Metro has released a $550 million plan this week for beefing up our city’s kinda-sad sidewalk system–called WalknBike. Researchers found that we’re missing close to 2,000 miles of sidewalks around here (ouch!), but the plan uses a fancy rating system to identify 91 miles of sidewalks we could add that would get us the most bang for our buck. And the “buck,” in this case, is $550 million. At the current rate we invest in new sidewalks, this plan would take about 20 years to complete.
There’s also a separate $41 million plan for adding better bikeways that that hasn’t gotten much attention as far as we can tell–perhaps we’ll dig into that at a later date.
The plan is posted in full right here (all 228 pages of it) or there’s a much shorter executive summary you can check out to see the highlights. If you’re a Nashvillian who likes to walk and bike around town (or wishes you could), you’ve got until the end of the month to send them feedback and add your voice to the mix. From there, it’s up to Mayor Barry and the Metro Council to finalize the plan.
Photo by Sascha Kohlmann.