I-64 or highway 40?

Last week the New I-64 was opened to traffic after a nearly 2-year reconstruction project. Although officially marked as I-64 to many in St. Louis this stretch of highway has long been known as highway 40 (“farty” to natives). Two names for the same stretch was confusing when I moved here and now it is just annoying hearing news reports use both names.  The poll this week asks what the highway should be called – I-64 or Highway 40.

Whatever the name, all welcomed the rebuilt highway.  The improved exit/on ramps are getting good reviews.  Completed on time and under budget, the highway is a success.  And that is the problem.  Incentives to carpool or use transit have now just disappeared.  With driving so easy more and more will drive the highway.  This will eventually lead to the highway not being able to handle the traffic volume.  This inevitable problem won’t show up a year from now or even five years from now.  Ten years from now the big easy to travel highway won’t seem so big or easy.

I may be off on the time frame, if gas prices stay steady it may happen sooner.  On the other hand, if gas prices rise to world levels it may take 50 years for the highway to get clogged, assuming the St. Louis region picks up population at a higher rate than in past decades.

I would have spent the half a billion dollars converting the old highway to a boulevard instead.  It wouldn’t serve the same volume of cars but that would have been one of my goals.  Another would have made crossing the stretch as a pedestrian easier.

– Steve Patterson

Sit anywhere on the bus

Fifty-four years ago today a 42 year old (my current age) woman refused to move to the back of the bus in Montgomery, Alabama.   Of course the woman was Rosa Parks:

Her refusal to surrender her seat to a white male passenger on a Montgomery, Alabama bus, December 1, 1955, triggered a wave of protest December 5, 1955 that reverberated throughout the United States. Her quiet courageous act changed America, its view of black people and redirected the course of history.  (source: rosaparks.org)

I am so grateful to her for refusing to give up her seat simply based on her race. But it wasn’t so simple:

Montgomery’s segregation laws were complex: blacks were required to pay their fare to the driver, then get off and reboard through the back door. Sometimes the bus would drive off before the paid-up customers made it to the back entrance. If the white section was full and another white customer entered, blacks were required to give up their seats and move farther to the back; a black person was not even allowed to sit across the aisle from whites. These humiliations were compounded by the fact that two-thirds of the bus riders in Montgomery were black.

Parks was not the first to be detained for this offense. Eight months earlier, Claudette Colvin, 15, refused to give up her seat and was arrested. Black activists met with this girl to determine if she would make a good test case — as secretary of the local N.A.A.C.P., Parks attended the meeting — but it was decided that a more “upstanding” candidate was necessary to withstand the scrutiny of the courts and the press. And then in October, a young woman named Mary Louise Smith was arrested; N.A.A.C.P. leaders rejected her too as their vehicle, looking for someone more able to withstand media scrutiny. Smith paid the fine and was released. (Source: TIME)

We have come a long way but we still have so far to travel. We all owe Parks (and so many others) for chipping away at the walls of hate that were commonplace at that time.

– Steve Patterson

Crosswalk located within parallel travel lane

I started this month talking about how Lisi Bansen was struck by a car as she traveled on Delmar using her manual wheelchair (post).  There she had no sidewalk available. The city finally came through with sidewalks connecting accessible apartments and a store two blocks away – four years after she died.

At the intersection of Truman Parkway & Chouteau (map) the situation is both different and the same.

• Different: sidewalks, curb cuts, crosswalks and signals are all in place.
• Same: a person is likely to get hit by a car when using these facilities as designed and built.

Most of us understand that as pedestrians you cross a street parallel with vehicular traffic.  But the problem is, at this intersection, is the crosswalk in placed within the parallel travel lane. Who as the right-of-way? The motorist driving in the lane or the pedestrian within the crosswalk? Both can’t have the right to the same space.  I know who would lose in a conflict!

After seeing the situation from my car and grabbing images from Google’s Street View I knew I had to see if the situation was different than it appeared.  It is different than it first appears. Not any better, just different.

Driving Southbound on Truman Parkway I pulled over out of the way just before Chouteau to observe the signals.  Traffic on Truman Parkway got the green but the pedestrian signal never got the okay to cross signal.  Then I spotted a button for pedestrians to activate the crosswalk signal.  So a person activates the signal when needed.  Problem solved, right? Not quite!

I parked a block away and walked to the SW corner of the intersection to see how the signals functioned.  Approaching the corner I see the button on the signal post.

This is an old type button that a blind person wouldn’t know if it was working.  New buttons give you an audible feedback to to let you know they have been pressed.  Using the button you are facing away from the intersection.  But guess what?  The button doesn’t do anything!

In the above image is another button at the same corner.  The first is in the shadow line of this poll.  If you look you can see the don’t walk on the pedestrian signal across Chouteau.  This button does actually work, sorta.

