It’s a major Memphis street. It’s a Downtown connector. It’s a park. It’s a festival grounds. It’s for going fast. It’s for taking it slow. It’s an urban planning laboratory. It’s for cars. It’s for everyone. It’s a front door. It’s a dump. It’s a movie set. It’s open. It’s closed.
When it comes to Riverside Drive, it’s complicated. And it’s been complicated even before the street opened in 1935. Back then, Riverside was built as a way to shore up and clean up the bluff. It was thought that the street might help connect Downtown to the city’s iconic riverfront for motorists, pedestrians, cyclists, locals, tourists, and anyone who wanted an up-close look at the Big Muddy.
Since 2014, no fewer than five projects have transformed Riverside in one way or another, and now the street is back to its original four-lane configuration. But that will change. Data from numerous public meetings shows people want “transformative” change there to make it “less of a highway,” says Nicholas Oyler, bike and pedestrian program manager for the city of Memphis.
But there’s been plenty of disagreement on what that change looks like and how to do it. Maybe no other Memphis street has gotten so much attention over the years. Oyler says Riverside is scenic, it’s the access point to our riverfront, and it’s the “doorstep to our city. Part of the fact that there is so much attention on [Riverside] is that — no matter what somebody’s opinion is — the street is not living up to its potential.”
“God’s foot” … and Garbage
Garbage and trash planted the seeds for Riverside Drive. Burning debris and rusted junk blanketed the bluff in the 1920s, from Beale Street to the Frisco Bridge (just south of the Harahan Bridge), according to a 2019 Memphis magazine story by Michael Finger. In the early 1900s, riverboat captains on the Mississippi knew they were nearing Memphis by the smell and the trash dumped on the city shore.
In 1922, erosion on the bluff sucked a Frisco Railroad locomotive into the river. In 1926, Tennessee Brewery employees found “deep, yawning fissures in the bluffs behind their building running parallel to the river,” and others heard “ominous rumbling noises coming from deep underground,” Finger wrote. In July of that year, a chunk of the bluff nearly three city blocks long plunged into the river “taking with it houses, railroad tracks, and the entire West Kentucky Coal Company.”
“God has just done set His foot right down on this here earth,” a woman who lived nearby told newspapers at the time. “Yes, He’s just stepped on it.”
Something had to be done, city leaders knew. The motivation mostly came from the stink, according to one version of the story. In that version, according to Finger, Memphis Mayor Watkins Overton and political boss E.H. Crump were standing in Confederate Park (now Memphis Park) one evening when both were almost overcome with the noxious fumes drifting from the dump.
“A wall of smoke and evil-smelling fumes from the almost continuously burning trash piles made the riverfront desolate by day and the harbor of bad odors at night,” Overton told a newspaper at the time. He said that he and Crump discussed how to improve the situation. “Out of this conversation came the plan to make the Memphis riverfront something of which the city could be proud.”
Another story has Riverside Drive first proposed as a bluff-top north-south connector for North and South Parkways. A wrinkle in another version has a harbor engineer placing the street at the bottom of the bluff instead of the top.
No matter where the idea came from, construction began in 1930. Complications pushed the cost over $1 million, causing local newspapers to label it “the most costly highway in the world.” Once complete, though, a Corps of Engineers official said “Memphis now has the most beautiful waterfront on the river.”
“We have not only completed a beautiful scenic highway, but we have protected millions of dollars’ worth of property, eradicated a menace to health, and erased Memphis’ poorest advertisement, a dump and garbage heap in its front yard,” Mayor Overton said at Riverside’s grand opening on March 28, 1935.
Riverside Drive has had its ups and downs in the years after the ribbon-cutting ceremony. The garbage under one section once fell away and literally created an up-and-down ravine of about 15 feet. This and other issues were finally fixed with a $2 million renovation project in 1990.
That fix came just in time for Riverside’s close-up in Sydney Pollack’s 1993 film version of John Grisham’s novel, The Firm. In the movie, Riverside symbolizes a free and wide-open escape from Memphis and the firm by Mitch and Abbie McDeere (Tom Cruise and Jeanne Tripplehorn) who cruise the street at the end credits for, maybe, one last look at the city before returning to Boston.
Fast forward through the 1990s and most of the 2000s and nothing much changed on Riverside, except the annual closing of the road for Memphis in May International Festival (MIM). There were always complaints of loud parties in Tom Lee Park, complaints of cruising up and down Riverside, and the worries about public safety all of it brought to the street. All of those concerns continue to this day.
A “Complete Street”
In 2008, spades of dirt were turned to break ground on Beale Street Landing, a $44 million river passenger boat dock along Riverside, which was completed in 2014. That year began years of a low-heat controversy on Riverside that has simmered in the minds of many Memphians ever since, and may continue for a while yet.
