I See Vibrant Urban Streets

Three years ago I did a post, Envisioning Smart Growth, that I want to make you aware of.   In that post I featured some impressive photoshop work done by a California firm, Urban Advantage:

My original post has two intermediate steps between the before and after.  The firm’s website has many more examples of using photoshop to create visuals to show how streets can be improved through narrowing streets, widening sidewalks, building up to the street and so on.

I often like to visit their site to see the latest projects they have done, helping their clients all over the country to visually show how proposed changes would help streets and places mature into a more urban/walkable form.  Of the many posts I’ve done over the last five years this simple post was one of my favorites.  I have thoughts of transformations like this going through my head for every corridor in the region.

My hope is we, as a city & region, will begin to think beyond what we have today and work toward what we can have tomorrow.  This requires coming together to create a collaborative vision and implementing the zoning to ensure that future efforts build toward the vision.  I invite you to look through the many examples on their site.  The photoshop work is the easy part, I also know that streets won’t transform themselves without a strong vision.

– Steve Patterson

Riding the #99 Downtown Circulator Bus

Last week I rode the fairly new #99 Downtown Circulator bus with Metro employee Courtney Sloger.  I had met Ms. Sloger a few weeks earlier as part of a panel with Dr. Todd Swanstrom of the University of Missouri St. Louis discussing transit for What’s Up Magazine.  Sloger doesn’t own a car and uses transit herself.  She is one of a couple of writers on Metro’s NextStop STL blog.

It was at this panel discussion I first heard of the #99 bus.  I was so excited I wrote a post about it last month that included the route map:

When I agreed to ride the #99 with her I planned to use the opportunity to use my wheelchair to try the lift for entry/exit.  The battery on my chair decided otherwise.  With the chair no longer taking a charge I would need to drive my car to a point along the route.  To simplify meeting Sloger I picked her up at Metro’s offices in Laclede’s Landing.  I drove to 10th & Washington Ave where there was plenty of on-street parking on 10th.  The time was around 4:30pm a week ago today. The bus stop was just around the corner on Washington Ave.

One of the amazing things about this route is the frequency of the buses, only 10 minutes.  So we caught the next Westbound bus.  I rode a bus in Seattle in March so I knew I could walk up the steps without issue.  The buses being used are shorter than most in their fleet.  This makes navigating downtown streets easier.  Many seats still remained empty.

We headed West on Washington and turned left onto Tucker.  Nobody got on or off along Tucker.  At Spruce we turned right to head to the Civic Center Station with many bus routes, MetroLink, Greyhound and Amtrak.  The #99 doesn’t board/unboard inside the bus section but along 14th street adjacent to the bus terminal.  If you are passing through this point on the #99 be sure to get a transfer ticket when you board.

Resuming the ride when went in the direction we had just come from except now we were going East on Washington Ave.  We turned right (South) on Broadway.  We took Broadway South past Busch Stadium until we turned left at Poplar and left again on 4th.  I didn’t set my timer but the entire round trip was much faster than I expected.

Along the way we talked about destinations nearby and how to market the route beyond the current ridership, mostly blue-collar transit dependent riders from my observation.  I suggested the buses need a special look.  While I preferred new low-floor buses Courtney Sloger thought a wrap works into the budget better.  Agreed, just something to make the bus stand out from the others.

Many cities have transit lines to help you navigate from destination to destination.  But just who are those more likely to take a ride on the #99?

Downtown residents and office workers seems an obvious answer.  Tourists and visitors here for conventions?  The wrap should include the words “downtown circulator” in big letters, I suggested.  And a graphic of the route.  Listing destinations reachable via the bus would help too.

When I visit a city I like to ride a bus or streetcar line to observe what is out there so I’ll know what to come back to on foot.  But the current #99 misses one of the best parts of downtown, the two blocks of Washington Ave between Tucker and 14th. Visitors should see this.  Granted if they exited at Tucker when the bus turn they’d be right there but I think going through it is better.  I’d like to see the route modified to go up & down 14th rather than Tucker (12th). The problem is 14th is often closed at Chestnut for special events at Soldier’s Memorial.  I guess on those days the bus could take Tucker.

For tourists they’d still need to know where they are going because destinations are not announced. Many places are close, but not obvious, such as Citygarden, Union Station, City Museum, and Culinaria.  Someone might get into town late on a Saturday.  After checking into their hotel on 4th they could take the #99 to grab a bite at a number of places such as the 12th Street Diner at Tucker & Washington Ave. While the diner is open 24 hours on the weekend, the bus line stops around midnight.  Check the schedule for hours & directions.

I suggested Metro get hotel concierges to ride the route at least once.  Downtown guides too.

As a helpful tool for downtown residents I suppose it depends upon where you live.  If you are in the Edison Warehouse at 14th & Spruce it is am easy way to get you closer to stores like Macy’s, Culinaria and others.  The steps into the bus, however, make bringing on purchases a challenge.  For those of us West of 16th the line doesn’t help much.  For people in the Pointe 400 apartments (old Pet building) on 4th Street it would be an excellent way to connect with restaurants and other destinations  that are a good walk from your place.

