The (former) Pedestrian Malls of Illinois

A year ago. I was starting my Capstone (thesis) for a masters in urban planning & real estate development at Saint Louis University. My focus, I decided, would be on pedestrian malls – once open streets permanently closed to vehicular traffic.

Last fall I documented roughly 160 such malls built in North America between 1959-1984. Documenting the year removed, if so, proved far more difficult than I thought. The Capstone remains unfinished.

On Friday, while driving to Chicago, I realized I should narrow my focus to the ten former pedestrian malls in the state of Illinois. A manageable number where I could collect and examine data.

So far I’ve visited Chicago (State Street), Elgin, Freeport, Rockford, Danville, Champaign, and Decatur. Last night stayed in Springfield and I’m checking out their former pedestrian mall this morning. I skipped Oak Park (inner ring Chicago suburb) because I visited there l last year. That leaves only Centrallia left to visit after today.

In visiting each of these I was amazed at how different each town is today. Big & small, college & industrial, rich & poor. Besides the failed pedestrian mall experiment, each town looks to have been repeatedly raped by urban planners, civil engineers and architects.

– Steve Patterson

[Note: This post was written on my iPad with a photo from my iPhone. Not all editing features are easily available, but I hope to produce more posts this way.]

Improving The Walk From Transit To Mall

Recently I went to the St. Louis Galleria, two days in a row.  Both days I took MetroLink light rail to arrive, the mall is only a short distance from the station.

But the short distance seems long because of the physical design of the space along Galleria Parkway.  The sidewalk needs to be 2-3 times as wide to handle the steady flow of people coming and going.  I snapped the above in one of the moments between an arriving train full of shoppers.

The solution I propose is for the property owner on the right to create a 2-story structure with street-level storefronts facing a new tree-lined sidewalk.   Add on-street parking to serve the storefronts and to narrow the excessive width of the roadway. The new structure would create a better feel on the now-isolated sidewalk.

Later this month I will look specifically at access to the Galleria.

– Steve Patterson

Maintaining Infrastructure in Sparsely Populated Areas

At 61.9 square miles of land area, St. Louis is a relatively small city.  But many parts of this area are sparsely populated and sidewalks are few.  The above sidewalk at North Florissant Ave at North Market St. was passable, I saw worse between here and the new sidewalks on two blocks of North 14th (Warren to St. Louis Ave.)

Which comes first? New residents or new sidewalks? The residents aren’t going to arrive until conditions improve and conditions won’t improve until there is more residents to help justify the capital expenditure on the infrastructure.

A future light rail line has been studied for North Florissant so improvements to the entire right of way would presumably come with that investment.  Population, it is expected, would follow.   A hundred years ago develop happened along new transit lines lines.  More recently, development happened along investment in highways. So I’d say the new sidewalks need to come first.  Of course, buildings and population aren’t going to just appear because some new sidewalks have been installed in a few places.  Someone has to put together a vision for how, in this case, this corridor, might look.

Maintenance, clearly, just isn’t done.  And really, minimal maintenance is probably just a waste of money.  So much is needed here to populate the area.

– Steve Patterson

Walk-up ATM, But Not Roll-up ATM

I like walk-up ATM machines.  Too often only drive-thru ATM’s are available.

When I’m out using my wheelchair it helps to be able to roll up and use the ATM.  But the above ATM presented a few of problems for me:

1. The curb at the base prevented me from pulling up close enough.
2. The height & angle of screen & buttons was too great to have used the ATM even if the curb wasn’t there.
3. At other machines I tend to pull up with the machine on my right side, rather than straight in.  But the ramp into the entrance prevent that as well.

I could have pulled up and stood long enough to have done my transaction, but not everyone can do that. This credit union needs to add this ATM & entrance to a list of future improvements. I’d like to see these be improved within a year.  I will send my request to them.

– Steve Patterson

Forced into the street again

Last week I posted about being forced into the street to reach the bus stop on 14th Street between Washington Ave and Delmar.  The issue was a major lack of wheelchair curb cuts at 14th & Lucas, the alley/street to the north of Washington Ave.  So Friday when I wanted to take the same bus from the same stop I knew I need to approach from another direction.

I crossed Washington Ave to the north at the crossing at 16th Street.  One block east on Washington and then north on 15th one block to Delmar. Heading east to 14th it didn’t take long for me to see I was going to have issues crossing 14th Street.

The SE corner where I was headed has a curb cut.  Interestingly, neither street – Delmar or 14th — has a curb cut to correspond with the SE corner. So again I was back in the street, in drive lanes instead of crosswalks, to reach the bus stop.  Trust me, “driving” a wheelchair on the road is not a comforting feeling.

Yesterday I caught the same bus south of Washington Ave, next to the main library. Much easier access! All bus stops should be accessible. Remember, my access issues are not the fault of our transit agency, Metro – the city has failed to ensure access by missing curb cuts in a few places.

– Steve Patterson