The city of Atlanta received one of six grants totaling $100,000 from outdoor retailer REI to install a protected bike lane on Westview Drive. A year later the bike lane has been removed and the experience has inspired a lot of soul searching.
"The city of Atlanta recently removed a bike lane on the westside of town, and it's left the community and cycling advocates with questions," reports Stephannie Stokes.
The lane had been installed a year earlier using grant funding from outdoor retailer REI and the nonprofit PeopleForBikes, but tension over the new bike lane began early, originating in part from Shiloh Baptist Church.
The article by Stokes focuses on the lessons that are emerging from the failed experiment, including lessons about community engagement and the kinds of infrastructure that have come to symbolize gentrification. Jonathan Whitfield, a minister at Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church, is quoted in the article, saying "[m]ost people feel like these bikes lanes are not for the people here. It's for the people to come."
Stokes's coverage of the controversy follows on earlier work on the subject by Darin Givens for ThreadATL, which was later picked up by Angie Schmitt at Streetsblog USA. Among the facets of this story reported by Givens: the bike lane was removed without authorization from the Atlanta City Council.
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