I invite each of you when you are downtown next to ride the #99.  See what you think.  I like the possibilities it offers for the future.  Certainly needs a special look.  Most definitely needs low-floor vehicles to eliminate the steps.But it is a step in the right direction.  Thanks Courtney Sloger for pushing me to ride the #99.

– Steve Patterson

Do People Still Care About Public Health?

It was a scene right out of a made-for-TV disaster film at the Creve Coeur Safety Fair held in mid-October on the campus of Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital. There were emergency services, helicopters buzzing overhead doing maneuvers, fire engines and fake rescues.

The real sense of urgency, however, was in the flu-shot lines just to the east of the accident re-enactors and general hoopla. There were a couple thousand people hurrying as fast as they could to stand in lines that wrapped around two large parking lots. Frantic drivers parked their cards anywhere they could and pushed children and elderly parents toward the line. Everyone wanted to get in place before the cops shut it down and turned people away. A four-hour event, the line was stopped a half hour after opening because the line already exceeded the supply of 2,000 flu vaccines.

Then we had time to wait. And wait. As the line finally crept forward and two hours slowly ticked by I couldn’t help but think that in case of a real emergency we’re in more trouble than we know. All around us there were stories of doctor’s offices that had no vaccine or pediatricians who had run out of the vaccine for infants. Rumors of cancelled flu shot clinics were verified. The next day Walgreens ran out of flu vaccine. And this was only for the seasonal flu vaccine, not the H1N1 vaccine.

So what happens if that tinge of panic becomes full scale, out-and-out panic? It doesn’t take much of an imagination to see all that anxiety transformed into something much worse.

I can’t speak for the state of public-health planning, but when a corporate citizen like BJC Healthcare distributes in excess of 30,000 free seasonal flu shots and they run out in the midst of a final mob scene, what does that say about the state of our public health? I say it means we’re failing.

While there were doubtless some freeloaders in the bunch, I’d guess many people were in the line because they were unemployed, uninsured, underinsured, very young, very old, or simply couldn’t afford the cost of immunizing their entire family. At $25 a shot, a family of six would have to invest $150 to protect themselves from just one of the serious flu threats this year. No word on how much the H1N1 vaccine will cost, but it if it’s the same, that’s $300 to inoculate a family in 2009.

The most effective public health measures are preventative. Wash your hands. Stay home if you’re sick. Don’t send sick kids to school. Get vaccinated against the evils we know. Yet how many of us who live in an interdependent way in urban or suburban environments take these precautions? We all know people who pride themselves on never taking a sick day or the fearful among us who refuse to get vaccinated. To quote Walt Kelly’s Pogo, “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

Urban life is intimately tied up with public health. We depend upon vaccinations, the county health departments that allocate them, and the generosity of corporate sponsors to fulfill the needs of those with substandard or no health insurance coverage. Our illogical and haphazard delivery of disease-prevention services undermines civic health.

So when I look at public investments in the community, I wonder why public health is never mentioned. We fund safety improvements to the MLK Bridge to the tune of $1.4 million to address 14 fatalities since 1998. And yet 84 people have already died in Missouri this fall (through Oct. 10) due to flu or complications of flu and 1,441 new cases of flu (seasonal and H1N1) were reported in Missouri during the week of Oct. 3-10.

I’m not saying the MLK Bridge project is frivolous, but perhaps the civic cost of not investing in disease prevention is more than short sighted, it’s a tragic loss of focus on what is most likely to protect the lives of ordinary Missourians.

While you mull on that, you might also consider that the majority of our local and regional flu pandemic planning is based on 2006 models for the avian flu. I don’t know about you, but I’d like to rethink public road investments and other “high priority” public-improvement projects and think more about public health and what will really make our communities safer and healthier.

Disclaimer: Yes, this writer belongs to the millions of the underinsured even though she pays significant amounts of money monthly to keep her healthcare coverage current. Individual health coverage often neglects simple preventative services like flu shots while maximizing out-of-pocket expenses. So, yes, I did need that free flu shot.

– Deborah Moulton

Metro Moving Transit Forward Without Streetcars

Through its “Moving Transit Forward” initiative, Metro is holding public workshops across St. Louis City and County to get folks thinking about transit needs and system expansion.  Rather than just let attendees dream up their own rapid transit lines on maps, a breakout exercise does a good job of sharing the stark financial realities of MetroLink expansion. Participants are given just a hypothetical $700 every decade for capital projects, when the average MetroLink corridor project costs roughly $450. As a result, it becomes quickly apparent that another Prop-M only buys roughly one MetroLink corridor a decade, if that. For example, the combined Northside-Southside corridors, just within the City, cost $800. The exercise also suggests that participants consider other, cheaper alternatives, such as Bus Rapid Transit ($35) or Commuter Rail ($300).

