Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Parks and Recreation Possible Greenline Disruption?
Posted by Mary Cashiola on Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 12:16 PM
The steady stream of folks to a portion of the new Shelby Farms Greenline may be stopped — temporarily — by TDOT construction at Holmes Street near East High School.
Construction at Holmes Street was supposed to be completed prior to the opening of the greenline, but the project, which is funded largely by federal dollars, was delayed. Now construction is scheduled to start at the beginning of the year and be completed next August.
But at this morning's City Council parks committee meeting, engineering division director Wain Gaskins told members that his staff was trying to identify detour routes through area neighborhoods to maintain the flow of the greenline.
Shelby Farms Park executive director Laura Adams was also at the committee meeting this morning:
"Closing the greenline for eight months is very problematic. We need to find ways to minimize that," she said. "There is so much great buzz around the greenline right now. We're concerned about this hurting our long-term prospects."
Holmes Street will be closed to traffic during the construction in an effort to speed up the process.
The Council also asked about new signage near the intersections of the greenline and busy streets such as Highland and Graham. Adams said Shelby Farms felt comfortable putting signage on the greenline itself but would defer to the city on city cross streets.
"It's incredibly popular, beyond our wildest expectations," Adams said of the greenline. "We have 400 people per hour at any one location on Saturdays and Sundays. We're scrambling to be able to meet the popularity of the trail."
Though security incidents have been few, they recently won a grant to install security cameras along the trail. Adams also told council members to expect good news shortly on the effort to connect the greenline to the fairgrounds and to Overton Park.
Comments (9)
Showing 1-9 of 9
I'm so sure the guy who's single-handedly done everything in his power to defeat making Memphis bike-friendly (including the way he engineered the loss of federal funding to mark bike lanes) is going to bend every effort not to disrupt the single-most successful bike-friendly project in Memphis history. Yuh, right.
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what, for a few hundred bucks they could toss down some temporary black top to make a path across the street... surely the whole 8 months won't be spent working on that 10' section of road.
Wain, dude, come on man... think of citizen's perspectives... you know, to actually enjoy living here. this isn't very hard.
Holmes Street bridge replacement is a TDOT project, so the city engineer has no control over it and is not to blame for the timing of it. Building a bridge over the Greenline will present some problems (not sure what "tossing down some temporary black top" would accomplish) but don't get your spandex bike shorts in a wad yet. I'm sure all involved will try to accomodate the Greenline users if possible.
Seriously? I see no mention of Mr. Gaskins trying to steal the crabby patty recipe, nor does he have aspirations to play the clarinet. Y'all cut him a little slack. He lives under a rock, after all. How many of you could manage that?
Perhaps they could utilize the power line easement on the southwest side of the overpass to create either a permanent paved or a temporary (compacted crushed gravel?) access between the GL and Holmes. On the east side of Holmes there appears to be enough space to at least approach the owner of the extremely deep lot regarding a lease or purchase of a strip there to accommodate either a temporary or permanent access from the east side of Holmes to the trail. That or you could go with the temporary access on the southwest side of the overpass and have the detour route utilize Waynoka to Highland where it could then reconnect.
Just ideas.
What the hell? Of all the streets in Memphis that need work, why Holmes. That street is never busy.
The dummies that run this town, in conjunction with TDOT just can't seem to get ANYTHING right, can they ?
Fact, the NEPA documents that approved the Holmes bridge project are not any good any more.
Fact, a supplemental NEPA document must be produced that considers the significant new circumstances that now exist on the work site.
Fact, if "somebody" would ask for an updated NEPA analysis that acknowledges the impact this federally funded project, (Holmes Bridge) will have on ANOTHER federally funded project, (Greenline), things could be made better.
Fact, once this analysis is done, the expenses of mitigating the damage done to the recreational resource, known as 4(f) resources will likely be borne by the project, not by local government. It is also likely that the Greenline would be closed for a much shorter time.
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