Metro Puts Brakes on Pedal Taverns

NASHVILLE, TN — There will soon be no more beer-swilling bachelorettes backing up downtown rush-hour traffic as they pedal through the city.

The Metro Transportation Licensing Commission passed new operating-hours restrictions for pedal taverns — low-speed, pedal-powered beer bars — at its meeting last Thursday, unanimously approving a policy that will keep the traffic-slowing woo wagons off the road between 7 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.. The policy will take effect after the commission's November meeting.

At the same meeting last Thursday, the commission rejected 35 permits from nine operators for new pedal taverns and their tee-totaling analogs, like pedicabs and pedicarriages.

Predictably, the operations manager of Nashville Pedal Tavern, the oldest and largest operator in the city, was fine with the second move but bristled at the first, according to The Tennessean.

"It's going to be a huge hit to our company," Brian Gleason said. "We employ over 30 people in our company alone, and the times they are talking about will affect 41 percent of our business. ... We're a very easy target. We basically started this industry and didn't really have any issues or backlash until copycat companies came in. It's been a real struggle to keep our reputation and our standards when other companies are out there not doing the same."

The city currently licenses 56 pedal vehicles, of which 19 are pedal taverns.

According to a recently-released study commissioned by Metro, it takes pedal taverns four times as long as traditional vehicles to make left turns or to clear an intersection and they travel an average of 23 to 45 percent slower than cars.

Image via Wikimedia user Michael Rivera, used under Creative Commons