Crosswalk located within parallel travel lane

I started this month talking about how Lisi Bansen was struck by a car as she traveled on Delmar using her manual wheelchair (post).  There she had no sidewalk available. The city finally came through with sidewalks connecting accessible apartments and a store two blocks away – four years after she died.

At the intersection of Truman Parkway & Chouteau (map) the situation is both different and the same.

• Different: sidewalks, curb cuts, crosswalks and signals are all in place.
• Same: a person is likely to get hit by a car when using these facilities as designed and built.

Most of us understand that as pedestrians you cross a street parallel with vehicular traffic.  But the problem is, at this intersection, is the crosswalk in placed within the parallel travel lane. Who as the right-of-way? The motorist driving in the lane or the pedestrian within the crosswalk? Both can’t have the right to the same space.  I know who would lose in a conflict!

After seeing the situation from my car and grabbing images from Google’s Street View I knew I had to see if the situation was different than it appeared.  It is different than it first appears. Not any better, just different.

Driving Southbound on Truman Parkway I pulled over out of the way just before Chouteau to observe the signals.  Traffic on Truman Parkway got the green but the pedestrian signal never got the okay to cross signal.  Then I spotted a button for pedestrians to activate the crosswalk signal.  So a person activates the signal when needed.  Problem solved, right? Not quite!

I parked a block away and walked to the SW corner of the intersection to see how the signals functioned.  Approaching the corner I see the button on the signal post.

This is an old type button that a blind person wouldn’t know if it was working.  New buttons give you an audible feedback to to let you know they have been pressed.  Using the button you are facing away from the intersection.  But guess what?  The button doesn’t do anything!

In the above image is another button at the same corner.  The first is in the shadow line of this poll.  If you look you can see the don’t walk on the pedestrian signal across Chouteau.  This button does actually work, sorta.

Above I’m standing at the ramp — the place where you’d stand if you wanted to cross. The walk signal is activated in the above.  Don’t see it? Look behind the light poll and it is on for a few seconds.  Yes, the signal to walk is blocked by a pole.  The don’t walk begins to flash almost immediately.

I’d say 98% of the intersections in the city do not require a pedestrian to press a button to get the okay to walk signal.  The other crossings at the intersection to not require the pedestrian to activate the signal.  Why is this so different from others?

It goes back to that curb ramp.  After the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 the City of St. Louis was faced with thousands of intersections that needed curb ramps.  When designing from scratch each intersection would ideally get 8 ramps – two per corner to handle each direction of travel.  To save money and get more intersections in compliance the city opted for only four curb ramps per intersection.   This This meant that crossing either street you’d use the same ramp.  In your typical residential intersection this was a reasonable compromise.  Often it was the only physical way because of sewer drains or other infrastructure in the way.

The problem is that since those early days even when new intersections are created (such as the above), when curbs are replaced, the engineers seem to incorrectly think the compromise of a single curb cut per corner is adequate.  Because they only used a single curb ramp on the SW corner of this intersection they had to do the pedestrian activated signal. But the button is to far away from the point where you’d cross and as mentioned when you are at the crossing point you can’t see the signal!

On this corner there is nothing to prevent a curb ramp in a better location.  Rather than have the pedestrian activated signal that you can’t see it would have been cheaper and better to have a second ramp to pull the crosswalk out of the Southbound travel lane.

Engineers do a great job of planning for motorists but they do a lousy job for pedestrians.  Projects involving pedestrian routes should be reviewed while on paper.

– Steve Patterson

Diverse populations celebrate diverse holidays

Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day is the holiday season in North America.  For most this time includes Christmas.  For the rest of us we often celebrate another holiday, such as Kwanzaa or Hanukkah.  We have a diverse population in St. Louis so I’m curious to see how diverse my readers are so the poll this week asks what holiday you celebrate in December.

I was going to randomize the answers but I decided to list Christmas twice so I needed to make sure everyone saw that before answering.  Twice? One is for the birth of Jesus and the other is because it is December 25th.  Get the difference?  I have never once celebrated the birth of Jesus but I have celebrated Christmas because it is December 25th. I’ve included an “other” option this week.