Above I’m standing at the ramp — the place where you’d stand if you wanted to cross. The walk signal is activated in the above.  Don’t see it? Look behind the light poll and it is on for a few seconds.  Yes, the signal to walk is blocked by a pole.  The don’t walk begins to flash almost immediately.

I’d say 98% of the intersections in the city do not require a pedestrian to press a button to get the okay to walk signal.  The other crossings at the intersection to not require the pedestrian to activate the signal.  Why is this so different from others?

It goes back to that curb ramp.  After the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 the City of St. Louis was faced with thousands of intersections that needed curb ramps.  When designing from scratch each intersection would ideally get 8 ramps – two per corner to handle each direction of travel.  To save money and get more intersections in compliance the city opted for only four curb ramps per intersection.   This This meant that crossing either street you’d use the same ramp.  In your typical residential intersection this was a reasonable compromise.  Often it was the only physical way because of sewer drains or other infrastructure in the way.

The problem is that since those early days even when new intersections are created (such as the above), when curbs are replaced, the engineers seem to incorrectly think the compromise of a single curb cut per corner is adequate.  Because they only used a single curb ramp on the SW corner of this intersection they had to do the pedestrian activated signal. But the button is to far away from the point where you’d cross and as mentioned when you are at the crossing point you can’t see the signal!

On this corner there is nothing to prevent a curb ramp in a better location.  Rather than have the pedestrian activated signal that you can’t see it would have been cheaper and better to have a second ramp to pull the crosswalk out of the Southbound travel lane.

Engineers do a great job of planning for motorists but they do a lousy job for pedestrians.  Projects involving pedestrian routes should be reviewed while on paper.

– Steve Patterson

Year anniversary of Gateway Transportation Center

A year ago today the ribbon was cut on the Gateway Transportation Center in downtown St. Louis (view post).

This station includes both Greyhound bus and Amtrak train and is adjacent to a MetroLink light rail station and a regional bus hub  (map link).  It is a transportation mecca.  Someone can use Greyhound to get to St. Louis where they can take MetroLink to the airport or Amtrak to Chicago.  Or just stay in St. Louis using the light rail or bus service to explore the city and some of the region.

The interior is no Union Station but it also is a huge improvement over the “temporary” shacks that were used for 20 some years.

Security is better than other train & bus stations I’ve seen — only ticketed passengers can get to the train platform or the bus loading area.  I’ve yet to take a train or bus in/out of this new station.  I had used both the old stations.

Monday of this week a new long-term parking lot opened up. From the press release:

The secure 42-space parking area is paved, fenced, well-lit and monitored by security cameras. It is fully automated, only accepts credit or debit cards and offers the attractive rate is $6 for up to 24 hours and $6 for each succeeding 24-hour period.

For the 12 months ending September 30, 2009, Amtrak St. Louis ridership reached 278,778, an increase of nearly 2.5 percent (6,781 passengers) from the previous year.

If you have used the new station for bus or train service please share your thoughts below.

– Steve Patterson

An argument in favor of shared parking

Last Sunday I was walking from my place to the London Tea Room. I went the long way to look at old cars lined up on 17th for the Veteran’s Parade.  So I crossed through CPI’s parking lot which is just North of my building.

I noticed a driver get into an SUV after pulling two notes off the window.  Pulling away I saw the car pictured above with the same notes. Basically CPI doesn’t like residents from surrounding buildings parking on their lot overnight.  I was very pleased to see the notes could be easily removed rather than those requiring elbow grease and a razor blade.

But it brings up a question about how we use our land.  The above image shows their parking lot thinning about 4pm on Monday. Washington Ave runs left to right in the background.  !7th Street and CPI’s building are on the left.  This is one of four parking lots for CPI.

The parking lot continues over to 16th Street (right).  The massive Ely-Walker building is across 16th. It has underground garage parking but I think some residents have more than one car per unit.

What I’d like to see is shared use of the lot.  For a fee, a fixed number of residents could be allowed to use CPI’s lot from 5pm -7am weekdays and 24/7 on weekends. I hate seeing this lot sit mostly vacant evenings and weekends.

Ideally CPI would do well to explore ways to reduce the number of employee’s vehicles each day. Offer employee’s $25/month if they didn’t bring their car to work.  This would prompt some to look at transit or carpooling.   The money paid out to employee’s would come in from fees collected from others using the parking on off hours.

A CPI-sponsored WeCar vehicle (car sharing from Enterprise) could help employees that use transit or carpool if they need a car to run errands at lunch.  The many residents living in this part of downtown might become members as well.  The nearest WeCar to us is 7-8 blocks away.  With a close WeCar some 2-car households might drop down to one and some one-car households might go to zero.  A sponsor covers the cost each month if a vehicle is not rented by members often enough each month.

Promotional video from Enterprises’ WeCar program:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDhHo3bJ9bM

Know that I’m not picking on CPI — they are a good neighbor.  I’m just suggesting ways in which they might alter how they view the land around their building used for car storage.

– Steve Patterson