Regular readers of Urban Review know I am a huge fan of sidewalks and accessibility. However, my focus is mostly around areas where we have a more urban form such as in the city and older suburban downtowns like Maplewood, Ferguson, Webster Groves or Edwardsville IL.
But what about the vast majority of highly auto-centric areas? I would certainly advocate as new areas are built they include sidewalks, as unlikely as they are to be used given the context. This leaves one area, retrofitting sidewalks in our older auto-centric sprawl mess.
One such example is along St. Charles Rock Road between roughly I-170 and Lindbergh through municipalities such as St. Ann, Breckenridge Hills and St. John. To be fair I think SCRR always had some sort of left over pavement designated as a token sidewalk but with so many driveway crossings and electrical polls it was pretty useless.
I must be on some turn of the 20th Century street, just look at the retro lamps on the bright pink concrete sidewalks. Inviting huh?
Yes, money well spent. In truth it does help provide accessibility for those who need to but the overall result is almost more ridiculous than it looked before the improvements. Do we think colored concrete and some black lamp posts are going to really make this stretch of road inviting enough to gain more pedestrians?
Over on Lindbergh (speedway) Blvd we’ve got similar attempts going in.
Except on Lindbergh they only get asphalt sidewalks (nice huh?), the pink concrete is reserved for special areas at crossings. Doesn’t this make you feel safer as a pedestrian. So now when the car flying off the exit ramp hits you the news crews will have a nice new sidewalk to stand on as they film your body being taken away. The other side of this crossing, in case you are wondering, is past the street light in the background.
The opposite view. Pedestrian-friendly, suburban-style. To be fair, I took these pictures in June but it did appear as all the work had pretty much wrapped up. The last of the concrete and asphalt was being set — I did not see anymore areas being dug out. In the picture above, I cannot imagine walking on the pavement to get to the next sidewalk area — this is a high-speed exit! My guess is they did not have the right-of-way to place a sidewalk along the area to the right and get closer to the next crossing.
But maybe when this is redone it can be corrected? It is not as far off as you might think. Turns out MoDot screwed up the specifications for these pretty-in-pink ramps and all 300 of them are being removed and redone at taxpayers expense! Don’t believe it? Watch the
You Paid For It segment yourself.
Again, I love sidewalks and making areas pedestrian-friendly. But, just putting a sidewalk along a major street does not make things necessarily accessible or friendly. We need street trees or other fixed objects separating the pedestrian from the passing traffic. We need zoning codes that will require adjacent buildings to have sidewalks connecting to the public sidewalk or, even better, constructing the new building adjacent to the sidewalk.
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