Personally speaking I know how awkward it is when you are wished a merry holiday you don’t celebrate. I’d like store clerks and others to say “Happy Holidays” than make presumptions about what, if any, holiday I might celebrate. Naturally “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” is controversial:

The American Family Association is calling on consumers to boycott Gap Inc. and its brands, which include Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic, this holiday season. The Christian organization alleges that the retailer’s ads downplay the word “Christmas.”

The boycott, according to the AFA, is in response to Gap’s holiday advertising and in-store promotions over the years, which have stayed away from recognizing any specific religion. For instance, last year’s campaign was themed “Merry Gap-mas,” substituting the chain’s name for Christ’s. The AFA—which had boycotted other retailers like Sears and Target in the past for their holiday ads—is singling out Gap this year. The AFA is planning to release a “Naughty and Nice” list of retailers who address Christmas and those who don’t.  (Source: Brandweek)

Below is Gap’s 2009 holiday commercial the AFA doesn’t like:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVMPWlWDvsI

I took the AFA poll:

Since Gap has now included the word “Christmas” in a television ad (in a dismissive manner), should AFA call off the boycott of their stores?

• Yes. Any reference to Christmas is good enough to me. 5,267
• No. Gap has taken a disrespectful attitude towards Christians with its ad. 47,935

The 2009 AFA “Naughty and Nice” list is here.  I personally celebrate retailers that don’t push one religion at the exclusion of others so I’ll use their list in the reverse of how they intended. You may agree or you may not.  Share your thoughts below and vote in the poll in the upper right corner.

Happy Holidays everyone!

– Steve Patterson

Reducing food waste from cities

No matter how much you ate Thursday, you probably had uneaten food remaining. Some of you will save and eventually eat what was left.  Much of the food will be tossed into the trash.  Tucked into the trash bag it is out of sight out of mind.  Your trash will get collected and sent off to a land-fill where the food will give off gases as it decomposes.  Waste from cities is a growing problem – more people live in cities (vs rural) and population is on the rise. We must learn to better manage our lives so the amount of waste we produce is significantly reduced.

I recently saw a TV report on a group in New York City collecting food left on restaurant plates to help feed those who are hungry.  Such an effort takes many individuals and coordination to pickup and deliver the food before it spoils. Others advocate re-plating the food so it goes back out again.  While that may be a bit extreme it hopefully gets you thinking about just how much edible food gets wasted daily.

Here are some tips I personally try to follow:

Eating Out:

• Order smaller portions — only what you can eat.
• Order dishes to share at your table.  Can two share one entree? Two dishes among three? Tip: can leave room for dessert.
• Take home extra food from restaurants.  I’ve taken home extra salmon to use cold on a salad the next day.
• Divide your plate before you start eating.  We’ve all been to places where the portions are ridiculously large.  A weight loss technique can be helpful here — when your plate arrives pull out your container you brought along and fill it with extra food leaving what you think is a reasonable sized dinner.
• Ask others at your table if they want any food you are not going to eat.  They may want it now or packaged to take home for themselves or a pet.

Home:

• Buy only what you can eat before it goes bad. I used to be bad about buying more food than I could eat.  If you buy too much, can or freeze part.
• Learn to use leftover food in new dishes.  This might be food in the doggie bag or extras from the night before.  Where do you think stuffing came from?  It was a use for stale bread.  Many dishes were created as ways to use an ingredient that was a bit past its prime.  Veggies & meat can be used to make stock for soup.  Some suggestions here.

The bonus to doing the above is you also save money.  Add your suggestions below.

– Steve Patterson

Apple should look to The Loop

A decade ago Apple depended on a few retailers to display and sell their computers.  These retailers did a poor job, relegating the Macs to the back corner of the store.  Apple decided they needed to open their own retail stores to get their products in front of consumers.  May 15, 2001 their first store opened in Tyson’s Corner Center mall in the D.C./Baltimore area.  The St. Louis region has two Apple Stores – one at West County Center and the other at the Galleria.  Not all stores are located in enclosed malls.

