Bike Share has Arrived

By now you’re surely aware that Explore Bike Share launched with much fanfare this passed Wednesday morning. Nearly 300 individuals took part in the launch festivities, which included a massive group ride from the EBS warehouse in Uptown to Court Square. From there, volunteers broke into smaller groups that rode the bicycles to each of the EBS stations.

Memphis is now home to one of the most state-of-the-art and one of the most equitable bike share systems in the country. Sixty stations and 600 bicycles are scattered around Downtown, South Memphis, Midtown, and Orange Mound. Next year the system will grow by 50% thanks to a Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality grant. Those 30 additional stations will be used to both double down on the existing service area and expand into new neighborhoods.

As a public resource, bike share will play a key role in the City’s network of bicycle infrastructure and facilities. As such, today we’re releasing a new map of the City’s bicycle network that focuses on the core neighborhoods composing EBS’ service area, and, most importantly, includes icons for the bike share stations.

Bike share and bike lanes exist in a symbiotic relationship. In order for bike share to reach its full potential in Memphis, people need to feel safe riding a bike on our streets. Likewise, by lowering the barriers to accessing a bicycle, bike share will put more people on bikes. The more that Memphians see bike lanes utilized, and by people like them, the more that bike lanes become perceived as basic transportation infrastructure.

In short, if you support safe streets for all users, you should support bike share. If you support bike share, you should support bike lanes and other traffic calming measures that improve the safety of our streets.

To purchase an Explore Bike Share membership or learn more about it, go to: www.ExploreBikeShare.com.

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New Bike Network Map Released

Yes, it’s been quite a while since the last post, but here’s a good way to break the silence.

Earlier this month we finished the first complete update in two years to the City’s bicycle network data. With that, we’re proud to deliver a new citywide map of Memphis’ bicycle network: City of Memphis Bicycle Facility Network (March 2018)

The legibility of the map has improved over previous versions. A gray-scale background allows the various facilities, existing and programmed, to easily stand out to the reader’s eyes. Extraneous labels and content have been removed. Signed shared roadways, paved shoulders, and marked shared roadways are colored the same. These facilities generally offer the same level of safety and provide no dedicated space on the roadway to people on bikes. Facilities that offer this dedicated space are colored shades of blue. The darker the shade, the more separation from car traffic. Greenways and dirt trails are intuitively green and brown, respectively. Additionally, the map offers some brief tips for users.

This and future maps can be found at the Bicycle Maps page of the blog.