Mayor Wharton to highlight bike-friendly initiatives

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Andy Ashby

Staff writer- Memphis Business Journal

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Mayor A C Wharton will outline past, present and future efforts to make Memphis a more bike-friendly city at a City Hall press conference tomorrow.

First, he’ll lay out the Memphis Complete Streets Policy he signed in February.

This executive order directs city divisions to look at making accommodations for cyclists and pedestrians when planning new road projects or fixing current ones.

“It’s what we’ve been doing, but it’s a formal policy,” Kyle Wagenschutz, the city’s pedestrian and bicycle coordinator, said. “It’s about being more thoughtful when doing projects in the public right of way.”

Wagenschutz, hired by Wharton in 2010, is working with other city departments on a formal design manual to go with this policy.

The mayor will also talk about the city’s efforts for “green lanes,” or bike lanes which are separated from car traffic by some sort of physical barrier, for the next two years.

Wharton will be joined at the press conference by Green Lane project director Martha Roskowski and Andy Clarke from the League of American Bicyclists.

Some green lane projects include the Harahan Bridge project across the Mississippi River and the Overton-Broad project, which will connect Overton Park to the Shelby Farms Greenline via Broad Avenue. Both of these projects receive some federal grant money.

The city has come a long way in bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure in the past few years.

In 2010, Wharton committed to build 55 miles of new bike facilities which include bike lanes, trails and shared lanes. Memphis currently has 51 miles of bike lanes, 26 miles of trails and 70 miles of shared lanes.

“We’ve done that and this is the next step for making accommodations for cyclists,” Wagenschutz said.

Andy Ashby covers commercial real estate; transportation and logistics; construction; and Downtown Memphis. Contact him at aashby@bizjournals.com.