I Hadn’t Bought Gas Since January

Yesterday, on July 14th, I filled the gas tank on my recently purchased 2004 Corolla. It was the first time I bought gas since January 20th 2008. Granted for February through April I was in the hospital and certainly in no position to drive.

On January 20th I filled the tank on the scooter for less than three bucks.  Yesterday I spent just shy of forty bucks to fill the Corolla (and it wasn’t empty yet).  So I missed out on seeing gas go up 50% ($2.69 to $3.99) while I was in the hospital.

Recently the Bush administration stopped adding to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve but now calls are coming in to sell some of the oil to relieve price pressures:

Bush initially opposed an earlier call this year to stop shipments to the country’s strategic oil reserves before Congress forced him to take that step. Now, Pelosi is asking him to go even further by drawing down a small portion of that stockpile for commercial consumption “to help reduce the record (gas) prices that are helping push the economy toward recession,” according to a copy of the letter.

“The severe energy price crisis facing millions of Americans compels strong presidential action to assist consumers and strengthen the economy,” the speaker says in her letter to the president.

The two parties are locked in a bitter fight over high gas prices, and congressional leaders have only taken a few superficial steps to reach across the aisle in search of a remedy.

With that in mind, Pelosi’s missive is hardly an olive branch; rather, the speaker points out that the price of a barrel of crude oil has nearly quintupled since Bush took office, with a gallon of gasoline now selling for the average price of $4.11.

In her letter, Pelosi points out that Bush, his father and former President Bill Clinton all tapped into the strategic reserves at one point during their respective presidencies. George H.W. Bush did small test sales in 1990 and again in 1991 right before the initial Gulf war. Clinton released 30 million barrels from the reserves during his final year in the White House to help lower the costs of home heating oil. And Bush himself withdrew 11 million barrels (after offering to withdraw 30 million barrels) in 2005 after Hurricane Katrina damaged refineries and pipelines along the Gulf Coast.   (source: CBS News)

As painful as filling as today’s prices are I think the long term benefits will be real. Those that bought any vehicle regardless of mileage and thought nothing about driving many miles without consideration of the impact will now change their behavior.   Some will take gas costing $7+.

The current gas prices are doing things we could never accomplish before with cheap gas.  Use of mass transit is up, sales of gas sucking trucks & SUVs are way down and people are more mindful about the number of miles they drive on a daily basis.

With my scooter I got into the habit of combining trips and planning my route in advance so as to be able to take care of several errands per trip.  Things like stopping at the store on the way home rather than running back out again.  At the time that was more about saving time as the scooter averaged better than 85 MPG.  So now with the car I think ahead to what I can accomplish while I’m out with the goal being a savings of miles driven.

The Corolla is proving to be as thirsty as promised.  The sellers had filled the tank right before I bought it so I know my MPG for the last few weeks – just over 31 mpg in mostly city driving with the A/C on most of the time.   Next month I’m driving back to Oklahoma City to visit family and I hope to get at least 40mpg on that trip.

One member of congress is revisiting the fuel savings achieved by the old national 55mph speed limit.  Virginia Senator John Warner, a Republican,  is talking about real conservatism:

Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages caused by the Arab oil embargo. The speed limit was repealed in 1995 when crude oil dipped to $17 a barrel and gasoline cost $1.10 a gallon. (source: AP via CNN)

I think a lower speed limit would help save fuel and save people money.  Averaging 55 mph rather than 65 mph on my 500 mile drive to Oklahoma City will add over an hour to my travel time — just shy of a 20% increase. A real savings in fuel is worth a little of my time.But perhaps my car would do better at 60 mph?  Like Sammy Hagar, I can’t drive 55.  60 I can do.  70 is out of the question.

One of the new applications I’ve downloaded for my first generation iPhone is a mileage tracker.  It will be interesting tracking my mileage and fuel expenses.  It show the MPG on the last fill-up as well as an average.

