How University of Memphis Alumnus Paved the Way for Memphis’ Bike Lanes
Kyle Wagenschutz | 2010 Alumni
As a college student Kyle Wagenschutz (’10) could be found volunteering at a community bike shop in the basement of First Congregational Church in Memphis’ Cooper-Young neighborhood.
“I went there at first because I was in school and needed a bike to get around,” Wagenschutz said.
A couple of years later, he found himself as the director of the program, Revolutions Memphis Bicycle Cooperative, where he would continue to help people from the surrounding community fix up bicycles.
“I had an epiphany one day that we were helping thousands of people fix up their bicycles over the course of you know, four or five years, but there was no place for people to actually go and ride their bikes,” he said.
He set out to try and change that with a few friends. They purchased suits from Goodwill and started going to City Hall meetings.
“We needed to look more professional than a bunch of greasy bike mechanics who were working in the basement,” Wagenschutz said.
After attending countless meetings, Wagenschutz said he needed to get a better understanding of city planning to see his vision come to life. He enrolled in the UofM City and Regional Planning master’s program and the rest is history.
Through the program, which is celebrating 50 years of impact in the city, Wagenschutz was exposed to the many neighborhoods around Memphis doing hands-on work where he gained an understanding of community engagement, equity and parity.
He said it’s the perspective from those experiences that he continues to take going forward in his work.
“The UofM program taught me to value engaging communities in this work and the power of a united voice.”
“The role of planners and other people working within governments and leaders have a responsibility to care for the least among us, and in a professional practice that’s especially important,” he said.
In 2010, Wagenschutz became the first Bicycle and Pedestrian Program Manager for the City of Memphis.
For the first time, the city had someone dedicated to thinking about walking and biking in new ways.
“There was no planning for it. There was no precedent for it,” he said.
Wagenschutz knew he wanted community members involved in what the master plan would become and continually met with them in South Memphis, Binghampton and Frayser, throughout the planning process as part of his strategy.
He even invited stakeholders in city government to visit a city known for their bicycle infrastructure — Amsterdam.
“The UofM program taught me to value engaging communities in this work and the power of a united voice and building coalition and momentum from the ground up,” he said.
“I’m really proud of the ways in which I was able to help the city lead community engagement in a process that was very different than the way that they used to do it, by focusing on relationships with people.”
With all the gears turning in the right direction, Wagenschutz began developing the city’s first bicycle master plan.
This added 200 miles of new dedicated bike lanes and pathways around the city.
He also developed a more pedestrian friendly Memphis through a strategy that included $200 million in pedestrian improvements over the course of 20 years.
Two large scale projects Wagenschutz helped develop are the Hampline, an almost two-mile bicycle and pedestrian throughfare that goes from Shelby Farms through Binghamton and then into Overton Park and Big River Crossing, the longest public pedestrian and bike bridge across the Mississippi River.
In 2015, the Obama administration honored Wagenschutz’s work in Memphis with the Champions of Change distinction in the Innovators and Transportation category. That same year, Memphis received the distinction of officially being designated a Bicycle Friendly Community by the League of American Bicyclist.
Today, Wagenschutz lives in Colorado and helps lead City Thread assisting communities and governments create the change they want seen in their neighborhoods. City Thread partners with the UofM City and Regional Planning through an internship program for students in their master’s program.
“What stands out to me about this program is that my classmates during that time are people that I continue to partner with in my professional work. It’s been 15 years, and they are people that I still work with on a daily basis,” Wagenschutz said. “The friendships and the people I met during those two years in the graduate program continue to be some of the most fulfilling relationships that I have today.”
This story is part of a series celebrating the UofM Department of City and Regional Planning‘s 50th year anniversary.
