Memphis is the deadliest metro area in the country for people walking, with 5.5 pedestrian deaths per 100,000 residents. Sheridan Harris nearly lost her life in a hit-and-run while training for a triathlon three years ago, and she is still working toward getting back to the riding she loved before the crash. Since then, she has become part of My Green Line Project, which is collecting firsthand accounts from dangerous crossings across Memphis, including places residents say have needed attention for years. Her own intersection still has not been changed, but My Green Line Project keeps doing the work anyway, gathering residents’ stories and pressing for safer crossings whether officials recognize the problem or not.
Hi, everybody! Welcome to another episode of the Bottom Up Revolution podcast. I'm your host, Tiffany Owens Reed. If you've been around the Strong Towns conversation, then you know that one of the most important questions we ask is, "What's the cost? What's the cost of the way that we have been designing and planning our cities in this country for the past 100 years or so?"
When we talk about costs, we don't just talk about the financial cost of how we're building our cities. We also talk about the personal cost and the human impact. Our guest today is going to speak to that on a very personal level.
I'm joined by Sheridan Harris. She is a Memphis-based mom and pedestrian safety advocate who has firsthand experience with roadway violence after a hit-and-run crash in 2023. She's now turning that experience into the basis for advocating for increased safety for pedestrians and bikers in her city. I am honored that she is joining us on the show today to share her story and her work.
Sheridan, welcome to the Bottom Up Revolution podcast. We have a little bit in common in terms of the city where you live. My dad is from Memphis, and I lived there a little bit during my elementary school years. I haven't been back for a while. How do you like to describe Memphis, and what would you say makes it feel like home to you?
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here today.
I'm not a native Memphian, but I moved here for college in 2010, and I'm an alum of the University of Memphis. So, go Tigers!
I think Memphis is really a big small town. Memphis-Shelby County has about a million residents, but it's really common to see people you know and get caught up in conversation. So even though it feels like there are a lot of people, it also feels like everybody knows everybody. I really like that homey feeling and feeling like you're embraced no matter where you go.
I think when people hear Memphis, they think of the typical blues music, Elvis Presley, barbecue, the Pyramid. Those are all fun things to think about. But what people may not know is a more tragic reality: Memphis is known as one of the most dangerous cities in our country for pedestrians.
As someone who lives in Memphis, what do you think contributes to this reality? What's the story here?
First of all, as you travel around Memphis, you see that it's very car-centric. It was designed for cars, not for people. You observe a lot of broken sidewalks. You observe a lot of faded paint or lights that are broken, things that would keep people safer. Mainly, you see a lot of lanes in a lot of different corridors of Memphis.
Those main intersections are places where lots of people travel by bike or by foot or rolling somehow, and it could be four to seven lanes sometimes. It's really stuck in the past. It hasn't been updated, and there aren't a lot of places for pedestrians to cross, unfortunately. A lot of those issues happen in intersections like that.
I'm glad you mentioned lanes because one of my memories of Memphis, visually, is those very wide lanes and those corridors where there are three or four of them. I don't know why that's the image stuck in my head, but it's a very prominent one when I think about the layout and feel of Memphis as a city.
You're part of a contingent of residents raising attention about the safety issue and pushing for change. We're going to talk about your story a little bit, but how do you find the conversation around pedestrian safety unfolds in Memphis? Do you find that there's a particular way of talking about pedestrian safety that resonates with people more?
I think that people, especially people who have lived here for some time, are tired of being ignored. A lot of them have brought up redesigns in certain neighborhoods or intersections, or they've requested lights or stop signs.
I don't know if you are familiar with the Spider-Man meme where everybody is pointing to a different Spider-Man, but that's basically what it is: this is the city's fault, this is the state's fault, this is someone else's fault. So you see a lot of blame being placed on different people, but no action.
I really think there is a big need for people to get upset, get together, and take action. We are seeing the wheels actually turning in Memphis after a very long time and a lot of conversations that don't feel like they've gone anywhere.
