How Wide is Too Wide?
Today I was at the intersection of Washington & Jefferson. Having a few extra minutes in my schedule and the desire to be outside (couldn’t take the scooter this morning) I decided to measure pedestrian crossing across Washington Ave on the east side of the intersection.
Care to take any guesses?
60 feet? Ha!
75 feet? Get real.
100 feet? Close.
A whopping 105 from curb to curb in the center of the intersection. Granted we don’t have many pedestrians in the area at this time. But with loft development in the immediate vicinity this will soon change. Or maybe it won’t? With crossings this wide and no separate pedestrian crossing signals this area may be doomed to being lifeless.
Decades ago the city undertook a massive program of street widening to accommodate the auto. It is time invested in reversing past mistakes.
– Steve
I must say I was a little nervous given the title of this post. However, I find I can add two cents worth here — Arlington County, where I live has taken to narrowing crossing areas at intersections by widening sidewalks. It has made it much safer for pedestrians and has slowed the traffic down. A win-win in my book. The roads are built to encourage drivers to go the speed limit while also encouraging people to walk more rather than drive.
Steve, you missed step 2 of your research: trying to cross 8 lanes of over-bloated street!
I thought after the streetscape/signal redo, we walkers might have a fighting chance, but that intersection remains a pedestrian hellhole.
You get the walk signal, you start out, and the “don’t walk” starts flashing before you make it half way across the great divide. Heaven forbid you should try to walk to dinner with your older parents, as did I.
Where could parents eat near the intersection of Jefferson and Washington? I thought I knew (from experience) all the codger restaurants around here?
You calling my parents codgers?!!
(Lucas Park Grille, and they loved it.)
[REPLY – Margie, you are thinking about Tucker, not Jefferson. I was talking about crossing Washington @ Jefferson. But you are right, crossing Tucker is an issue. That will be a subject for another post. – SLP]
Google Earth is a pretty useful tool. I measured 106 feet at that intersection, from the comfort of my desk. While I agree with Steve, there are no buildings at on the east side of the intersection so this may not be an issue immediately.
More importantly Washington at 20th St. is 60 ft. wide, while further east in the area of the streetscape improvements it is 45 ft. wide. The feel of Wash Ave. definetly changes past 18th St. due to many reasons, but this is one.
Lots of development in this area, narrowing Wash Ave. west of 18th would help with the westward expansion.
Jefferson Ave/Parnell from Hwy 40 to Natural Bridge needs a complete redo from its over-bloated(I like that description) condition. Unfortunately, the City is only planning to resurface the stretch north of Hwy 40 to MLK Blvd. in 2007 or 2008. There are no plans to narrow the large width of the roadway.
In my opinion it’s a wasted chance to correct a road that is 30 years past its prime and to create better linkages for pedestrians between the new lofts west of Jefferson to the more established lofts/businesses east of Jefferson.
oops! I was just reading about the Jeff Arms (damn, why couldn’t they put a movie theater there when I lived a block away!) and had Tucker on the brain. Please do post about that intersection!
Search for a picture when streetcars were on Jefferson and Washington to see how it once looked. It might be instructive.
Tom, I know what you’re talking about. I have two of the books about the history of streetcars in Saint Louis, and at least one of them has a picture of Jefferson Avenue north of Olive.
Like many other scenes from that book, it sickens me to see what was lost in a misguided attempt to ease the traffic flow for people commuting to the city from the rapidly-expanding suburbs of that era.
This is a case where looking to the past is the key to improving this thoroughfare’s future. As loft development pushes westward from downtown’s core, this street and its importance to the overall context of the area shouldn’t be ignored. As Steve said, now is the time to begin correcting the mistakes of the past. And this is one of the many good places to start!
Narrowing the width of existing city streets is probably infeasible given the city’s tight fiscal situation.
However, in (the as-yet-un-renamed) Ballpark Village (how about Redbird Street?), look for narrowed streets, widened sidewalks, and street level retail so nice that they might even make Margie smile!
[REPLY – No, no, no! We already have good street names in the area. No need to make up new names just for a block or two. – SLP]
Especially since we all know what a notorious sourpuss Margie is. ; )