St. Louis Board of Aldermen Recognizes Rollin Stanley

Today the St. Louis Board of Aldermen passed Resolution #323 thanking Rollin Stanley for his five years of service to the city.  Many aldermen expressed thanks for his help in planning assistance in their wards. Stanley indicated he left with a heavy heart, indicating he is more proud of his work in St. Louis over the last five years than his prior 21 years in Toronto.  Stanley is leaving his post as the Director of the Planning & Urban Design Agency to take a similar position with Montgomery County, Maryland (see prior post).

Bill Would Permit Segway Use in Forest Park

Last Friday Ald. Lyda Krewson (D-28th) introduced Board Bill 449 which would allow, with restrictions enforced through a permit process, the use of a Segway in Forest Park. Currently the Segway is legally allowed to use the street, along with cars, trucks, bicycles and scooters. They are also allowed, per state law, to use sidewalks and bike paths:

Defined–requirements for operation.

307.205. 1. For the purposes of sections 307.205 to 307.211, “electric personal assistive mobility device” (EPAMD) shall mean a self-balancing, two nontandem wheeled device, designed to transport only one person, with an electric propulsion system with an average power of seven hundred fifty watts (one horsepower), whose maximum speed on a paved level surface, when powered solely by such a propulsion system while ridden by an operator who weighs one hundred seventy pounds, is less than twenty miles per hour.

2. An electric personal assistive mobility device may be operated upon a street, highway, sidewalk, and bicycle path. Every person operating such a device shall be granted all of the rights and be subject to all of the duties applicable to a pedestrian pursuant to chapter 304, RSMo.

3. Persons under sixteen years of age shall not operate an electric personal assistive mobility device, except for an operator with a mobility-related disability.

4. An electric personal assistive mobility device shall be operated only on roadways with a speed limit of forty-five miles per hour or less. This shall not prohibit the use of such device when crossing roadways with speed limits in excess of forty-five miles per hour.

5. A city or town shall have the authority to impose additional regulations on the operation of an electric personal assistive mobility device within its city or town limits.

The last section above does allow cities to place restrictions. In the City of St. Louis it has been interpreted by the City Counselor’s office that the Segway is a vehicle and is not allowed to use sidewalks and/or bike paths. The current applicable definition comes from ordinance 65138 which was signed by the Mayor in January 2001 — before the introduction of the Segway:

For purposes of this ordinance a “motorized scooter” shall mean any two-wheeled device that has handlebars, is designed to be stood upon by the operator, and is powered by a motor that is capable of propelling the device with or without human propulsion at a speed of not more than 25 miles per hour.

The above ordinance was originally targeted to those motorized skateboards that were popular at the time — hence the ‘stand upon part’ of the definition. The city cites the following as reasons for a Segway being a vehicle and thus banned from use on sidewalks:

Every person operating a motorized scooter shall have all the rights and is subject to all the provisions applicable to the driver of any other vehicle as established by ordinance, including, but not limited to, ordinances concerning driving under the influence of alcoholic beverages or drugs, except those provisions which, by their very nature, can have no application.

Well, OK, but what about this section from the same ordinance:

A person operating a motorized scooter is not subject to the provisions of this code relating to registration, and license plate requirements, and, for those purposes, a motorized scooter is not a motor vehicle.

If we stroll over to the “revised code” for the city and look at the Chapter 17.16 Miscellaneous Traffic Rules we can see all sorts of, well, miscellaneous rules. These include rules on many topics such as crossing fire hoses, boarding in motion, transporting animals, and allowing police officers to ride bicycles on any sidewalk in the city. The city considers the Segway a vehicle and references the following as reasons why it is banned on all sidewalks:

17.16.040 Driving upon sidewalk or bicycle/ pedestrian right-of-way.

A. No person shall drive any vehicle upon a sidewalk except upon a permanent or duly authorized temporary driveway.

B. No person shall drive any vehicle upon any bicycle/pedestrian right-of-way. The provisions of this subsection shall not apply to persons driving emergency vehicles or maintenance vehicles, persons who drive upon any bicycle/pedestrian right-of-way as a means of ingress or egress to a place of business or a residence or persons crossing any bicycle/pedestrian right-of-way at a point designated by Grace Hill Americorp as river access crossing site. (Ord. 64952 § 2, 2000: prior: Ord. 57831 § 1 (part), 1979: 1960 C. § 827.040.)

So is the Segway a “vehicle” or not? The state of Missouri considers a bicycle a vehicle as well with the operator is subject to the same rights and rules as a motor vehicle operator but we don’t ban bicycles from operating on bike paths.