I’m also finding other drivers frustrating.  I know that Jack Rabbit starts are good at wasting gas but so is taking forever to go when the light does turn green.  If that 6th car back misses the light and has to sit through another cycle they are just wasting gas.  Someday more cars will have to technology to shut off the engine at such stops but in the meantime we all need to pay attention and get through the lights. We don’t have to race to the next signal but we shouldn’t take forever either.  Getting the lights timed better would also help.

These gas prices are here to stay.  They are not high at all, just higher than what we’ve grown used to.   They will go higher too.  Interesting times ahead as the general public grapples with this new reality.

We Are Still A Beer Town

InBev upped the offer and A-B’s board said yes, that we know. For the moment at least this change of control of A-B won’t affect most of us in our daily lives.

I’ll admit that my heart sank a bit after reading the news this weekend.  I still miss names like Boatman’s Bank, Mercantile Bank and so on.  Times change.  Big & little guys get bought out every day.    The fact is the Busch family sold the brewery in 1980 when they took it public.

We will continue to produce beer just as they have for generations.  The big changes, if any, will be in the corporate tower.  The middle management types probably need to polish up their resumes.

In terms of the urban landscape around the brewery I don’t anticipate many changes in the short term.  In the long term I’d like to see some new 2-4 story structures line the outside edges of some of the surface parking lots.  Filled with restaurants at the sidewalk level the could serve employees during the week and become a walking destination for nearby residents in the evening.

Before I moved downtown I would use Broadway as my scooter route from my southside home to downtown.  I would enjoy passing the brewery — the aroma, the gargoyles, and the knowledge that a long standing tradition was continuing at that location.  Hopefully it will continue for many more generations.

I didn’t like the aroma at first.  I was 23 when I came to St Louis with a friend on our way to Washington DC.  That Saturday in August 1990 we arrived at her mother’s home on Lemp just North of Arsenal. The hops were strong that day.  A Sunday tour of St Louis convinced me to make this my new home despite that strong odor from the brewery.  In the nearly two decades since I’ve come to appreciate, and at times crave, that wonderful smell of hops.
We are a beer town.  Besides A-B we have some other great micro brewers.  I even know several people in town that home brew.   Beer is in our blood, its a part of who we are.  That can never be sold.

Forestry Dept Begins Long-Overdue Street Tree Maintenance on Washington Ave

A few days ago I did a post on the deferred maintenance along a stretch of Washington Ave (posted at 2:43pm on Wednesday). The main issue was the fact that nine out of 41 trees (over 20%) had been cut down and not replaced between 14th and 18th. Of course I had a picture of each and every stump to illustrate the point that maintenance was lacking on a street that underwent a massive (and costly) streetscape makeover just over five years ago.

Earlier today employees from the city’s Forestry Dept ground out one of the nine stumps. Eight remain. Still I was encouraged (and a bit surprised) to see the crew out doing this work on a Saturday morning. Perhaps today was just a test to see how long each might take? Also they’ll need to ban on-street parking in the remaining areas to get their equipment into place.

Above, getting the grinder into position required blocking the crosswalk for a few moments.

By 10:30am one offending stump was gone.

The crew cleaned up the mess and left. Hopefully this Fall we’ll see a newly planted tree in this spot and the eight others.

On a related note New York Magazine last year had an interesting article on the worth of street trees:

The standard formula says a dwelling with a tree in front is worth .88 percent more than a home without one.

That is $880 per $100K. The ability to clean the air, create shade and absorb water runoff is all part of the value. The loss of nine street trees in a distance of four blocks thus devalues the whole area.

What is an Accessible Route?

I often write about an “accessible route” (or lack thereof), but what constitutes an accessible route? In the days of walkable urbanism and streetcar suburbs you didn’t have wheelchair access but you also didn’t have multiple stores on 20+ acre sites connected only by large surface parking lots. In those days all were connected by this thing we call a sidewalk.

Decades now of building for the car and not humans has destroyed the ability for a pedestrian, disabled or not, to reach the main entry of many businesses from the public sidewalk without having to traverse space occupied by cars. However guidelines relating to the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) intended to make all future establishments reachable from the public sidewalk without having to walk though driveways where cars are coming and going.

