ABOVE: Bike locked to tree at Gateway One 2/18/2010
Last Thursday I spotted a bike in front of the Gateway One building (701 Market). The bike was chained to a tree. With the exception of Washington Ave (West of 9th) and a few other spots, downtown St. Louis has no places to park bikes. Considerable effort goes into creating bike trails, paths & lanes yet places to secure bikes once the user has arrived don’t receive attention. We’ve lost far too many buildings to create surface & structured parking for an increasing number of automobiles.
The public rights-of-way can accommodate both bike parking and more automobile parking. We need to freeze the creation of new spaces for autos on private land and focus on using the public streets (road + sidewalks) to provide bike parking throughout the central business district.
ABOVE: Looking east on Dorsett at the southbound Interstate 270 on-ramp. Source: MoDOT
Maryland Heights Residents for Responsible Growth, is hosting a public event with MoDOT and the City of Maryland Heights on the reconstruction of the I-270 interchanges at Dorsett Road and Page Avenue, which begin this month.
Wednesday – February 17, 2010 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. – Presentation and Q&A with MoDOT and City of Maryland Heights Public Works
7:00 -8:00Â p.m. – Open Forum with Community
Maryland Heights Community Centre – Auditorium 2344 McKelvey Road
Maryland Heights, MO 63043
This is the first public forum with specific details and time lines on this two-year construction project. The project will start on I-270 and Dorsett Road the first year, then move to Page Avenue interchange in 2011. The project is expected to take two years. MoDOT will also be showing the public the animated driving sequences on the “divergent diamond” design on Dorsett at the I-270 interchange.
180,000 cars a day travel on I-270 through Maryland Heights every day and this is going to cause big disruptions for both local traffic in Maryland Heights, Westport and Creve Couer as well as those who are just traveling through the area on I-270 from Page Ave. to I-70. There will be lane detours and reduced lanes as they completely rebuild the bridges/interchanges.
There will also be a major, parallel Maryland Heights city project moving Prospect Parkway away from the rebuilt Dorsett interchange which will place the finished road further east on Dorsett. It will relocate the road on the north side of Dorsett past Syberg’s and cross to the south-side of Dorsett just east of the Drury Inn. The south-side construction will feature a “jug-handle” design and is designed to assist with traffic congestion from the newly expanded Edward Jones campus as well as funnel traffic in and out of the Westport area.
Maryland Heights Residents is a relatively new organization that originally formed in 2008 in response to development proposals for the Howard Bend area. In general, there seemed to be no community information or engagement with residents of Maryland Heights. Only the business and property owners were routinely notified of public meetings and asked to participate in community development discussions. The residents realized we needed to step up as citizens and inject ourselves into the process.
The organization has developed since then into a group dedicated to making Maryland Heights a better place to live and giving residents a voice in community development. Our four main goals are:
ABOVE: Residents of Parsons Place in East St. Louis can walk to MetroLink
Liberals do not hold a monopoly on supporting public transportation.  Thanks to a post on Sprawled Out I learned of an interview by Street Films with conservative author William S. Lind. Some of his points include:
Auto dominance in the U.S. is not a free market outcome
Liberal transit advocates should not mention reduction of greenhouse gases when talking transit to conservatives
Libertarian anti-transit critics use wrong measurements
“When you tax one competitor and subsidize the other the subsidized competitor wins.”
Here is the video (3:21 minutes):
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q9zeJnCx6Q
I often find myself agreeing with fiscal conservatives — and disagreeing with Libertarians.
“Conservatives And Public Transportation”Conservatives and Public Transportation” is a collection of studies originally published between 1997 and 2009 in booklet form by the American Public Transportation Association. The book includes a previously unpublished report on the activities of the National Surface Transportation Commission, appointed by Congress in 2005 to examine the infrastructure needs of this country. Weyrich served on the commission and wrote language that strongly supported public transportation for the commission’s final report. That language, which had been adopted on a 9-3 vote, was excised from the final report.The studies helped conservatives understand why transit should be an essential part of the conservative agenda: because it enhances national security, promotes economic development, helps maintain conservative values including a sense of community, and provides welfare recipients with access to jobs.” (Reconnecting America)
More:
“The Free Congress Foundation has established The Center for Public Transportation under a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation to offer a re-balanced vision of the national transportation system in which rail and highway travel complements each other. Some journeys will always be more convenient by car. But Americans should be able to travel from any point in the country to any other point without using a car, if they so choose. They had that option as recently as the 1950s. By re-creating it, we can ensure that America is not held hostage by crises in the Middle East or other oil-producing areas.” (Free Congress Foundation)
Conservative or liberal, there are reasons to support good mass transit.
Cities, and the neighborhoods within them, slowly change over time. Old photographs and written accounts are our best window into life before we existed. When I arrived in St. Louis in August 1990 the old City Hospital complex on Lafayette was long vacant. Now the main building is The Georgian condos but two other structures were razed for the condo project.
