundation for cycle transportation.”

Bike lanes smooth new riders’ transition to the road, says Lyndsey Pender, The Works’ research and evaluation specialist. “One of the barriers we encounter is fear of the road and sharing it with cars. I think bike lanes provide that confidence that some people might need initially, when starting to bike.”

Oyler says the city’s vision for the near future is to have a better network of safe bike facilities throughout the entire city. “For so long we have built our streets and neighborhoods around cars in Memphis,” Oyler says. “The only way that’s reliable, safe, and realistic to get around Memphis, for the most part, is by car — by design.

“If you look at a map of our bike lanes today, it’s disconnected, with a little piece there and a little piece here,” Oyler says. “If you imagine that those lines on the map were streets, you wouldn’t see that many cars, because what’s the point? You can’t connect. You can’t get to point A and B.” But, two to three years from now, he says there will be a “much better connected network of safe streets for bike riding, and as a result of that, more people will ride bikes for transportation, because it will become easier.

“There’s a saying among bike advocates that you don’t justify building a bridge by the number of people swimming across the river,” Oyler says. “You build the bridge, and then people start going across it, and that creates the demand. It’s the same with safe bike facilities and bike lanes. Until we have the safe infrastructure it will be a barrier to people.”

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

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.