9th Street Is Open to Traffic, Sorta
Since construction began on Citygarden the Northbound block of 9th Street between Market & Chestnut has been closed. When the two block sculpture garden opened earlier this summer 9th Street remained blocked to traffic. This block of 9th was designed to be opened to traffic but due to the enormous crowds it remained barricaded. But once again 9th Street is open to traffic — at least from 10pm to 10am.
Hopefully this is a first step toward 9th Street being open 24/7. The open sometimes, closed others might actually prove more confusing. The important thing to do is look before crossing what looks like a street.
I want to reopen the street grid where it has been closed along the Gateway Mall — 6th & 16th. 19th Street is OK closed because Union Station prevents a through street and the sculpture & fountain is stunning.
Restoring our street grid will help disperse traffic on all streets. This is superior to concentrating traffic onto a fewer number of streets.
– Steve Patterson
Huh? The street grid WAS maintained here. The daily closure is being done to protect the current large volume of pedestrians, to give them priority. I would interpret this as a success for peds, and something that we’ve been advocating for. I’d also expect this to continue to evolve, as the new wears off and the weather turns cooler. By November, this should be a non-issue. So, by extention, are you advocating against ANY street closures for special events or situations?!
“I want to reopen the street grid where it has been closed along the Gateway Mall — 6th & 16th.” I agree, in theory, but the reality is that there are similar grid discontinuities (like Union Station, only newer) on 6th south of Market (something called Busch Stadium) and on 16th, north of Chestnut (Plaza Square). And while Kiener Plaza (at 6th) may not be the best urban park/plaza in the nation, it is one of the more-used urban spaces downtown.
“19th Street is OK closed because Union Station prevents a through street and the sculpture & fountain is stunning.” Hypocritical – using the same logic, 17th should be closed! If maintaining the grid is so important, the sculpture and fountain can be moved (or is the present context so important that it should/must be maintained?).
In reality, the bigger challenge downtown to a better-quality pedestrian experience is the one-way street system, not the random losses in continuity. One reason having 9th closed is a minor PITA is that you can’t drive north on either 8th or 10th, you have to go two blocks, to 7th or 11th. If the “lesser” one ways (6, 8, 9, 10, 11, Locust & St. Charles) were eliminated / converted to 2-way streets, then having to go an extra block becomes less of an issue for drivers.
I think the heavy pedestrian traffic will definitely disappear once the water fountains are shut down for the season. And maybe when school starts. I took my kids there two weeks ago and it seemed to me that most of the people crossing 9th were soaking wet and under the age of 10. It’s good that the city will open it after hours, though.
Steve-
Your point about the need for pedestrians and motorists needing to co-exist sounds dangerously close to the type of rhetoric typically used to continue to empower mono-segmented automotive transportation. Cities existed for 10,000 years before the automobile. It has been less than a century since a large percentage of cities was taken away from pedestrians and other modes of transportation and gifted to subsidized automobile users. By definition to be urban is correlated with equal opportunities for transportation and interaction beyond the automobile
You are being disingenuous. If you really were concerned about the “co-existence” and safety of pedestrians and motorists you’d be arguing for shared streets on all of the 32′ wide streets between Tucker and Broadway. By greatly reducing traffic speed shared streets increase safety for all residents.
It has been interesting to watch the devolution of this blog from critical analyses of development to stridently upholding the local status quo (although with sexier bike racks). Perhaps you hadn’t heard of what other cities are doing this summer?
This park is awesome. I go there every other day to eat lunch and hang out. It’s always packed. People, especially kids love it. The people have spoken – loudly – its a major success. Celebrate it – blog about how cool this place is, blog about the sculpture or the landscape design: blog about why this space is packed every day whereas the plaza at Old Post Office is not – who cares about closing the street?
I get the feeling that the posters in favor of keeping the street blocked off are ones that have never tried to circle the “block” to find street parking. Once you’ve been forced to go 3-4 blocks out of your way just to get back to where you started a few times, you’ll probably be bitching about our fragmented and barricaded grid yourself.
I get the feeling that anyone who complains about parking in downtown St. Louis has never been to a big city.
They should have installed bollards to facilitate the opening and closing of the street and not use the ugly barricades that have been recently dressed up with some paint and city garden lettering. Unless they plan on eventually just leaving the street open permanently.
Making street use a function of time is oversimplifying a solution. I still like the idea of crosswalk areas in intersections to be either people-only or cars-only and perhaps we should consider this short block to be like a large intersection. With the large urban highway known as Market Street on the south, we have created a very large “dilemma zone” for all travelers whether on foot, bike or by car.
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Could we not designate this block of 9th BIKE ONLY and then we can brag that we have implemented the same type of forward thinking demonstrated on the west coast? GRG is spending millions of dollars for an elevated bike path so we can claim we’re just like NY and Paris instead of supporting practical alternatives.
Last I heard a week ago, the latest iteration of the plan for 9th is to leave it open to traffic from 10PM to 10AM. On Cardinals home game nights, 9th would be closed until the midnight, then reopen at 10AM. That could be further modified of course, particularly as the seasonal uses change.
I am often sympathetic to the argument of letting automobiles and pedestrians coexist in urban environments although cars have certainly had the better half of that argument in too many cities. However, Citygarden’s 2.9 acres would ideally be an undivided whole except perhaps on special occasions. The fact the city lived over a year with 9th closed shows it would have worked. Whatever is the final solution(s), the idea of attrractive removable bollards is a good one. Since this issue seems to be a work in progress, I suspect the temporary barriers and signs are just that – temporary.
As for finding street parking now, I live/work in CWE but have visited Citygarden and environs a dozen times at all hours since its opening. Not once have I had trouble finding meter parking. Just lucky perhaps.
Regarding Market Street, it’s a problem for the entire lenth of the Gateway Mall and is likely to remain so. Many folks have addressed the need to try to make the surroundings around Citygarden friendlier, particularly at several locations on the south side of Market Street. Whatever works out, Market Street would ideally be much narrower but the City sees it as a grand parade route. The city reportedly balked even at the idea of a traffic slowing measure such as diagonal parking. Given those views, a landscaped median running all the way to Union Station would also only be wishful thinking.