Alliance > Media center > People Powered Blog

Entries tagged: Memphis

The irony is impossible to ignore: A burger joint leading a charge against bike lanes.

By any measure, Memphis is certainly in need of safer streets that support physical activity. In 2010, the city was labeled by Bicycling magazine as one of the worst places to ride in the entire United States. At the same time, Memphis was at the top of another list: It had the highest rate of overweight residents of the largest 50 cities in the U.S., with a staggering 70 percent of all adults overweight or obese.

So when Memphis officials rolled out a massive street project that didn’t include any facilities to encourage bicycling or walking, local advocates at Livable Memphis were ready to take action — and a won a commitment from the mayor for 55 miles of new bicycle facilities by 2012.

Now that the promise is hitting the pavement, some business owners are pushing back with misguided fears that bikes curb commerce.

Earlier this year, the city (with some help from the advocates at Livable Memphis) rolled out a proposal for Madison Avenue that would add bike lanes to this major east-west connector by converting the street from four traffic lanes to two (with a center turn lane). In his detailed memo, city bike/ped coordinator, Kyle Wagenschutz, outlines the traffic and economic benefits of the plan. Despite the wealth of data suggesting that businesses prosper in proximity to better bicycle and pedestrian facilities (click here for a number of studies in our Resource Library), a number of shops along the Madison stretch have risen up against the bike lanes, including a long-standing, much-loved restaurant.

“Hueys has been and continues to be a wonderful restaurant, and the owners (the Boggs family) have served as good stewards of the Memphis community for many years,” Anthony Siracusa, Memphis resident and secretary of Bike Walk Tennessee, says. “But today what we see in Memphis is a burger and fry joint blocking a bike lane in the second most unhealthy state in the nation.”

So advocates, like Siracusa, have been working overtime to make sure the bike lane proposal doesn’t get fried.

“Locally, we have waged a serious letter writing campaign with hundreds and hundreds of letter submitted to the Mayor and his staff,” Siracusa says. “We staged a bicycle buy-in, supporting those businesses that support the bike lanes. We sat down with the Mayor and invited two business owners to share their support of the road diet and bike lanes on Madison. In spite of all this work, we stand perilously close to a re-paving project on Madison that maintains four lanes of car traffic and provides no space for bikes.”

“While we thought we had turned a corner – leaving behind two straight years of being rated as the nation’s worst bike city – opposition from a small number of business owners has endangered a critical step in making Memphis a better place to live, work and play,” he adds.

Want to help? Write a quick not to Memphis Mayor AC Wharton with your enthusiasm for his plans to make Memphis into a bike-friendly city at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). And read more at the Walk Bike Memphis blog.

In May, Bicycling magazine named Memphis one of America’s worst cycling cities. But a big push from local advocates could be the first step in turning around the Tennessee town. 

The ranking in Bicycling wasn’t exactly a surprise. According to the Alliance’s 2010 Benchmarking Report, Memphis lags in the bottom third of cities in just about every category, including safety and bike-ped policies. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act exposed just one example of the city’s seeming disregard for biking. While other jurisdictions loaded up their applications for stimulus funds with cycling and walking facilities, officials in Memphis didn’t include so much as a single sharrow in their ask for ARRA dollars.

Advocates with Livable Memphis weren’t content to let that omission slide. When the city started street repaving projects utilizing federal dollars, advocates rolled out an aggressive campaign to add accommodations for cyclists. 

Sarah Newstok, program director for Livable Memphis, says two Alliance workshops in 2009 gave her the tools to take on City Hall. The Membership Training in San Francisco, she says, clarified her organization’s mission. Then, attending a Winning Campaign Training in Little Rock armed her with tactics to advocate effectively.

“We really pulled out the stops,” Newstok says.

Livable Memphis members spoke at council hearings and sat down with council members. They lobbied members of his administration and met with Mayor A.C. Wharton Jr. himself. Advocates penned letters to policymakers, editorials for the local newspapers and saturated media with their pro-bike message.

“After chipping away from lots of directions the barriers seemed to crumble all at once,” Newstok says. “Our outrage about not including bike facilities in the repaving projects really came to a head this month, with a public scolding of our City Engineer by the Mayor.”

Shortly after the rebuke, Wharton committed to 55 miles of bike lanes and facilities, installed over the next two years. “Even though bike lanes were regrettably omitted from the city’s recent stimulus fund application,” Wharton announced on July 15, “I have directed our city engineers to make any necessary adjustments to their operating budget plans so we can get these lanes and facilities in place.” 

The about-face was significant. “This is a major turnaround for us,” Newstok says. “I feel like Memphis is finally at least facing the right direction.”

“Of course, this leaves us with a long list of next ‘to do’ items,” she adds. “But I’m energized and we have a very engaged crew of volunteer advocates. Here’s to getting Memphis off Bicycling magazine’s worst city list and to being awarded most-improved in the next ranking.”