Planning West Ashley’s greener future
Ongoing planning to enhance West Ashley’s greenway and bikeway are focused largely on the various meanings of the word “safety.”
Last month, the Charleston Parks Conservancy brought together over a dozen landscape architects and planners from around the country to begin brainstorming possible improvements and uses for the two linear parks.
Taking advantage of grant and donation dollars to fund the effort, the conservancy wants to provide a priority list of possible projects for future consideration to the city and its residents.
The opportunity for improvements is immense, as the two trails cover more than 11 miles in combined length, and they connect through the heart of so many neighborhoods and communities.
Linear greenspaces have become the planning rage nationally, with New York, Atlanta, and other megacities creating less impactful, yet more verdant pathways through their city limits.
Charleston is also getting into the act, with a similar effort to create a “lowline” downtown. For the past five years, city officials scraped together money and permits to run an urban green swath along the peninsula.
Conservancy head Harry Lesesne oversaw last month’s planning charrette, which included several days of drafting and public listening sessions to see what locals want done with the two paths.
The conservancy has been involved in a variety of public beautification projects in Charleston, and it often comes with more than plans in hand.
On top of the $100,000 it spent of its own money on the planning event, it has also put $75,000 toward improvements to Wragg Square, as well as another $75,000 toward a Hampton Park renovation downtown, with the city matching or exceeding private funding.
The city had already vastly improved the stretch of the bikeway from Playground Road across St. Andrews Boulevard, and down to the Ashley River with millions of dollars of landscaping, drainage projects, and beautification.
Lesesne marveled at the beauty of that stretch of the bikeway when it was reopened to the public earlier this year, until it came to cross St. Andrews Boulevard, where he was forced to play “Frogger” to cross the busy thoroughfare.
Lesesne says he was especially pleased with the offerings from the public. “They were not ‘pie in the sky,’ they were all pretty much implantable,” he says. “Common sense has to rule, this won’t be the product of starry-eyed idealists.”
Principal designer Daniel Ashworth was flown in from Memphis and has worked on similar projects around the country. Ashwworth says he and the other planners are distilling all the suggestions into a conceptual plan with an eye on “some pretty quick, relatively cheaper – costing less than $500,000 – projects.”
Some of the “quick-hitters” include ones that can be accomplished with paint, some shallow curb aprons, and without having to deal with the bureaucracy of the state’s Department of Transportation.
Ashworth gives constructing neighborhood street crossings along the linear parks as a prime example. “Also, adding water fountains, trash cans, lights, and other park-like amenities,” says Ashworth.
The lights speak to the many approaches the planners are taking to the word “safety.” While there has been some violent crime along both parks, community members suggested lighting to make everyone using these facilities, like women joggers and those pushing strollers, feel safer.
Additionally, the word “safety” is being used in the planning process to make sure walkers are “safe” from whizzing bikes, and cyclists would be “safe” to ride in opposite directions on the same trail.
Water fountains would increase safety against dehydration and overheating by stakeholders.
But enhanced safety measures already under discussion are providing some political danger, specifically creating safe passages for bikes and walkers using the aforementioned St. Andrews Boulevard crossing.
Ashworth says one consideration would be to install a HAWK traffic light there, “slaved” and synchronized to the light a few hundred feet away at the Sycamore Street intersection. That way the traffic signal might only stop traffic if it senses pedestrians and cyclists and is told the intersection red light is on.
That way, it is hoped, cars would be inconvenienced less as they would be stopping in a bout a football field anyway, and the final section of the trail would be better utilized.
Ashworth says the proposal is being run through computer simulations. He also acknowledges the lingering concern many local motorists may have, as times recorded for traffic delays for an earlier bike lane closure project on the bridge felt longer for those actually in the cars.
City Councilman Bill Moody attended several of the planning meetings and is a near-daily user of the greenway, which is right around the corner from his West Ashley home. “I think it’s a wonderful asset to the community,” he says.
Moody says there are situations in the neighborhoods where cars should have “primacy” and other situations where bikers and walkers should have the right of way.
“We all have to share the road,” says Moody, who recently saw a man on a moped “sock” a woman on a bicycle in the face along the greenway. The mans was arrested nearby and has been charged.
Ashworth says a master plan is being drafted and should be available for public scrutiny by Labor Day before the conservancy board votes whether or not to present the plan to City Council.