At the end of MIM that year, city officials announced they’d keep Riverside closed for an additional two weeks to reconfigure the street, making it more accessible for bikes and pedestrians. The decision was based on recommendations for Riverside in a 2013 report from land-use consultant Jeff Speck.
“Riverside Drive, which is annually narrowed and closed with little negative impact on the Downtown, should be converted from a four-lane speedway to a two-lane ‘complete street,’ including parallel parking and a protected bicycle track along the Mississippi River,” the report read. The pilot project reduced car traffic lanes from four to two lanes between Beale and Carolina. The “road diet” was to make the riverfront “safer, more active, and accessible.”
“The pilot project helps the public envision how Riverside Drive could be repurposed for greater enjoyment by bicyclists and pedestrians,” said John Cameron, (who was at the time) the city engineer. “It also gives technical experts a chance to evaluate traffic impacts on Riverside Drive and the Downtown street network as the ultimate configuration of Riverside Drive is determined.”
A 2016 report from a city engineers project found that traffic volumes and traffic patterns remained mostly unchanged during the 12-month “complete street” project. Traffic speeds lowered from an average of 47 miles per hour in 2006 (when the posted speed limit was 40 mph) to an average low of 38 mph during the pilot project in September 2014 (when the posted limit was 35 mph). That average rose to 48 mph in July 2015, after the project concluded.
Car crashes increased during the 2014 pilot project, too. From June to May 2013, 20 crashes were reported on Riverside. From June to May 2014, 32 were reported, a 14 percent increase. No crash on Riverside was fatal from 2012 to 2015. Injury accidents were cut nearly in half during the pilot project, from 30 percent in the year before it to 16 percent during it. The report said the types of crashes “changed significantly.”
“Prior to the pilot phase, nearly half of crashes were out-of-control, run-off-the-road crashes typically linked to excessive driving speeds,” reads the report. “During the pilot phase, however, these types of crashes greatly reduced and were replaced by slow-speed, rear-end and sideswipe crashes, oftentimes located near the entrance of Tom Lee Park parking lot.”
Then-Memphis Mayor A C Wharton cited the rise in crashes as one reason to reopen Riverside to four lanes of car traffic in June 2015. But he told reporter Bill Dries, then at The Memphis Daily News, that “there will be bike lanes” on Riverside but he wanted to ensure that “we have the best configuration … considering everybody’s views.”
People for Bikes, the cycling advocacy group, ranked the Riverside bike lane project in its top 10 bikes lanes of the year in 2014, calling it a “perfect example” of an “agile” planning approach.
“In bike planning, Memphis is the anti-San Francisco,” read the People for Bikes web post at the time. “The city reasons that there’s no better way to make its planning process public than to rapidly get a project on the ground, listen to the ways people react to it, and adjust as needed. ‘Ready, fire, aim,’ Memphis planner Kyle Wagenschutz says.”
Tinkering on the River
City leaders have tinkered with Riverside four other times since that pilot project in 2014.
A host of public meetings surrounded a proposal to bring bike lanes back to Riverside to help connect the newly opened Big River Crossing to Downtown. The comments collected during those public meetings show Memphians’ often divergent thinking about changing Riverside Drive. Some love it for bikes. Some hate it for cars. Some want tax money spent on cops and not on projects that benefit “only a few.” Others (usually cyclists) gave technical advice on turns, crossings, and more.
“This looks awesome!” reads one comment. “Thank you for bollards. Everyone treats Riverside like a racetrack!”
But another comment said, “Of all the proposals, this is the most extreme and the most harmful to the flow of traffic in an area that requires more than a single lane of traffic in each direction. This proposal should be shelved.”
“Riverside needs to be slowed down for certain,” reads another comment at the time. “I do not feel safe as a cyclist or pedestrian in the area. The naysayers have to accept to share the road with other users.”
Another commenter said, “absolutely not.”
“Have you even studied the use of these lanes!” the commenter said. “Simply building bike lanes will not make bike riders out of non-riders. Stop wasting tax dollars to benefit a few hundred people!”
That proposal was, ultimately, shelved. But it didn’t stop leaders from further tinkering with Riverside.
RiverPlay closed a section of the street from Court to Jefferson for a few months in the early summer months of 2017. The pop-up installation brought basketball courts, a roller skating rink, food trucks, and more to the street.
The most recent closure of Riverside Drive was not driven primarily by urban planning, though. The street was blocked off from Georgia to Union in March 2020 in an effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. The move was a broader effort to limit access to parks and the “first restriction will be to cars,” Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said on March 30, 2020.
“Riverside Drive will be closed, and I will be closing as many roads in and around parks that the fire marshal will let me,” Strickland said. “Second, even though our Safer at Home Order sets this out, I will repeat — no groups of people will be allowed to congregate in our parks.”