From Paul Hohman of Vanishing St. Louis:
The aerial photo below from 2002 shows the City Hospital site as a fairly dense urban village with the old Administration Building along Lafayette, the 13 story Tower Building at center fronting on Carrol Street (notice how Carrol connects to the residential area to the west), and the 6 story former Malcolm Bliss Mental Heath Center along Park Avenue. In late 2002 demolition began on Malcolm Bliss and the Tower Building prior to the conversion of the Administration Building into the Georgian Condominiums by Gilded Age.
Image source: Vanishing STL, click image for post
Last year I brought the following photo which shows the construction of the now-razed tower building.
This was an era of increased building possible through rail transit (streetcars). I know perceptions were changing anyway, but I can’t help but think the demise of the last streetcar in 1966 contributed to further decline. Eight lines were closed in 1946/47. Cities like New Orleans, San Francisco and Toronto kept their lines running and that has paid dividends for them.
In the poll last week (post: St. Ann’s speed camera begins February 1st) readers were clear: a speed camera in the school zone is not the best way to make the street safe, it is about revenue for the municipality. In this case the suburb of St. Ann. For the most part I’m not bothered by speed & red light cameras because I tend to follow traffic laws to the letter. However, safety on the streets, especially for pedestrians, is a high priority for me.
Q: This week St. Ann begins school zone enforcement using speed-zone camera technology. These are:Bad: will only increase revenues for St. Ann: 35 [40.7%]
Good: will increase safety in the school zone: 21 [24.4%]
Other: better solutions exist to slow traffic: 21 [24.4%]
Neutral: won’t have much of an impact on safety but it doesn’t bother me: 5 [5.8%]
Other answer… 2 [2.3%]
Unsure/no opinion. 2 [2.3%]
The two “other” responses were:
compensating for taxes lost from NW Plaza Foreclosure/Wal-Mart leaving
need mass transit not more speed traps this is bs
For me the question comes back to performance. If the cameras are successful then fine. But do they? Trying to find unbiased information is impossible. On the pro-camera side is the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety:
“Do speed cameras reduce travel speeds?
Institute studies show that automated speed enforcement can substantially reduce speeding on a wide range of roadway types. Institute studies in Maryland, Arizona and the District of Columbia found that the proportion of drivers exceeding speed limits by more than 10 mph declined by 70, 95, and 82 percent respectively. Research conducted outside the United States also shows large effects of speed cameras on traffic speeds. For example, in Victoria, Australia, speed cameras were introduced in late 1989, and police reported that within 3 months the number of offenders triggering photo radar decreased 50 percent. The percentage of vehicles significantly exceeding the speed limit decreased from about 20 percent in 1990 to fewer than 4 percent in 1994.
Are there other technologies that could aid in enforcing speed limits in both urban and suburban areas?
Yes. Roadside electronic signs that display vehicle speeds to warn drivers they are speeding may reduce speeds and crashes at high-risk locations. Institute research found that mobile roadside speedometers can reduce speeds at the sites of the speedometers as well as for short distances down the road.16 When used in conjunction with police enforcement, the effect of speedometers can last longer. Signs warning truck drivers that they are exceeding maximum safe speeds on exit ramps also show promise, as they reduce the numbers of trucks traveling greatly above maximum safe speeds.
Two emerging technologies are being used to enforce speed limits. Intelligent speed adaptation links a position of the traveling vehicle via Global Positioning System (GPS) technology and computerized maps with speed limits to determine if the vehicle is speeding. The system may work as an advisory system for the driver or an intervention system that automatically reduces the vehicle’s speed to comply with the speed limit. Point-to-point speed camera technology records the time it takes a vehicle to travel between two camera locations to compute an average speed and compare it to the posted speed limit. This system uses optical recognition technology to match the two photographed vehicle license plates. Point-to-point speed cameras are being used to enforce the speed limit on the Hume Freeway in Victoria, Australia. In the UK, point-to-point speed camera systems are known as “Distributed Average Speed” camera systems and have received government approval.”
Cities that have tried speed cameras offer a different perspective. One community in Arizona has removed speed enforcement cameras:
“Pinal County supervisors Wednesday bid goodbye to photo enforcement.
Their vote to terminate their contract with Redflex, the company that operates the cameras, came at the recommendation of the county’s top law-enforcement official, new Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu.
“I’m against photo speed enforcement completely,” Babeu said, walking the three-member panel through a detailed PowerPoint presentation. “Here in Pinal, it’s failed miserably.”
Babeu said speed cameras created dangerous road conditions and offered little financial benefit for the county. He plans to boost traffic enforcement through additional manpower.” (Source: Pinal County shelves speed-camera program)
To me these cameras are more about revenue than safety. Better ways exist to slow traffic and raise awareness of the presence of school children.  Ticketing was to begin on February 1st but the Post-Dispatch reported on the 4th that warnings will continue through at least the end of the month.
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