Green infrastructure is a planning and design approach to managing stormwater. Green infrastructure can also be utilized to improve air quality and reduce the urban heat island effect - an urban area that is warmer than surrounding rural areas, due to human activities.
You can watch a video about Nashville's bikeways to learn more about how the city designs bikeways that are safe and intuitive for all ages and abilities.
East Nashville Bikeway Planning
Projects in East Nashville focus on providing connections from residential areas to commercial areas including Five Points and Shelby Bottoms Park, and improving existing bikeways on Shelby Avenue and Davidson Street.
Many of these connections are planned to be neighborways—a type of bikeway that creates a safe biking route by slowing down traffic on the street instead of installing separated bike lanes. These projects can be accomplished without removing any driving lanes or many parking spots—rather, through calming traffic on neighborhood streets. In doing so, we can also help enable people to ride bikes to neighborhood destinations, as well as to safe places to cross the river into Downtown.
East Nashville Bikeways Map
South Nashville Bikeway Planning
South Nashville is currently difficult to bike in because interstates and major roads cut through and separate neighborhoods. By focusing on creating a safe and easy bikeway connection on Chestnut Street, Wharf Avenue, and Charles E. Davis Boulevard, people will be able to bike safely between the Napier, Sudekum, Chestnut Hill, and Wedgewood-Houston neighborhoods, to destinations within all four neighborhoods, as well as to Downtown and to the west via Edgehill Avenue. Additionally, providing this seamless connection will make it easier in the future to connect in other neighborhood streets via neighborways—a type of bikeway that creates a safe biking route by slowing down traffic on already quiet neighborhood streets instead of installing separated bike lanes.
South Nashville Bikeways Map
North Nashville Bikeway Planing
In 2018, Metro Planning and Public Works began working with neighborhoods in North Nashville, including Elizabeth Park, Buena Vista, Germantown, and Salemtown on a network of bikeway projects designed for people of all ages and abilities. The result is a network of bikeways to be installed in phases, beginning in August 2019, that provide space for people on bikes to ride safely, enable people walking to cross streets safely, slow down traffic in neighborhoods, and include art in public spaces. Through this process, Metro Planning and Public Works staff worked hand-in-hand with the Metro Arts Commission to ensure that neighborhood residents and business owners were leading the changes to their streets.
These investments also represent collaboration between non-government groups such as the Cumberland River Compact, Walk Bike Nashville, and the Nashville Civic Design Center; culminating in the first Open Streets event in North Nashville and a Metro investment of nearly three million dollars.
North Nashville Bikeways Map