The street was reopened to car traffic in July 2020 for weekday traffic, though the Tom Lee Park parking lots were still barricaded. The street opened completely in late March 2021.
During that year, many Memphians, especially many Downtowners, grew to love the quiet street. Social media was alive with positive comments from cyclists, roller skaters, snow sledders, dog walkers, and more. But Jerred Price, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association (DNA), says another group felt left out.
“We had a lot of disabled neighbors come to us and say, ‘This isn’t equitable for us because the parking lot with the handicapped spaces is closed,’” Price says. “‘Our tax dollars — everyone’s tax dollars — paid for the parking lot but now we’re being forced way up on the bluff.’”
Traffic began to rise Downtown, too, and Price said neighbors worried emergency services vehicles were slowed on interior city streets, instead of the wide-open Riverside. For these reasons, Price and his group advocated for Riverside to reopen once COVID-19 restrictions began to lift and helped secure the partial reopening in July. Temporary handicap parking was added near the corner of Front and Riverside, though Price said the walk to the park was still too far for some.
Others advocated for Riverside to be permanently closed. Columnist Dan Conaway recently opined in The Daily Memphian that roads around Riverside can easily absorb any traffic caused by a closed Riverside. He argued for safety and access to the riverfront and against “more traffic easing or slowing or speed bumps or lane reductions or any other euphemism for cars on Riverside below the bluff bordering Tom Lee Park.
“Nobody with a baby carriage should have to play dodge ’em with cars to get across Riverside,” Conaway wrote. “Nobody with a cooler, or a cane, or a leash, or the hand of a child should have to risk life and limb to get to the river.”
The Newest New Plan
Opinions diverge when it comes to Riverside, and they have for years. But when the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP) unveiled its newest plan for Riverside last week, those opinions began to converge.
The new plan announced that it would make a “safer, slower Riverside Drive” by introducing a number of traffic-calming interventions along the stretch bordering Tom Lee Park. The plan would focus on three crossings across Riverside: one at Vance, another at Huling, and one at Butler. These would be pedestrian crossings to connect Tom Lee Park, combining several elements to slow traffic and make crossing safer.
As motorists approach a crossing, they’ll first encounter a speed hump, warning them of the crossing ahead. At the crossing, they’ll find a speed table, a ramp larger and steeper than a speed hump. The tops of these speed tables would be level with sidewalks on both sides of the street, so pedestrians would not have to step down as they crossed. And the tables will be high enough to force slower speeds.
“You’ve got this combination of design mechanisms that force traffic to slow down,” says MRPP president and CEO Carol Colletta. “Otherwise, your car gets damaged and, maybe so do you because of the jolt you’ll feel.”
Spots for parallel parking along the street are also expected to slow traffic. Such parking will be available only in three “pods” along the western edge of Riverside. Together, these areas are expected to yield 60 parking spots along the street.
To the immediate west of the parallel parking pods will be a median to separate cars parked there and a straight path for bikes and scooters. Coletta says that path is hoped to keep that faster traffic out of the main part of the park for strolling pedestrians.
The new design also removes the decorative median strip from the center of Riverside Drive. Smaller medians will remain, though, closer to the three street crossings.
The combination of all of these interventions is expected to slow traffic at the crossings to 15 miles per hour. The plan is expected to slow Riverside’s fastest traffic to 30-35 mph and slow average speeds to 20-25 mph.
Coletta says rules enforcement and traffic signs will still be needed along Riverside, but she hopes the new plan will slow traffic more naturally.
“The more we rely on design to make streets safer, the better off we’ll be and the more likely we are to sustain the slow speeds that deliver safety,” she says.
Construction of the new Riverside Drive is slated to begin when construction of the new Tom Lee Park begins. That project kicks off after MIM wraps up later this year.
DNA president Price, who is oft-times at odds with the MRPP, says the plan is “what we’ve been advocating for and asking for since late last year. We’ve finally been heard and we can’t thank [MRPP] enough for finally allowing that to move forward.”
Oyler, the city bike and pedestrian program manager, says the plan knits together two concerns that are in direct conflict with one another: quick, easy access for cars to the area and slowing cars there for better pedestrian access.
“[The MRPP plan] is one of the best attempts at a compromise between these two diametrically opposed positions,” he says.
Riverside Drive is a complicated situation. Solutions haven’t been easy, and that’s not from a lack of trying — for decades.
So far, the new MRPP plan has most everyone singing from the same song book. So far, there’s not any of the city’s usual and plentiful public backlash. Coletta says the plan meets the criteria set out in mediation with MIM and it has the approval of Mayor Strickland.
So maybe, just maybe, MRPP has devised a solution that’s been sought after for decades. We won’t know for a while, though, so, until then, we’ll keep a watch on the riverside.