What really concerns me with this exercise is two-fold: 1) Northside-Southside is presented as the only big idea for City system expansion, and 2) Modern Streetcars are missing from the suggested tool box of cheaper alternatives. When thinking of streetcars, I’m not talking more vintage trolleys akin to the Delmar Loop project (that’s criticism for a future post). No, I’m talking low-floor, high-capacity vehicles that travel on cheaper-to-build, embedded, street-running tracks. But back to the first point, this former planner of the Northside-Southside concept actually thinks such a “big idea” is terribly flawed, and should even be scrapped.

To understand how Northside-Southside even came to be is to tackle the very complex history of system planning and evolution of MetroLink in St. Louis. Such history would be its own series of posts. But suffice it to say, the St. Louis region is still working off a 1989 system analysis produced by East-West Gateway as the basis for all its corridors. I admire Metro using their new Moving Transit Forward initiative to scrap the prioritization of that document that hasn’t been officially updated since 1991 in a failed attempt to lure St. Charles County. But showing a map of big ideas spawned from those very corridors dreamed up now twenty years ago is perpetuating flawed thinking. I know this in part, because the Northside-Southside Study, I worked on two years ago, also perpetuated inherent flaws.

In my opinion, the key flaw of the Northside-Southside Study was the dual purpose of serving both City riders and County commuters. As a result, speed of lines to the County became essential, but of course, at an expense. Faster trains meant taking lanes and closing intersections on arterials and complex designs inside Interstate rights-of-way, all for a fast-ride to Downtown. And given such premise, modern streetcars were deemed too slow, despite their lower cost. But in the end, many County stakeholders would view the project as a lower expansion priority, especially given a roughly billion-dollar price-tag, which ironically resulted from attempts to attract their ridership.

A political reality of Metro is that the County holds the purse and the populace (albeit in voters, if not riders). One can imagine then that if you can only expand MetroLink by one corridor a decade, the City will be waiting in line for some time. Plus, as Northside-Southside showed, the City doesn’t have as attractive exclusive rights-of-way to build MetroLink-looking lines easily.

Rather than compete in a game stacked heavily against the City, I advocate changing the transit ideas discussed inside the urban core. Modern streetcar corridors, such as Grand Avenue, would offer the City projects paired well fiscally with a County MetroLink extension each decade.

And there is still time for City transit advocates to be heard. One opportunity is attending the workshop scheduled for South St. Louis City 5-7pm this Monday (10/26/09):

• St. Louis Public Library, Carpenter Branch
  3309 South Grand Boulevard (map)
  St. Louis, MO 63118

– Brian Horton

Giving Forest Park Forever’s New Director a Chance to Prove Herself

On September 21st Forest Park Forever’s new Executive Director was announced:

Forest Park Forever, the nonprofit that maintains Forest Park, named Lesley Hoffarth its president and executive director on Monday following a nationwide search.

Hoffarth, currently the I-64 reconstruction project director, will join Forest Park Forever in January.  (Source: St. Louis Business Journals)

It didn’t take long for some to question the wisdom of hiring an engineer with 20 years at the Missouri Department of Transportation to head the non-profit .  The day after the announcement:

Now, I don’t know Lesley Hoffarth, and she may be more urban-minded than I’m aware. But any head of Forest Park Forever, a group that has done great work strengthening and improving the innards of the park, should know that its edges are important too. (Source: STL Dotage)

And the day after that:

I’m keeping an open mind regarding the new President of Forest Park Forever. By all accounts the I-64 project has been managed well. I think it’s unfair to say that Lesley Hoffarth personally will favor roads and car-centric changes. However, the Forest Park Forever mission statement doesn’t emphasize the experience of the non-destination visitor or pedestrians. With all the attractions in the park you can bet that open roads and parking will play a big part in future park development. My fear is that the new Forest Park Forever President is a perfect fit. (Source: STL Urban Workshop)

Mayor Slay chimed in on Twitter with a general welcome; “Looking forward to working with Lesley Hoffarth at Forest Park Forever.”

And on Arch City Chronicle, Competence is Transferable:

FPF is a private organization which partners with the City of St. Louis to maintain St. Louis’ largest, most adored park. The organization, led by Todd Epsten, CEO of Major Brands and heavy Democratic donor, hired Hoffarth away from MODoT.

Forest Park has a lot of trails and sidewalks. But one assumes that Hoffarth’s ability to manage the reconstruction of the main highway in St. Louis, and do so ahead of schedule and with minimal disruptions, was the main selling point. She should be able to manage the Forest Park which operates as the city’s premier melting pot.

I suppose I’d join the other bloggers in their suspicion if not for one fact: I know Lesley Hoffarth.  I’m not talking about having briefly met her at a public meeting.  I’ve known her and her family for years now, spending time in their home.  I’ve seen her spend hours volunteering to help the Kirkwood Farmers’ Market.  So I’m willing to give her a chance to prove she can lead Forest Park Forever.

– Steve Patterson