So Ald. Krewson’s bill is not looking to examine the bigger issue from a city-wide perspective. BB#449 is geared only at Forest Park and mainly at institutions within Forest Park. Basically the Science Center owns (16) Segways they like to use for groups to show how they work — you know, the science behind them. Legally they should be permitted to use them on roadways in Forest Park but it seems they want to use them on sidewalks and paths. This bill, if passed in its current form, would permit the Director of Parks to formulate rules, an application process and issue permits to those seeking to use a Segway in Forest Park.  To receive a permit you’d need to own the Segway.  Institutions in Forest Park, such as the Science Center, could allow others to use their Segways after the person signed a waiver form.  Anyone riding a Segway in the park would need to wear a prominent plackard — making them look even dorkier.

So all this brings up several questions.  First, does the current laws on the books limit the use of Segways or not?   If yes, do we keep it as is or do we consider where and how we’d like to permit Segways on sidewalks/paths.  For example, besides Forest Park perhaps on the North Riverfront Trail?  If the current laws do not ban the use of Segways on sidewalks/paths, do we want to limit their use.  At nearly $6,000 a pop it is pretty rare to see one out and about except for tour groups.

One time, a few years ago, I crossed the street heading to the Chicago Art Institute and a group on Segways had blocked the entire corner on the sidewalk — making it difficult for me as a pedestrian to get through.  Like my scooter, I have no issues with someone locking up a Segway to a bike rack on the public sidewalk, but I have to wonder about mixing Segway users with walkers, joggers, rollerbladers, and cyclists on paths in Forest Park.  This seemingly non-issue gets complicated pretty quickly.  For more information on the Segway see Wiki and Segway.com.

Boston’s North End, Once Slated for the Wrecking Ball, Perhaps the Best Urban Neighborhood in America

Last week I visited Boston and I specifically made a trip to the North End neighborhood. Before heading on the trip I re-read a portion of Jane Jacob’s classic 1961 book, Death and Life of Great American Cities. Starting on page 8 Jacobs talks about planners and architects and how they’ve learned how cities “ought” to work:

Consider, for example, the orthodox planning reaction to a district called the North End in Boston. This is an old, low-rent area merging into the heavy industry of the waterfront, and it is officially considered Boston’s worst slum and civic shame. It embodies attributes which all enlightened people know are evil because so many wise men have said they are evil. Not only is the North End bumped right up against industry, but worse still it has all kinds of working places and commerce mingled in the greatest complexity with its residences. It has the highest concentration of dwelling units, on the land that is used for dwelling units, of any part of Boston, and indeed one of the highest concentrations to be found in any American city. It has little parkland. Children play in the streets. Instead of super-blocks, or even decently large blocks, it has very small blocks; in planning parlance it is “badly cut up with wasteful streets.” Its buildings are old. Everything conceivable is presumably wrong with the North End. In orthodox planning terms, it is a three-dimensional textbook of “megalopolis” in the last stages of depravity. The North End is thus a recurring assignment for M.I.T. and Harvard planning and architecture students, who now and again pursue, under the guidance of their teachers, the paper exercise of converting it into super-blocks and park promenades, wiping away its nonconforming uses, transforming it to an ideal of order and gentility so simple it could be engraved on the head of a pin.

This neighborhood, first settled in the 1630’s, didn’t fit with the mid-20th century notion of a city. Architects, planners and politicians had written off the entire area, and equally urban areas in cities all over the country, so they could be rebuilt in the new order. Jacobs continues:

Twenty years ago, when I first happened to see the North End, its buildings — town houses of different kinds and sizes converted to flats, and four- or five story tenements built to house the flood of immigrants first from Ireland, then from Eastern Europe and finally from Sicily — were badly overcrowded, and the general effect was of a district taking a terrible physical beating and certainly desperately poor.

Gee, that doesn’t sound so good. Perhaps the planners were correct, wipe it back down to bare earth and start over? Of course, at this point in the early 1940s, the country had been in a long depression with little money for the maintenance of housing stock.

When I saw the North End again in 1959, I was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by throwing two older apartments together, and had equipped these with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a narrow alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North End, but no: more neatly repointed brickwork, new blinds, and a burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city district I had ever seen — or have seen to this day — in which the sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and amputated, but repaired and painted as neatly as if they were intended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for living were an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such enterprises as upholstery making, metal working, carpentry, food processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people shopping, people strolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold January day, there would surely have been people sitting.

The general street atmosphere of buoyancy, friendliness and good health was so infectious that I began asking directions of people just for the fun of getting in on some talk. I had seen a lot of Boston in the past couple of days, most of it sorely distressing, and this struck me, with relief, as the healthiest place in the city. But I could not imagine where the money had come from for the rehabilitation, because it is almost impossible today to get any appreciable mortgage money in districts of American cities that are not either high-rent, or else imitations of suburbs. To find out, I went into a bar and restaurant (where an animated conversation about fishing was in progress) and called a Boston planner I know.

