Metro Vets Shrinking Eighth Avenue For Bike Lanes

NASHVILLE, TN — Metro Planning is considering a project to add bike lanes and a shared center turn lane to nearly a mile and a half of busy Eighth Avenue. That plan would take the stretch of Eighth between Wedgewood and the roundabout south of Broadway down to two travel lanes for cars, and that has business owners worried.

The City of Berry Hill has already recommended a similar project for the stretch of Eighth — or Franklin Road, as it becomes once it passes under Interstate 440 — that runs through the satellite city. There's no way to widen the road to accommodate the bike and turn lanes, so to do so would require a reduction in travel lanes.

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The planning department and advocacy group Walk Bike Nashville argue the plan would actually reduce congestion on the well-traveled thoroughfare — roughly 20,000 cars use it daily — but area business owners expressed their skepticism at a Tuesday night meeting, according to WKRN.

“Adding bicycle lanes and a turning lane all the way through will just end up making traffic worse,” Chris Watts, owner of America’s Motor Sports, said according to the station. “If we take the 20,000 cars a day that Metro Planning says is going through there and we take them out of four lanes and put them on two lanes.”

Several other meetings are planned before a formal proposal is made.

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