Why Doesn’t the St. Louis Region have HOV Lanes?

HOV Lanes, short for High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, are used in most regions larger than St. Louis as well as a number that are smaller than our region. The concept is simple — designate the center lane on the interstate for buses, vehicles with 2+ people, motorcycles and in some cases, hybrids.

On my recent trip to Seattle we used the the HOV lane on I-5 when traveling North to visit a weekend cabin as well as traveling South to the Airport. Seattle’s I-5 HOV lane requires at least two persons per vehicle. Their floating bridge requires 3 or more persons to use the HOV lane.

These lanes do a couple of things. One they remind the people in single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) they could be moving at a better rate if they had carpooled with someone. It also rewards those people that do carpool or take mass transit.

This would seem like a reasonable step for the St. Louis region to consider. We have issues of congestion on our interstate highways throughout the region as well as air quality concerns.

HOV lanes should be tried throughout our region before we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new lanes and bridges to ease congestion.

UPDATED 11/5 9AM CST:
I found an interesting review of HOV lanes from Canada. They look at HOV lanes in North America — what worked and what didn’t. This review is now eight years old so it may not be very applicable.

HOV lanes are created one of two ways – adding a new lane to the existing system or taking a lane from the current roadway. Both approaches have some drawbacks. By adding a new lane to the system you encourage more driving. By taking an existing lane you have protests from people that think highway lanes are a God-given right. Seattle’s I-5 HOV lane was originally for 3+ vehicles and showed good results from carpooling and transit ridership but due to political pressure the requirement was dropped to 2+. Carpooling dropped as did transit use.

We are already planning to add a new lane to I-64/40 from Spoede to I-170. Why not mark this as a 3+ HOV lane to try it out to see how it goes?

Committee on High Occupancy Vehicle Systems seems to be an excellent resource for information but they are clearly biased in favor of HOV lanes.

Does anyone have any arguments in favor or against HOV lanes? Speak up in the comments below.

– Steve

Saving Face in Seattle

What do you do when a beloved building is where you want to build a new 22-story high rise tower? Most developers and elected officials would assume you have to clear the existing site.

Saving a facade is not a new concept but when done well it still interests me. I think it is good to continually remind ourselves this is an option to completely razing an existing structure.

From the new architect’s website:

The new tower retains old walls facing each street but the corner element is new — a retail space. The windows in the old facade are also updated with metal canopies to help protect pedestrians from rain as they walk along the sidewalk. While not a pure restoration of the entire original envelope it is an acceptable compromise.

Architect Blaine Weber from the Puget Sound Business Journal:

The retention of the old facade as well as the use of massing to relate to the low-rise buildings adjacent to the site shows great skill. From the sidewalk you really don’t get the sense you are walking next to a 22-story tower — and that is a sign of a pedestrian friendly high rise.

– Steve

An Urban Walgreen’s in Suburbia

Yes, Walgreen’s has built a decent new store in an up to the sidewalk urban fashion in an otherwise suburban area. But don’t look for this in the St. Louis region. I’m in Seattle on a combination business trip and brief vacation. Yesterday we spotted this new Walgreen’s in an area of NW Seattle (map)

The first thing you can see is the typical Walgreen’s window where a true second floor should exist. But under that is a sign & entrance for a place that does nails. What gives?

Walgreen’s is known for seeking high-profile corner locations but they don’t necessarily want a pedestrian corner entrance. Instead they want a parking lot and adjacent entrance. This is a good compromise design.

Seattle has requirements to build more urban even in areas that in the past had been allowed to have typical suburban development — far setbacks behind a sea of parking. Seattle has realized people will walk if you make the path interesting and convenient.

So the street corner, at far left in this picture, has a smaller business but gives Walgreen’s the visibility they desire. The other end of the building relates well to both the sidewalk and their small, but adjacent, parking lot.

Behind the Walgreen’s is local grocery store QFC with a large parking lot. This new Walgreen’s gives a more urban feel to the corner that it previously lacked. Between the Walgreen’s and QFC parking lot is a narrow drive-thru lane to serve the pharmacy.

Also of note is the red bike rack. The placement near the entrance is excellent. I would have preferred an “inverted-u” type rack that allows the bike to be supported in two places. This wave type rack is sexier which is why it gets selected. This rack is designed to hold three bikes — the middle bike entering from the opposite side. Whomever specified this rack failed to understand that point as the user would have to trek their bike through the planting area to do so. As a result, this is a essentially two-bike rack. An inverted-u rack would also hold two bikes and would have been cheaper. In the space they have they could have done two inverted-u racks for a total of four spaces — probably for the same cost as this single rack that really only hold two. I’m glad to see racks becoming more common but more thought needs to go into their selection and placement.

Back to the Walgreen’s…

Why don’t we have such urban thinking in the St. Louis region?

Basically it boils down to elected officials that are either ignorant of what it takes to make a more urban and walkable community or too lazy/spineless to require developers to do something different than their auto centric sprawl prototypes. At the same time these elected officials are trying to deal issue of meeting air quality compliance and population loss. Solutions are at hand but it requires doing business differently.

I recently had a St. Louis Alderman tell me, as we were discussing developments, “if you knew all the information” I’d have a different view. The additional information was tidbits like the store in question only has two standard models which the alderman accepted at face value. The “if you were in my shoes” answers just don’t cut it. It is an easy way out. Finally the real sentiment came out that in the past we haven’t had developers lined up to do projects in the city. So a developer expresses an interest in a project so we accept whatever it is they want to build because that is their standard model.

The building anything you want attitude is not limited to officials in the city. Municipalities in St. Louis County are tripping over each other to give developers incentives in a fight for sales tax dollars that are regionally flat. Brilliant.

The buildings we are constructing today will be with us for at least 20 years. That alone is a sad statement as we should be building for much longer life spans. But even a short 20 more years of parking dominated development is too long. Our region will fall behind other regions that are actively embracing pedestrian-friendly designs. Our region needs to attract more people, hedge our bets against rising fuel costs and make real efforts to reduce auto use that leads to lower air quality.

We cannot continue to have elected officials that simply accept the developers first sales pitch. We can demand better in our community.

– Steve

Historic Doering Mansion in Path of Broadway Bluffs Townhouses

The South Broadway bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River in South St. Louis offer some of the most stunning views in the region. Seldom does a week go by that I don’t stop at Bellerive Park and take in the view. The view of Illinois is rural and lush while barges and industry remind me of the long history of the Mississippi as a working river.

Since the founding of St. Louis and Carondelet people have enjoyed these views. Most often is was the well to do that built great country mansions along the bluffs. But over time we’ve lost nearly every early mansion. We are about to lose yet another.

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Request for Proposals: Kingshighway & Chippewa

The Citizens of St. Louis are seeking quality development concepts for the area bounded by Chippewa, Ridgewood, Delor and Kingshighway (map). We are seeking proposals to be ahead of developers which will no doubt propose typical big box sprawl. Development plan should be considered a master plan for the area — not necessarily a call to take the area shown by eminent domain. Development may happen over a period of years as existing structures reach the end of their service life or as properties are sold.
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