The ADA itself just establishes the fundamental civil right to be granted full access to where the general public is permitted. However, through the “Access Board” the rules are established. The rules (guidelines) are known as ADAAG (pronounced A-Dag) — The ADA Guidelines for Accessible Buildings and Facilities. Enforcement of the ADA falls to the federal Department of Justice. However, municipalities, counties and states are free to adopt the ADAAG guidelines as part of their own requirements.

This brings me to my original question, what is an accessible route? For the answer we go to section 4.3 of ADAAG. Much of this section deals with halls and other routes. But one section, if enforced, would change the face of sprawl development:

4.3.2 Location.

(1) At least one accessible route within the boundary of the site shall be provided from public transportation stops, accessible parking, and accessible passenger loading zones, and public streets or sidewalks to the accessible building entrance they serve. The accessible route shall, to the maximum extent feasible, coincide with the route for the general public.

(2) At least one accessible route shall connect accessible buildings, facilities, elements, and spaces that are on the same site.

Developers & cities on which they work have down the route from accessible parking. They just tend to ignore the rest. But “and public streets or sidewalks” is pretty clear. In part #2 above the guidelines require all an accessible route between locations on the same site. This is really just basic sound planning but sadly it is ignored more often than followed.

I’ve shown you numerous examples before. The new Lowe’s in Loughborough Commons is not reachable along an accessible route from a public street. New free-standing Starbuck’s facilities in the area such as the one on Watson and the latest on Broadway lack accessible routes from the adjacent public sidewalk. The entire development at Gravois Plaza lacks an accessible route to any of the store entrances much less all of them. It is just as bad if not worse out in sprawl-ville. For example Brentwood Promenade is just west of a MetroLink station yet none of its stores are accessible from the public sidewalk and even once you are there going from one store to the next cannot be done on an accessible route. Sometimes it is a mixed bag. The new shopping center in Dardene Prairie has a connection from one public sidewalk to the Target & JCPenny but it then fails to connect to other buildings within the site. The typical fast food joint or strip center in an out parcel is often just an island in a sea of asphalt for cars.

If cities required developers, especially those receiving tax incentives, to follow the ‘accessible route’ requirement it would actually make the developments better for all the customers not just those who happen to be disabled. The parent with a five year old and a baby in a stroller could easily get from store A to store B without having to brave the dangers of taking their two offspring through a busy & crowded parking lot or having to load them back in the car to drive closer to a store within sight. Even if it is just a nice day and you’d rather walk than drive, following this guideline makes that a more pleasant possibility.

Compliance is not an impossibility but rather a shift in thinking away from the auto only status quo. Examples I’ve found include a former mall site in Bloomington-Normal,and an Arby’s on Lindell. One of the best examples is a mixed-use project in the bay area that I found in December 2006.

Walkable need not exclude cars.  Sadly so much time is spent by Architects and Civil Engineers figuring out traffic patterns into and out of shopping centers that pedestrian traffic concerns is short changed.  People will say that nobody walks in suburbia so why bother.  If we look deeper we can see that the design of the spaces is largely unfriendly to pedestrians so it is no wonder that nobody walks.  People do want to walk but they need connecting sidewalks to do so.

I Walked To Lunch Today

Walking downtown is one of the things I’ve missed since returning home after my three months in the hospital following my stroke on Feb 1st.  The electric wheelchair is great but there is just something different about getting somewhere only using your own power.  Walking & bicycling are the two ways to enjoy this great feeling and up to now both had been taken away from me.

I’d been practicing walking around the block in the evenings but today I walked the farthest I have since my stroke, roughly 4/10ths of a mile to a luncheon at Lucas Park Grille.

That fraction under a half mile took me 40 minutes.  Ditto for the walk back. Getting back my urban life of walking, bicycling and scooting is a great motivator.    Despite the heat and the slowness of my pace it felt great to walk to a destination.  Next time perhaps Bridge & Tunnel Pizza at Tucker?  After that dinner at Mosaic or Kitchen K, both at 10th & Washington Ave.