How much of the conversation around transportation and pedestrian safety in Memphis do you think has to do with the reality that there are a lot of poor people in Memphis? That's my other impression of Memphis. There are pockets that are very wealthy, but there are also really serious levels of poverty.
How do you think that plays into this conversation? I have my theory, but I'm curious how you would explain that.
First, I think it's important to note that Memphis specifically is not proud of some of its history, and I think we struggle with some of the things that we are negatively associated with, especially around the unhoused community or around racial tension.
A lot of us want to make a change and want to make amends, but there are a certain number of people who are stuck in the past and don't want to see change. They like the way things are. I think you see that history repeats itself. We're still fighting about the same things today that Martin Luther King came and ultimately lost his life here fighting for.
If you do a lot of side-by-side comparison, there's not a lot of progress in some ways that's been made, and that's really unfortunate.
I'll tell you my theory. I have a theory that places like Memphis, maybe more Sun Belt Southern cities, saw the car as such a symbol of wealth that it's really difficult to reconsider the entire ecosystem of transportation in general.
I wonder if talking about walkability and bikeability doesn't feel like a conversation around transportation. It feels like a conversation about success: are we a successful Southern city? For whatever reason, I think of Cadillacs when I think of Memphis. I don't know if that's a thing, but if you're in the South, having a car and a nice car is a big status symbol. Maybe this is the case in other cities. In Texas, it could be the pickup truck. A sign of success is having nine trucks parked in your front yard. That's what they're going for.
I haven't been to Memphis or lived there for a long time, but one of my memories is that it had a uniquely Southern association with certain kinds of cars and cruising culture as part of what it means to say, "We've made it. We're successful now." I can see how talking about busing, biking, and walking would be a head-scratcher if your culture is baked into getting the nice Cadillac and cruising around. What would you add to that? Am I wrong? Am I right? How far off the target am I?
I think that is correct. Cars were a status symbol at some point, but along the way, we stopped investing in the infrastructure and public transportation that people needed to live without one.
One of the things I noticed earlier as I drove across town to a meeting is that you see a lot of cars that are not even in good working condition. Things are dragging. Their windshield is busted out. The car is smashed in half. But they feel like the only option is to drive that car because our public transportation here in Memphis is in such disarray that they would lose their job, their kids may not make it to school, and there are all these other consequences that people of a wealthier status may never consider.
That's what I was thinking about when we were talking about poverty. Is that part of the challenge too, just not having the resources to invest in these types of things? I know Memphis has a large poor population. Maybe I'm not using the right words there, but is part of that reflected in the city itself not having the revenue or tax base to make serious investments in public transportation and infrastructure?
We're talking about things like lights not working. I wonder how much of this is also a bigger conversation about the financial well-being of Memphis as a whole.
I do think there are very serious problems financially here. You see the evidence of that even in investments in third spaces, for example, that are not in good condition anymore because things are continually getting cut.
People are moving out of the city. When I said earlier a million residents, that includes the entire county. That doesn't include Memphis proper. People continue to move out of Memphis because of all these different things that we're naming that they don't want to deal with or be a part of.
We also have a lot of people who commute into the city who do not pay taxes. They live somewhere else and come to FedEx or St. Jude or wherever to work. They don't want to live here, but they're using our roadways, taking advantage of the city culture during the day, and then leaving without really making an investment. I think that's a real big issue as well.
As you were saying that, this idea clicked in my head. Many cities in the U.S. decades ago really invested in this vision of what I call the autotopia, everyone getting a car. It's almost like nobody stopped to think, "Wait, what if someone can't have one of these?"
I don't know how it happens, but it's almost as if the idea of someone not having a car gets deleted from the car brain. It's like, "This is the way to get around," and now we've completely lost the ability to envision life without one. Therefore, there must not exist a single person who doesn't have one.