Many cities have the Apple store along retail streets.  The San Francisco store above opened on my 37th birthday.

As of November 2009, Apple has opened 282 stores; 221 in 41 US states, 24 in the United Kingdom (20 in England, two in Scotland, one in Northern Ireland and one in Wales), 14 in Canada, 7 in Japan, 6 in Australia, 3 in Switzerland, 2 each in Germany, Italy and France and 1 in China.  (Source: Wikipedia)

The stores have been a huge hit.

Apple began building its own outlets in 2001, and they have proved enormously profitable. A record 42.7 million customers visited Apple Stores last quarter, generating $7.6 million in revenue per store, up 15% year over year. All told, Apple Stores brought in $6.6 billion in revenue in fiscal 2009, more than the whole company generated ($5.4 billion) in 2001.
Basement

“We have the highest performing retail stores on the planet,” boasts Ron Johnson, the former Target marketing whiz who runs Apple’s retail division. Johnson told the press on Thursday that the average Apple Store generates $4,300 per total square foot (including storage space), the equivalent foot for foot of 5 Best Buys and 15 Target stores.

The “significant” stores (what Apple used to call its flagship stores) do much better. According to a Bloomberg report last summer, Apple’s big glass cube on 59th St., across the street from the old Plaza Hotel, is the highest-grossing retail outlet on Fifth Avenue, bringing in an estimated $35,000 per square foot, nearly double the gross of Tiffany’s sales floor and triple Harry Winston’s.  (Source: CNN/Fortune)

With this great success recently Apple announced plans to keep expanding.

November 12, 2009,

Apple said Thursday that it expects to open 40 to 50 new retail locations next year and that it will focus on bigger flagship stores in major cities.

At a media preview of its fourth New York store, this time on the Upper West Side, Ron Johnson, Apple’s senior vice president of retail, said the company sees this location, as well as its glass cube on Fifth Avenue and newly opened store at the Louvre in Paris, as “significant stores.”

Its new stores, both significant and standard, will be larger, to accommodate the width of three product-display tables and bigger Genius Bars.“Our stores are too small,” Mr. Johnson said. “Our biggest challenge at the Genius Bar – we cannot build them big enough.”

More than half of Apple’s 40 to 50 new retail locations in 2010 will be outside the U.S., including the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, France and China, he said.

Apple doesn’t currently have plans to open more stores in Manhattan, Mr. Johnson said, but when asked if there were any plans for neighboring borough Brooklyn, he left it at, “Stay tuned.”  (Source: Wall Street Journal)

While the West County location just got revamped the Galleria store is quite small.  So this is where the Loop comes into play.  I think Apple should build a new location on the Delmar Loop to replace the small Galleria location.  The portion East of Skinker is ideal with restored buildings, modern new construction and vacant land a block from a rail transit station.  Specifically I’m referring to the site between Big Shark Bicycle and Miss Saigon Vietnamese restaurant (map/aerial).  Apple would then be in a new building of their own design on one of the most popular streets in our region.

The site is bigger than they would need so the total project would include more storefronts.  There are other vacant sites both East & West of Skinker but I think this one is best.  Hopefully Apple’s retail scouts will find this post and check out the Loop.

– Steve Patterson

Thankful to be a stroke survivor

For nearly two years now I’ve been thankful every day that I am a stroke survivor.  That moment when you are certain your life will soon be over is surreal.  When I awoke from sedation in ICU almost a month later just the idea of still being alive was more important than the fact I couldn’t move my left side and that I had a tracheotomy to enable me to breath while I was on a ventilator.  Early on I was so very thankful the doctors didn’t reinsert the speaking valve after I removed it in my first days awake.

I’ve adjusted to my physical limitations.  It helps that each day, week, month my physical limitations are fewer.  In a way I am thankful for having had a stroke.  That may sound weird but it helped me lose 80 lbs.  I have become a more organized, focused person as a result.  As a disabled person I will be a better urban planner. Accessibility is not just minimum widths from guidelines for me — it is very real.

I’m thankful for my family, friends and all of you that read this blog.  Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

– Steve Patterson