“Why in the world are you down in the North End?” he said. “Money? Why, no money or work has gone into the North End. Nothing’s going on down there. Eventually, yes, but not yet. That’s a slum!”
“It doesn’t seem like a slum to me,” I said.
“Why, that’s the worst slum in the city. It has two hundred and seventy-five dwelling units to the net acre! I hate to admit we have anything like that in Boston, but it’s a fact.”
“Do you have any other figures on it?” I asked.
“Yes, funny thing. It has among the lowest delinquency, disease and infant mortality rates in the city. It also has the lowest ratio of rent to income in the city. Boy, are those people getting bargains. Let’s see… the child population is just about average for the city, on the nose. The death rate is low, 8.8 per thousand, against the average city rate of 11.2. The TB death rate is very low, less than 1 per ten thousand, can’t understand it, it’s lower even than Brookline’s. In the old days the North End used to be the city’s worst spot for tuberrculosis, but all that has changed. Well, they must be strong people. Of course, it’s a terrible slum.”
“You should have more slums like this,” I said. “Don’t tell me there are plans to wipe this out. You ought to be down here learning as much as you can from it.”
“I know how you feel,” he said. “I often go down there myself just to walk around the streets and to feel that wonderful, cheerful street life. Say, what you ought to do, you ought to come back and go down in the summer if you think it’s fun now. You’d be crazy about it in the summer. But of course we have to rebuild it eventually. We’ve got to get those people off the streets.”

Here was a curious thing. My friend’s instincts told him the North End was a good place, and his social statistics confirmed it. But everything he had learned as a physical planner about what is good for people and good for city neighborhoods, everything that made him an expert, told him the North End had to be a bad place.

Boston’s North End, like St. Louis’ Soulard or Old North neighborhoods, were very overcrowded during the years of the depression when many people migrated from rural settings to urban centers seeking employment. Overcrowding, not to be confused with high density, can and did lead to many diseases. The older buildings often lacked modern plumbing which would have helped offset disease.  At the time the experts claimed the only thing to do was to clear cut the entire area — including all the streets and alleys — and start over from scratch.

In the 1950s Boston cut out a strip of the North End to create their overly popular Central Artery highway.  This highway project cut off the North End from downtown and the rest of the city.  The highway also became congested quickly which eventually led to the “big dig” project.   Despite being cut off from downtown, or perhaps because of it, the North End avoided the wrecking ball.
Boston, St. Louis and all older cities do well with their older street pattern and mix of uses.  As you will see, this is very compact, and not for everyone.  Of course, not everyone aspires to a 2-story Colonial ranch in the suburbs with a 3-car garage.  The inner core of our region, basically the entire City of St. Louis, should grow increasingly urban as it once was.

Here are a few of the pictures I took in Boston’s North End:

I’m looking forward to a return visit when the trees green up and more people are out and about.

Gateway Mall Wishes It Was Boston’s Commonwealth Mall

St. Louis’ Gateway Mall was an afterthought — a way to clear away buildings and people thought to be too seedy for downtown. However, in clearing the blocks for the Gateway Mall and numerous other later projects in the urban renewal era all the people were removed as building after building were razed. Businesses and residences were lost by the hundreds if not thousands.

Boston’s Commonwealth Mall, however, was planned from the start. Dating to the 19th Century, not the 20th Century, it has a quite different feel. I visited the Commonwealth Mall this morning.

The mall is technically a wide median but it is sufficiently wide enough that you don’t feel endangered by a passing motorist nor do you feel so isolated that you fee unsafe. Surrounded on both sides by stately masonry buildings which, combined with the trees, creates a wonderful scale. There are no parking garages or blank walls, just varied architecture with entry/exit points (aka doors) highly frequently. There are no follies or other tricks to get you to be in this space, it was designed to be an integral part of the city.

Frequent sculptures break up the linear pathway while retaining a formal feeling. Despite the cold and snow, many in Boston walk to their destinations and the Commonwealth Mall provides a beautiful way to do so.

What planners in the 20th Century failed to understand is that you cannot simply cut a slice through a city at any point and expect it to succeed. Furthermore, destroying activities and interest along the edges is critical to the overall feel and ultimately will help determine if the public will use the space or not. St. Louis’ Gateway Mall has no reason for the general public to walk along it. Regardless of the attractions contained inside the space it will remain lifeless and disconnected from the city, the opposite of Boston’s Commonwealth Mall.

Sidewalk Terminates in Stone & Brick Wall

When I was back in Oklahoma City last summer I visited a new subdivision. I was happy to see that they had sidewalks although they didn’t lead out to the main street. Of course, the main street doesn’t have sidewalks either.

Inside the subdivision some of the homes were in a regular section while others were in a special gated area. But, walking from one section to the other presents issues:

Yes, the sidewalk was poured right up the wall dividing the sections. From the other side:

Crazy huh?  Those on the other side of the street do get a pedestrian gate.

The sidewalk does lead out of the subdivision toward the main road.  Of course, it stops well short of the main street.  And, despite the road network being all new construction, they couldn’t manage to place the utilities in the path of the sidewalk.  Amazingly bad planning.