I'm still wrestling with how a city ends up being that dangerous for pedestrians. There must be a lot of people still walking and getting around without a car, and that scenario seems not to light up as an actual legitimate reality for so many people.
If you have people moving out and just commuting in, have you ever looked at a map of how spread out Memphis, Shelby County, is?
Not in a while, no.
That's another interesting thing because even if the city center had good transportation, there are so many things that have moved to the outskirts of town, and people have continued to push out. There are people who are 45 minutes to an hour outside of downtown Memphis.
When you think about people who have doctor's appointments, or they may see certain specialists or have jobs in a different part of the city, which is pretty common, that doesn't necessarily guarantee that fixing the bus system in the middle of the city is going to help that problem. We would have to expand it out as well.
Wow. Let's talk about your story a little bit. You're advocating, and we're going to talk about what you're advocating for in a bit, but I would love to share some of your personal experience because we're talking about Memphis being a dangerous city, one of the most dangerous for pedestrians and people outside of cars.
You experienced this while riding your bike. You were hit and nearly lost your life in a hit-and-run. Tell us the story about this incident, and then we'll talk a little bit more about how this has affected you personally and how it informs the work that you're doing now.
I was not riding out of necessity on my bike. I was riding for fun, which is something I've enjoyed doing since I was a kid. I grew up in a very rural part of West Tennessee where I could ride my bike and there weren't a lot of cars. That's a different type of environment from coming into the city and biking on a city street.
I did this often. I was actually training for a triathlon. I was super active, and people may not have known my name, but they recognized my bike and helmet because I rode the same route all the time.
We have a greenline that goes through the middle of the city here, and that was my route from my house. I would take a few streets, get on at one of the crossings, and head out into a big green space on the outskirts of the city center. In there, you're protected. But as you're crossing through, there are lots of different crossings where there are pedestrian lights and cars that you're going to encounter. I'd never had a problem. I'd never had a close call.
As I was biking that day, I came up to an intersection. There was a person in front of me and meeting me, so I was not the only person in the intersection. At this particular intersection, at Graham Street, there is a light that gets cars to stop after you hit the pedestrian light to cross, but the sign that the person has while looking at the light and driving the car is not the same as how many seconds are counting down on the pedestrian sign.
For example, it starts flashing, then it's a solid light, then it starts flashing again, then it turns off. But when it starts to flash the second time, there's still time left on the pedestrian countdown. What happened was, when that changed, that person took it as, "It's not a solid light. I can go." They ran the light and ran over me.
They weren't going really fast. We think they were going about 20 miles an hour, but they sideswiped me from the left side and knocked me off my bike. The bike went under the car. Thankfully, I was not clipped in because I had a brand-new bike and was getting used to it. That saved my life because I was not pulled underneath the car with the bike. Then the bike was thrown back out at me, and the car kept going.
Okay. The first thing I want to say is we have a similar light in Waco.
Really? I've never encountered another light.
It's a new light. It's one of our newest intersections. First of all, that had to be terrifying. I am so sorry that happened to you. When you say those little things, how if you hadn't been clipped in you could have lost your life, it's so crazy to imagine.
After talking to you before we recorded, I was thinking about this light, and I actually drove it over the weekend. There's a bridge that takes you from East Waco to downtown. It's a pedestrian bridge. There are two or three bridges in Waco across the Brazos River. One is open to cars and pedestrians, one is just pedestrian, and one is closed entirely.
This is a new pedestrian bridge, and it has an intersection for cars. People come from the farmers market plaza and want to cross traffic to get to that pedestrian bridge. Instead of making it a normal intersection, I think because it's so close to a normal intersection, they decided to make it a conditional intersection.
You'll see a sign that says if you see pedestrians in the crosswalk, and the light is flashing, you have to sit there and read it. You're thinking, "What are the instructions for this flash?" You only stop if the light is solid. If the light is flashing, I think it means look for pedestrians before proceeding. If nothing is happening, you just keep going.
