Tuesday update

Sorry this is a day late… had problems publishing yesterday.

Memphis River Parks Partnership and the city have come up with a fantastic plan for Riverside Drive, allowing it to be shared by vehicles and pedestrians.

  • Good news for vehicles – in the long term, Riverside will remain 2 lanes each direction (during park construction, it will be one lane each direction at Beale Street Landing)

BUT

  • Good news for pedestrians – there will be three raised crossings at Vance, Huling, and Butler. The raised crossings will have speed bumps on either side, and cars’ undersides will be damaged if they don’t slow down to navigate over the crossings.

This sounds outstanding. Hopefully it will eliminate the ability to drag race on Riverside between Georgia and Beale without doing thousands of dollars of damage to the racers’ cars.

It’s not just the drag racers either. When I worked in Horn Lake and took Riverside to work in the mornings, drivers were honked at, cussed at, and flipped off if they didn’t maintain a speed of about 48 to 51 MPH on a stretch of road where the posted speed limit was 35. Prevailing traffic speed was way too high to be safe for pedestrians.

There will be flashing lights at the intersections, activated by pedestrians, as well as the “speed table” crossings. There will also be pods of parking spaces totaling about 60 on the west side of Riverside.

Cheers to all involved on coming up with a win for everybody. This is the kind of thinking we need more of in our city.

Fox 13 has updated info on the gunshots fired near Hyatt Centric Memphis at Front and Beale Sunday night about 10. The shooter was said to be a man standing on the southeast corner of Front Street firing a weapon. He hit a moving car as well as shot out windows in two hotel rooms. The hotel is scheduled to open this week.

Larger hotels in Memphis tend to employ their own PR person, and if Hyatt Centric has one, that person is certainly getting a baptism by fire in their new job.