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SHELBY FARMS
GREENLINE
Trail
access point
Arkansas
Total trail length:
6.5 miles
Trail surface:
Asphalt
map illustration by daniellemarks.com
State line
Harahan
Bridge
(“Big River
Crossing”)
Memphis
City Hall
M E M P H I
S
BINGHAMTON
EAST MEMPHIS
MIDTOWN
S h e l b y
F a r m s
P a r k
M
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Walnut Grove Rd.
Moore Rd.
Mullins Station Rd.
Farm Rd.
M
a
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.
Tillman St.
Poplar Ave.
N Holmes St.
N Highland St.
N Graham St.
Waring Rd.
N Perkins Rd.
N Mendenhall Rd.
N White Station Rd.
Podesta
St.
High Point Ter.
S
y
c
a
m
o
r
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V
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w
R
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.
Macon Rd.
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MILES
0
1
2
TENNESSEE
Map for reference only.
Not for navigation.
cyclists with new services, such as bike rent-
als and beginner classes. And real estate
agents began to trumpet the trail as a selling
point for any home listed nearby.
“The success was just instant,” says Kyle
Wagenschutz, who was a new face at City
Hall and himself a sign of changing times.
Wharton had named Wagenschutz the city’s
first bicycle/pedestrian coordinator a month
before the greenline opened.
“Any complaints,” Wagenschutz says,
“changed pretty quickly from being about
whether the trail was a good thing to use-
oriented issues like, ‘Why doesn’t it connect
to my neighborhood?’”
Officials embraced the question, as more
connections were on the way. Remember
those lonely two miles of bike lanes that
Memphis had before the greenline opened
in late 2010? Contrast that with the tally
of bike lanes opened from January 2011
through December 2014: more than 80
miles.
That’s not to say those changes came
without controversy. Public meetings on
bike lanes in high-traffic commercial areas
drew strong objections from business own-
ers who worried that losing parking spaces
for cars would cost them customers. But
in the end, Wagenschutz says, each project
brought outcomes good enough to win fans
for the overall movement.
“I do see the greenline as a turning point
for what we’ve been able to accomplish
over the past four years,” he says. “It helps
immensely to have local examples of suc-
cess. And it gets easier every day to talk to
neighborhoods about why robust transpor-
tation systems that address people walking
and bicycling are important.”
Rolling on the River
The active-transportation turnaround in
Memphis persuaded
Bicycling
magazine in
2012 to move Memphis off its worst-cities
list and into a spotlight as “most improved.”
But the metamorphosis isn’t over.
Paul Morris is among a growing collec-
tion of real estate developers and
dreamers who see a time in
the not-too-distant future
when a strong cycling
culture will be as much a
part of Memphis’ iden-
tity as barbecue, blues
and the Mississippi
River.
Morris is president of
the Downtown Memphis
Commission (
downtown
memphiscommission.com
) and
the city’s manager for a project known as
the Big River Crossing. Funded in part by a
$15 million federal stimulus grant, the proj-
ect will convert a cantilevered carriageway
along the mile-long Harahan Bridge into
a bike and pedestrian trail beside an active
Union Pacific Railroad line.
Ultimately, the bridge trail will be the
centerpiece of multiuse pathways connect-
ing Main Street in downtown Memphis,
Tenn., with Main Street in West Memphis,
Ark. It will invite people to take their time
and enjoy the Memphis skyline as they
cross the mighty Mississippi. Every hour or
so, a slow-moving train will pass at a safe
distance, adding to the magic.
“I like trains,” Morris says, a little giddy
as he describes the plan. “Most boys, I
guess, like trains. So it’s kind of cool to see
the trains go by in that setting.”
The idea to build a trail across the bridge
goes back decades, but the Shelby Farms
Greenline, he says, is what finally made it
achievable.
“In the past when people
tried to pull this off, the
effort would fall apart
when they reached their
first big obstacle,” he
explains.
“Part of the reason
for that is they didn’t
have the evidence of why
a bike trail could matter
enough to Memphis to be
worth it. With the greenline, all of
a sudden we turned cynicism about bikes
and our ability to do good things into opti-
mism and hope and belief. And it allowed
the private sector to take notice and say,
‘Hey, I want to get behind stuff like this.’”
Amy French is a freelance writer, editor and
communications consultant based in Memphis,
Tenn.Writing this article inspired her to borrow
her sister’s bicycle and give the Shelby Farms
Greenline a go.
Dave
Schenk
on the Wolf
River Bridge
Danielle marks
rails
to
trails
u
spring/summer.15
13