I haven't compared what the pedestrian sees to what the driver sees, but I was one of those drivers who had to stop because someone was waiting to cross. It was very confusing. Ambiguous, unclear signaling almost cost you your life.
There are more parts to your story. There's the medical part of the story, and then there's the advocacy part of your story. But this driver was never caught, right?
The driver was never caught. I was taken by ambulance to a local hospital. The police who arrived on scene came onto the ambulance as they were cutting my clothes off and said, "We're going to catch this guy."
That is something that has stuck out to me forever, and I will never forget it because they had no intention of catching this person. Even for me to get my police report to file with my insurance and let them know that this was not my fault, we had to beg them and stand outside of the police department and wait just to get it. It was such a terrible interaction. They were so rude to us.
Here I am, beat up from being run over and just asking for a police report. They acted as if this was some horrible thing that I had done, and the blame felt like it was on me already, even in the very beginning, and not on the person who committed the crime.
They put you in the ambulance and get you to the hospital. What has been the cost of this accident on you? Thank God your life was spared, but there has still been a serious medical and physical impact on you and your family. Can you share about that?
Thankfully, I have good insurance that's been able to help me. Without insurance, I would say it would easily be $800,000 to a million dollars in medical bills.
You have to think this is stretched over a three-year period of time. I'm still finding injuries and still having to go through different surgeries and things today because trauma sometimes doesn't present itself immediately. There are still things being discovered that were overlooked or weren't the most important thing to address at that time.
Overall, I have a spinal cord stimulator because I have nerve damage from my mid-spine all the way down my right leg, and that just helps to control the pain. I've had several nerves that have been cauterized because they were so damaged that they would never be able to be repaired, but my body continued to try to repair them. There were different nerve surgeries that I went through to try to repair that.
I lost some of my hearing in my right ear. I have had a shoulder surgery that reconstructed my left shoulder, where the car ran over me and I tore that mirror off with my shoulder. The mirror flew out into the road. That's how hard it hit me in the shoulder.
Then PTSD, just the mental aspect of it and how it's taken hold of me, and what I've had to go through from a mental health perspective has been a lot as well.
I can only imagine. You're still dealing with pain. You live with chronic pain now?
I live with chronic pain, and I now have a really great team of doctors who are seeing me and helping me. Initially, that wasn't the case. I waited 10 months to see a nerve specialist.
That is just the reality of things here. We have good medical teams, but there are so many people who come from all around this area to see them that the waits are often very long.
What has this been like for your family? You're a mom to two little boys, correct?
Correct. I have a second grader and a sixth grader, my husband Robert, and then we have two dogs.
It's been a lot. It's taught my boys specifically how to look at the world in a different way. They are so willing to meet people where they are because of this experience, and they know that things can change day to day and your abilities may not always be the same. That is a gift that's come out of this, but they've been forced to handle a lot of adult situations at a very young age.
I left on a bike ride and almost didn't come back, and they're aware of that. It's something that people talk about constantly in front of them. It's affected the way that I parent, in the way that I can't be as physically active or present as I sometimes want to be. I have to walk with a device sometimes, like a cane. Sometimes I'm in bed with chronic pain and I can't get up.
Those days, thankfully, are more in control now because I have a great team of doctors. But all those things have changed their childhood for sure.
What is your outlook at this point? What is your team hoping for? What's the goal for you from a medical perspective?
My goal is to be able to get on my bike, at least to do, for example, Critical Mass events, things that bring attention to the need for better infrastructure for cyclists and pedestrians in Memphis. Right now, I'm not even able to do that.
In the next year, I will most likely be having a hip surgery, which really came out of nowhere. That's one of the injuries that was missed. I'm hoping after that I can do rehab on my lower body specifically and get up to maybe seven to eight miles on my bike. I would be really happy for that and feel very accomplished because that has not been possible so far.
That must be so hard for you because, as you said, biking was a huge part of your life since you were a little child and something that brought you a lot of joy.
