Lack of Curb Cuts Annoying, Requires Backtracking

Saturday I met a friend and her nieces at Union Station.  I didn’t drive there, I took my motorized wheelchair.

On the way back home  I decided to take a slightly different route.  Normally I take 17th street North across Olive to Locust.  But Saturday I thought I’d go one more block East before heading North on the former 16th.  16th has been closed for decades, ever since the Plaza Square urban renewal project cleared the area.  But as I approached the former 16th Street as I headed East on Pine I encountered a problem.

My destination is the sidewalk going off to the left on the other side of this drive.  This drive goes to a locked gate.  All of the street intersections around here have ramps but little drives like this get overlooked.

Unable to proceed as planned I backtracked to 17th to cross Olive.

Crossing Olive without a signal is a bit scary but when there is no traffic such as Saturday it is alright.  The green light you see is 16th, where I was trying to cross.

The street grid is a joyous thing, when it is still a grid for motorists and pedestrians in wheelchairs.  As you destroy the grid you destroy the essence of the city.  Someday I plan to map all the public streets & alleys that have been vacated since say 1950.  How many acres of land has the city given away as the street grid was destroyed?

I’m emailing a link to this post to Alderman Phyllis Young, the director of the Streets Dept and the Office on the Disabled so they will be made aware of the issue at 16th & Pine.

Crosswalks Work Better Without Trucks in Them

Last Saturday morning I went out for a walk…ur…stroll in my wheelchair. I had no issues until I reached 8th & Locust (map) – 8 blocks East of my place.

I was trying to continue Eastbound along Locust, crossing 8th.  One block of 8th from Washington Ave to Locust has been closed for a while now as construction crews for the Roberts Tower use the road for staging.  They left the sidewalk open on the East side of 8th.  That is where I was headed so I could get back to Washington Ave. Directly in my path is a big truck.  Parked.  Nobody in sight to yell at either.  I was able to go around and get to my destination but going out of the crosswalk lines does carry risks — even on a slow Saturday morning.

Other times I’ve seen the gate for their construction fence blocking the crosswalk.  Our sidewalks are not packed with pedestrians but we do exist.   Think before you park in a crosswalk!

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Stealing a Sidewalk

For decades the NW corner of 11th & Locust was known not for the parking lot that we see today, but Miss Hullings Cafeteria on the ground floor of the building. Miss Hullings closed in late 1993 and the building was razed.

But lately neighbors have questioned the line between the public sidewalk and surface parking lot:

Buildings were built up to the property line to maximize the land. Thus the public right-of-way was well defined by the fronts of the buildings.

Based on the photos you’d think the ROW made a jog at the alley line, but it doesn’t. From the city’s Geo St. Louis site we see the right-of-way is aligned with the adjacent blocks:

The boundaries of city blocks and the widths of public rights of way have been documented for years. So what happened here? Our public space has been stolen, that’s what. The same condition applies along Locust.

In the 1909 Sanborn map we can clearly see the consistent 60 foot right-of-way for both Locust & 11th. This map predates the Miss Hullings building on the NW corner as well as the Louderman building on the SW corner. The structures have changed but the line between public and private has not. Well, in practice it has.

This parking lot owner, an LLC based in Arizona, can park more cars by using part of the public right of way. It is bad enough we have these vast surface lots in our downtown. The lack of any sort of landscaping, wall or fence makes it worse. But to have the sidewalk area stolen from the public is just wrong.

The city now has better rules regarding the separation & screening. But we can’t go back and apply those rules retroactively. But couldn’t the city construct a wall or fence on the edge of the ROW? This surface parking lot is not the only one downtown lacking screening but as far as I know it is the only one that has stolen park of the public space. We need our sidewalk back and we need to keep cars off the public space intended for pedestrians.

I do not know if the current owner created this situation or not.  Maybe when it was done it was a ploy to take the public land through adverse possession? Although I don’t think private parties can get public land this way?

Several in the area have been working behind the scenes to adress the theft of this sidewalk for a while now. I found it an interesting situation worthy of being shared. I know we have bigger thibgs (economy, swine flu, etc) but someone has to look out for the little things. To me the theft of a public sidewalk is not so little.

Update 4/29/09 @ 12:30pm — Michael Allen of The Ecology of Absense just finished a post on the Miss Hullings building.  Check it out here.

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Five Easy Solutions to Help the City of St. Louis, Downtown – No Stimulus Funds Required

We here all the time about the need to assist multi-million dollar projects such as Ballpark Village.  St. Louis and cities nationwide have been helping fund big ticket projects for decades.  Some deliver on the initial promises while others do not.  But this post is not about the massive project costing hundreds of millions.  It is about little things.  Things not dependent upon federal stimulus money.

The following is my list, you may have others:

#5 – Reduce most six lane roads to four by striping outside lane for bikes and/or parked cars.

Yes stripes do take some money but not that much.  Jefferson, Market, and Natural Bridge quickly come to mind.  We have a fraction of the population we had in 1950 yet we have the lane capacity for a much larger population.  These streets all need expensive diets but paint on pavement can do wonders.

#4 – eliminate all minimum parking requirements throughout the city.

Our entire zoning code is 60+ years old.  Much has changed and the code needs to as well, but that takes time & money.  In the short term we should just 86 those sections in the zoning code that require parking.  Just delete them entirely.

#3 – allow on-street parking on all streets in CBD, reducing 4 lane one-way streets to just two travel lanes.

Downtown St. Louis is blessed by short city blocks that are both walkable and easily biked.  Unfortunately in many places what would be a pleasant two travel lane street has four travel lanes in a single direction.  These should all be reverted to 2-way traffic and reduced to two travel lanes.  But changing signals to go back to two-way streets takes money.  .

#2 – street performers

St. Louis has many talented residents that could help animate our staid streets while earning a buck or two.  Changing the ordinances to make it easier for performers to do their thing on St. Louis’ public sidewalks would do wonders for residents & visitors’ perceptions.  Again, no massive debt-laden project is necessary.

#1 – street vendors

Related to street performers, street vending is as old as cities.  For decades we’ve gone the wrong direction with respect to street vending, being too busy trying to emulate suburbia.  Time to lighten it up Francis.  The vendors are there and they are well aware of the obstacles.  It is sort of the chicken-egg debate.  The first step is to loosen the regulatory grip and in time the vendors and customers will find each other.

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Washington Ave Maintenance 9 Months Later

Last July 9th I did a post called, “Washington Ave Suffering From Deferred Maintenance” which focused on nearly 10 missing street trees on what had been a very expensive streetscape.  I included  numerous pictures like this one:

Four days later I reported that the “Forestry Dept Begins Long-Overdue Street Tree Maintenance on Washington Ave. They must have been testing the process to grind out the stumps because they only did one that weekend.

But eventually they all got removed and replanted.

The newly planted trees are budding out too.

But they won’t all do well.  The above tree is not planted correctly:

If this tree lives it will begin to grow into the grate on the right.  Most of the other trees seem to be planted reasonably centered in the area provided.  I happened to spot this one yesterday.  Is it too late to move it?

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