Changes coming to slow Riverside Drive traffic
Memphis River Parks Partnership and the City of Memphis have reached an agreement about several changes that will be made to try to slow down traffic on Riverside Drive.
Updates to the street will be made as construction on the $60 million Tom Lee Park renovation progresses. Work has started on the park overhaul but large-scale construction will begin after the Memphis in May festival concludes. The changes were announced in a Zoom meeting Monday afternoon.
Carol Coletta, president and CEO of the Memphis River Parks Partnership, said there were five measures being put in place to make crossing the street and getting to Tom Lee Park safer and easier.
“Traffic moves way too fast for people on foot, people on bikes, for people on scooters to feel safe crossing Riverside Drive or actually even walking alongside,” she said. “It feels too much like an expressway on Riverside Drive.”
To counter that, speed tables will be put in, speed humps will be put before and after the speed tables, pedestrian signals will be put at all the crossings, a lane of parallel parking will be added to the west of the south-bound lanes, and the speed tables will also serve as pedestrian islands.
“So essentially, you’ve got this combination of design mechanisms that
slow, that force traffic to slow down,” Coletta said.
Parks partnership and city staff hope the measures will slow speeds to between 15 and 20 mph at the speed tables, between 20 and 25 mph between speed tables and then back to over 30 mph at the tail ends of the park.
To accommodate the 60 spaces of parallel parking that will be created in three pods along the west side of the drive, the median will be taken out of the road and the lanes will narrow slightly.
George Abbott, director of external affairs for the Memphis River Parks Partnership, said there would still be small medians around the speed tables to provide a space for pedestrians crossing Riverside Drive to stop.
There will also be a thin strip of landscaping between the parallel parking lane and a lane for bikes and scooters at the edge of the park.
“That is the fast path,” Abbott said. “That is designed to keep bikes and scooters trying to move as quickly as possible north-south out of the park where you’ll have people kind of strolling at a more leisurely pace.”
The changes to Riverside Drive have been approved by Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and the city’s engineering department.
Coletta said the partnership was still getting estimates for how much the roadwork would cost and did not have an exact price tag. The changes will be made in the latter stages of the Tom Lee Park renovations.
Contact Corinne Kennedy at Corinne .Kennedy@commercialappeal.com.