It's definitely a coping skill that I really miss. But talking about it and helping other people develop their athleticism and use those things as a positive outlet has helped me. That's how I try to channel that energy, to invest it into other people, specifically youth.
Have there been any interventions at that light since your accident? Any improvements?
There have been zero interventions at that light. I've actually never even been recognized by anyone in an official capacity, with the exception of my city councilman. His name is Philip Spinosa. He represents District Five in Memphis, and he lives near this intersection.
He has personally attended events and talked with me, but he has been the only person from an official capacity who has ever even said, "Yes, this needs to be changed. I will do what I can to try to help you."
There is a plan in place, I've heard, through grants and things that we've gotten recently, but there's no press release. It's on a three-year track, and we are tracking in the wrong direction. Think about in three years where we could be if we put it off for that long, because this is a problem for more than just me.
You're working alongside some other advocates there in Memphis. I know we both know Kelsey Hughes. I've had her on the show before. You all are doing a project to improve safety along the Greenline. Can you share about that project and what you're hoping to accomplish?
Kelsey is a great friend. She's been such a good support person for me, and she is working with me on something called My Greenline Project. We are trying to bring attention to the intersections in Memphis, specifically connected to the Greenline, that need better visibility, better signage, whatever needs to happen.
We are trying to get personal stories to bring to the city to help them see that this is a real-life issue.
That's really interesting. What's been the response so far? How are you all collecting those stories?
Some of it has been through petitions. We've given people an ask: "We want you to sign this petition to change this area," and then we ask for more information. Some people don't give it, but some people are very detailed and say, "This happened to me on this date, and this is exactly what I experienced."
We are still trying to figure out the best way to present this information, but I think it's important that we understand this is a widespread issue in Memphis. We are putting faces behind the statistics that people name all the time and helping people understand these are real families that are being affected by these issues.
Before your accident, what's the overlap between your concern about pedestrian safety and advocacy and this incident that happened to you? Was this incident the spark to this work, or were you already starting to think about these topics ahead of time? How do you describe that?
I'd already started to think about it in Memphis. There was a lot of talk about six months before that, when a young schoolteacher named Eliza Fletcher was abducted and killed. It was less than two miles from the site where I was hit.
It felt like women were trying to take back their lives, to do something for themselves, and there were people trying so hard to take that away from them. I started to feel this catalyst in Memphis, especially women who were tired of feeling like they couldn't exercise, couldn't get outside, and couldn't move freely. I think that's really what made me start to think about all of these issues.
I've heard several stories like that in Memphis, where crime is directed at young women who are out doing something by themselves, running, biking, things like that. That is really scary.
What was it like for you? I love to hear people describe the moment that they started to look at their city differently. A lot of people say, "I found a Not Just Bikes video," or "I found a Strong Towns article," and suddenly it started to click. When did it click for you? Did it change how you saw Memphis? Did it change how you saw your city?
I love my city. I am always going to be a cheerleader for Memphis, and I think Memphis will love you if you want to love it. That's always been what I've told people. I know we get a bad rap a lot of times, but I have always loved Memphis, and I've never blamed the city. I think this is just one small part of a really great place.
For the advocacy piece, it clicked for me when I realized I could use my story to even just bring awareness to resources. I thought, "What kind of resources did I need when I was in this position? How could I let other people know these things are available?" That was really where it started for me.
You're using your story in some other ways. I know that you and Kelsey are about to speak at a conference soon. Can you talk about that?
Bike Walk Tennessee is a nonprofit. They're based in Middle Tennessee, but we as Memphians are not represented. I joined their newsletter and started trying to follow them about 18 months ago and realized it never named West Tennessee one time. It was nonexistent.
From everything that I can gather, it just seems that Memphis did not want to work with the other metro cities in Tennessee to try to come up with improvements. I do think that our issues are different, but we can look at Nashville, Knoxville, Murfreesboro, and use that as a blueprint for change for us.
