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Chattanooga Bicycle Corridor
By Chris Gilligan
November 1999
It has been a long time coming, but we are finally beginning to see our
dreams for a Chattanooga bicycle corridor come down to earth. Once this project gets on
the ground, we will have the momentum, the contacts, and the experience to get better
facilities for Chattanooga cyclists.
It is not an easy thing to change the culture of the traffic
engineering department at city hall. While we have always had supporters in the public
works department, they have often been tied to old ways of doing things, simply because
there was not enough public sentiment, with accompanying political pressure, to change the
course. Due to the efforts of a few Chattanooga Bike Club members and some enlightened
civil servants, we are now on a first name basis with folks in the planning department and
city hall. They recognize the Chattanooga cycling community as a significant and vocal
group. Whenever we speak up and ask for work on the plans for "the bike route,"
we get a little closer to a final product.
Implementing a bike route on city streets is much, much more time
consuming and difficult than building trails in a state or national forest. The required
planning, networking, and "hoop-jumping" is overwhelming. However, when we think
back a few years, we can remember a time when biking was pretty much prohibited on
National Forest trails. Now, thanks to our relationships with a few helpful people in
positions of authority in the Cherokee National Forest, we have been able to help build
and maintain (and ride!) miles and miles of bike trails. That same thing is happening with
the Chattanooga Public Works department.
The Devil is in the Details
Designs for the section between M.L.King Blvd. and 12th St. will be
discussed at a meeting at 11:00 on Tuesday, Nov. 2, 1999 at the Design Center (2nd Floor,
Miller Plaza, 850 Market Street). This section of the route presents some difficulties,
because Broad St. is constricted between M.L.King and 11th. The current design calls for
widening the roadway here, which would require removing some landscaping, trees, and
portions of the sidewalks. For the design to work, we will have to reach consensus with
business and land owners, planners, and the Traffic Engineering department.
Other sections of the route do not pose serious problems. The engineers
and planners agree that Broad St. between 2nd and M.L.King has plenty of unused capacity
to allow bike lanes. They also agree that Chestnut St. between 12th and 26th is
appropriate for cycling, as is the majority of St. Elmo Ave. If we can work out our
differences on some of the smaller pieces of the route, work could progress in year 2000.
Brewed and Bottled
To use a beer analogy (I know a lot of you folks can identify), we have
had to sit back and allow this idea to brew for a couple of years, but now it's fermented.
It's getting bottled, and we hope to pop the cap and have a toast "when it's
time."
Documents that have been created so far include:
- Requests for Surface Transportation Program funding (approved and
funded by local and federal agencies)
- Engineering survey and study identifying possible routes
- Design specifications and evaluation criteria
- Linear route map showing 3 alternative routes
- Detailed overhead and cross sections of Broad, 11th, and Chestnut
Streets between M.L.King Blvd. and 12th St.
(We hope to have these detailed cross section maps available on the
web page in the near future, however it became prudent to complete the newsletter first
– keep watching for more on this)
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