Livelicity _ The Green Line

The Green Line

“If we’re going to talk about transport, I would say that the great city is not the one that has highways, but one where a child on a tricycle can go safely everywhere.”

Enrique Peñalosa

While cities all over the world are nowadays in the process of transforming their streets and rethinking their mobility, Beirut similarly observes a growing number of people starting to commute by bike in its city center.

Ensuring a proper and safe biking infrastructure is therefore fundamental. By prioritizing and encouraging people to walk and bike, exceptional changes are observed in the city life.

The Green Line is a network of protected bike lanes throughout Beirut Central District, transforming its streets with low-cost and fast interventions, and connecting it to its surrounding neighborhoods.

Based on analysis of the streetscapes and mapping of people behavioral patterns, two main cases are defined:

Case 1 | Street barriers
Street barriers (concrete and plastic blocks, steel fences) are frequently used on the edge of the roads in order to prevent cars from parking. The resulted residual area forms a potential space that can be easily transformed and used as a protected bike lane.

Case 2 | Double parking
Double parking is a common habit where vehicles park next to another row of cars properly parked on the side of the street. The intervention consists of shifting the existing on-street parking lane towards the double parking lane, and acquire a protected bike lane next to the sidewalk.