If we can get together and try to talk about these experiences, I think we can make a change in Memphis. Specifically, Kelsey and I are presenting on collective action and how we found that, in an unofficial capacity, we've been able to make a lot of change and drum up a lot of interest and support with everyday people.
We don't have a budget. We are really just using our voices, social media, and tabling at events that people often don't even ask for a fee. We're just asking to get out and tell people these are ways that you can make a change.
Can you give me an example of some specific asks or invitations that you're asking people to think about?
We ask for very small, actionable steps, as small as we possibly can. Right now, some of them are just petitions. For example, we have a sustainability event coming up at the University of Memphis, and we're going to ask those people to give us mobility opinions: how do you feel traveling on campus? You have to walk or ride a bike or a scooter. If you bring a car, what is the parking situation like? What are some of your frustrations? What are places that could be safer?
No one is asking these questions, and we found that often those entities notice when the conversation starts up. They think, "Okay, people do care about this. They do want it to be safer. These are things that we have not noticed." It's really from professors, students, everyone on the campus. It's not just a particular area of the campus, and these are longstanding issues that have been there since I was there that have not been improved.
It sounds like a big part of your work is collecting people's stories, but also having conversations to help people start to see the connection for themselves between the way a place is designed and their experience as a pedestrian or as a non-driver outside of a car.
The majority of people aren't mad at Memphis. They love their city, and I think that is very fascinating. Even though they're frustrated, they want to be here, and they want to know what they can do to make it better for themselves and their fellow man.
You're also working with parents specifically, if I recall correctly, to help them overcome their fear of letting their children ride their bikes. Can you share about that work?
One of my biggest pet peeves has been school zones because they often involve children walking independently, sometimes off of a bus or out of a car, maybe down the sidewalk.
I think the level of independence that children are given today is diminishing because we feel it's unsafe. Specifically, when you hear of these pedestrian issues that we have in Memphis, it doesn't necessarily make you motivated to let your kid out to ride their bike or walk by themselves.
I am providing tools to people just to show them that you can be safer. You can walk with them and show them everything to do. It may not prevent something from happening, but it's not worth taking that experience away from them. We can't live in fear that something bad is going to happen to our children all the time. That takes away from their childhood.
I think there's a fine line that you have to walk. If you can help people walk that line and really be in the trenches with them and try to relate, you can say, "Yes, you can be scared, but at the same time, you can also understand that this is a vital part of your child's childhood."
Do your children bike?
They do. We walk to school or bike every single day. We are actually known as the walking family in their school. When I'm in a car, people say, "Oh my gosh, you're in a car. I didn't even notice who you were."
That makes me proud because it's what I want people to think about: that a car isn't always the best option or the easiest option. Sometimes walking or biking is actually easier and saves time.
Sheridan, it's been really inspiring to hear your story, and I'm honored you would take the time to share it with us. In closing, can you share some of your favorite local businesses you like to recommend people check out if they come to visit Memphis?
Sure, I would love to. My all-time favorite place to recommend is Novel Booksellers. It is an independently owned bookstore that has a wonderful restaurant inside of it called Libro. It's a great place to grab a drink. They have handmade pasta. You can grab a book, have a quiet little dinner or date. It's also super kid-friendly.
I also love the Broad Street area. It's a big art scene. I have to shout out Muddy's Bake Shop. It's delicious, and I also love Whitney Winkler Art and Blue Suede Vintage over in that area. That's another place I love to recommend.
Very nice. Thank you.
Sheridan, again, thank you. I look forward to following more of your story and more of your work. I'm sure you're only just getting started, but thank you for sharing your story with us and with our audience.
Thank you for having me today.
To our listeners, thank you for joining me for another episode. I'll be back soon with another conversation. Don't forget to let me know if there's someone in your community who you think I should have on the show. You can let me know about them using the suggested guest form in the show notes.
I'll be back soon with another conversation. In the meantime, keep doing what you can to build a strong town.
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