Shelby Farms Greenline Groundbreaking

It's all about connections

Editorial from the Commercial Appeal

How do you bury a city's reputation as a place that doesn't care for cyclists and pedestrians?

With shovels, of course.

The ground-breaking ceremonies set this week for two off-street trails in Memphis are ceremonial but meaningful gestures in a city that has fallen far behind the trend that helps make a lot of American cities more livable.

First, on Wednesday, is the ceremonial start of construction on Memphis' first phase of the Wolf River Greenway, a short but symbolic $1.4 million stretch of asphalt between Walnut Grove and Shady Grove on the river's city-side bank.

This summer plans also call for bids to be sought for another section of the Greenway that will continue east and link with a shaded, rolling and popular riverside trail in Germantown.

Eventually, the Greenway trail will stretch along 22 miles of the Wolf River corridor from the Mississippi to Collierville.

Another ground-breaking will probably be held this spring for a pedestrian bridge over the Wolf that will link the Greenway with the network of trails in Shelby Farms Park.

This Thursday in the park, meanwhile, more dirt will be turned to get work symbolically started on the Shelby Farms Greenline -- a new name for the long-sought rails-to-trails project on an abandoned stretch of CSX Railroad right-of-way obtained by Shelby County largely with privately raised money last year.

Phase One of this trail is an ambitious, $2.4 million, 6.5-mile project that goes beyond giving cyclists and runners a protected track on which to pursue their hobbies.

Modern urban trails are also about connectivity, and in this case the primary connection is an important one.

The section links several Midtown and East Memphis neighborhoods to Shelby Farms Park's 4,500 acres of amenities without the hassle of starting up the car and dealing with traffic.

The paved trail and seven bridges that will either have to be replaced or adapted for bicycle and pedestrian use will also link neighborhoods with each other -- a factor that could do a lot of good but that has also produced some anxiety.

There will be trailheads at Tillman Street and Walnut Grove on the west and Farm Road at Shelby Farms Park on the east. Management and operation of the project -- or "the missing link," as it has been known around Shelby Farms Park -- are the responsibility of the nonprofit Shelby Farms Park Conservancy and Shelby County government.

How well will it work?

That depends on a number of factors, including how well a dusk-to-dawn trail closure is enforced and whether residents along the trail are willing to work together in Neighborhood Watch groups and the like to monitor activity.

In the experience of other urban communities that have built trails, property values alongside the right-of-way usually increase and wary residents grow to appreciate them.

Residents along the Shelby Farms Greenline can take a cue from Midtowners who live next to the 1.7-mile V&E Greenline, the city's only other rails-to-trails project and a popular and well-maintained neighborhood amenity.

If things go as they should, the first section of the new trail will be completed by August and most of the anxieties will have been eased. The fundraising, the negotiating, the designing and all the other work that has gone into the project will have been well worth it.