VOL. 126 | NO. 135 | Wednesday, July 13, 2011

A new twist on the old phrase “where the rubber meets the road” occurs Wednesday evening on Madison Avenue.

The rubber will be from bicycle tires as an architecture and planning firm hired by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton Jr.’s administration closes out a trio of public hearings to shape a more comprehensive plan for the Madison roadway between Cleveland and Cooper streets.

The Wednesday, July 13, meeting, moderated by the architecture firm LRK Inc., begins at 5:30 p.m. at Minglewood Hall, 1555 Madison Ave.

A Madison plan will go to Wharton as a recommendation for his approval, rejection or amendment.

Based on sentiments at the first two hearings, the recommendation is likely to include some dedicated bicycle lanes, some on street parking and a combination of both in some parts of the two-mile length of the Midtown thoroughfare.

But the sentiment hasn’t been unanimous.

A group of business owners whose opposition to the bicycle lanes prompted the Wharton administration to take a second look at the idea said Tuesday the meetings so far have been “biased” toward reducing one of the two lanes of auto traffic in each direction. They want a full engineering traffic study by the city.

A week ago, during the second session, a group of more than 100 people marked up maps of Madison divided into four segments with what they would like to see. The maps included bicycle lanes, parking, no bicycle lanes, better sidewalks and ideas for signage.

Wade Walker was among the planners called in by the city to get a specific proposal for Madison by the end of the month, the deadline to have a use for the federal funds to repave and restripe the street.

Walker is director of transportation planning for Fuss & O’Neill, a Nashville planning firm. He’s also a native Memphian with good memories of the Overton Square end of Madison.

“I’m really fond of those 38104 (ZIP code) shirts I see,” Walker said to the crowd at the hearing. “Can I get one? I was born in 38104. … I remember when there was a parking problem at Overton Square.”

Walker said the goal of the process is to get beyond what he calls the “black box theory,” where planners crunch traffic counts and other stats and then tell designers what will and won’t work on the road surface.

LRK and the other planners and experts have that data, and they have fresh traffic counts to do more than make assumptions about traffic on Madison.

Traffic count devices on the section of Madison from June 26 to July 1, showed a traffic volume of 12,500 vehicles a day going both ways. And 85 percent of the cars were driving 41 miles an hour or higher despite the posted speed limit of 35 miles an hour.

Madison reached a traffic count volume high of 21,000 a day in the mid 1980s with the count dropping dramatically in the mid 1990s and bottoming out shortly after 2000. It’s remained stable since then.

In 2008, 36 percent of the auto accidents on Madison were from cars switching lanes, a driving habit the planners call “slaloming” that they say could be remedied with a turning lane on some sections of the street.

That and other options including the dedicated bicycle lanes, they argued could increase and even double the amount of traffic on the street.

But Walker said there is more to consider, including the need to “be respectful of the built environment.”

He also talked about the concept of “gap closure” that goes directly to the controversy about whether bicycle lanes will build trade for businesses. More than 60 businesses along Madison are opposed to dedicated bicycle lanes and in favor of better marked but shared bicycle-auto lanes.

“The key is balance,” Walker said. “We need to close those gaps. If people don’t feel safe riding a bicycle across an intersection they are not going to ride that bike along that border. If people don’t feel safe crossing the street in a commercial area, they are going to shop one side of that street and they are never going to cross the street.”

The 10 options, including two unique to Overton Square, on the table Wednesday evening have some nuance. Some flip the dedicated bike lane from between the curb and the parking lane to between the parking lane and the one lane of auto traffic – and vice versa.

Other options include parking lanes on one side of Madison only. And there is the option of some modification if not removal of the median strip in Overton Square.

“When we talking about moving traffic, it’s not just moving parts,” Walker said. “We ought to think about it as moving people. … You want to see more people. People in their cars, people getting out of their cars, people shopping, people living.”