A Picture is Worth a Thousand Strokes
On the day we learn that Memphis is the most sedentary city in the country, I think we need to stare at some pictures on a screen.
This is a view of the Walnut Grove bridge over the Wolf River before construction began on its replacement.
Count the lanes.
And here's a rendering of the replacement.
Count the lanes.
4 to 10. 10!
This is the most excessive example of automobile overcapacity EVER. It's grotesque on its own merits, but more so considering that the City Engineer has fought "squeezing" a bike lane on his monument to obesity.
This is not news, but I hadn't seen the renderings until today. Here's some more information on the project, plus a template for a letter you can send local officials to show your support for bike lanes.
This is a view of the Walnut Grove bridge over the Wolf River before construction began on its replacement.
Count the lanes.
And here's a rendering of the replacement.
Count the lanes. 4 to 10. 10!
This is the most excessive example of automobile overcapacity EVER. It's grotesque on its own merits, but more so considering that the City Engineer has fought "squeezing" a bike lane on his monument to obesity.
This is not news, but I hadn't seen the renderings until today. Here's some more information on the project, plus a template for a letter you can send local officials to show your support for bike lanes.
Labels: geo:lat=-89.855, geo:lon=35.1329, geotagged, Greening Greater Memphis, Shelby Farms Conservancy
posted by gatesofmemphis at 11:55 PM
4 Comments:
It's the first time I've seen that visualization too, and it leaves me wondering what's going to happen to the existing bike lanes... not ones to run along Walnut Grove, but the ones that run under it.
That bridge runs over the connector between the northern and southern halves of the hiking and biking trails for the Lucius Burch Natural Area. Making the connection at the moment just requires ignoring a few signs and some construction barricades, but if they're not careful they could not only have missed an opportunity to add features that activate the space for pedestrian use, but succeed in shutting down activity that's already taking place. I suppose they mean for us to get our exercise playing Frogger across 10 lanes of speeding suburbanites.
For what it's worth, once everything falls into place these trails would effectively link the Greater Memphis Greenline with the proposed Wolf River Greenway (which is Burch is a part of) and the existing Germantown Greenway (giving people looking for a little exercise that much more options in the way of scenery). I hope that gray streak pointing west into the Wolf on that visualization isn't their idea of how to route the trails.
With as much mindshare that the Wolf River Greenway has gotten, I wouldn't think they would block the path. But I wouldn't have thought they would make it so hard to cycle trans-Wolf either.
Thats fabulously disgusting. I just noticed that this intersection is identical to W.G. and G-Town Pkwy, which is about as pedestrian unfriendly as you can get. It seems to me with that design that they will do away with the BMH and CBHS entrances and make folks use Humphreys. Thats a mainline into I-240
Thanks TDOT! Yet another uninspired roadway design. Somebody has to be the anchorman.
Hey matalac! I didn't realize it was the WG/GP evil twin 'til you commented. Except I think that bridge is only 8 lanes.
They have to get their fix.
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