The Port of St. Louis

We all know that St. Louis owes its existence to the Mississippi River.  We’re all well aware of our interstate highways and most of us are aware of the railroads that are an integral part of our urban fabric.

What turned out to be somewhat of a surprise to me, as a newcomer, was just how big a role the Mississippi continues to play in our local economy.  Part of it is “out of sight, out of mind”, part of it is the low profile many of its users keep.  But the statistics are pretty impressive  – the port extends for twenty miles, with 16 public terminals and “over 100 docking facilities”, there are no locks or dams between here and New Orleans (unlike going upriver), and it’s the “third largest inland port in the Midwest.”

Unique resources like this are where we can differentiate ourselves from our economic development competitors, and I’d like to see more of a push to do so.

– Jim Zavist

Downtown St. Louis has a Circulator Bus Route, Metro Routes on Google

I missed the news about this line when some bus routes were temporarily restored but as part of Metro’s Partial Service Restoration Plan includes a circulator bus downtown.

The route does a loop through the central business district along 4th & Broadway as well as a stretch both ways along Washington Ave.  At Tucker it drops down to make a stop at the Civic Center transit center (bus, light rail, Greyhound, Amtrak). Frequency ranges from 10-20 minutes depending upon the day of the week and the time of day.  During normal working hours the buses run every 10 minutes.  The route takes riders past two MetroLink light rail stations.

The other big news is Metro routes are now available for viewing on Google Maps!  The default setting is by car but you can request routes by foot or by transit.  I’ve tested a few trips and it did a great job and included departure times for both bus and light rail trains.  From my downtown loft to The Tivoli theater on Delmar it gave me three route choices — one bus and two light rail.  The bus is the most direct and includes the least walking, I can see the stop where I’d board from my balcony.

For more info on routes and schedules see http://MetroSTL.org.

– Steve Patterson

Elevated Highway Separates Convention Center from Laclede’s Landing

Myself and others are calling for the removal of the highway lanes that cut through downtown, dividing the CBD & loft district on the West from the Arch grounds, Laclede’s Landing and Mississippi River to the East.  Too often the discussion about solving the division problem presented by the highway focuses on just three blocks at the center point of the Arch.

The other day I set out in my wheelchair to document just how bad a barrier the elevated lanes are North of Washington Ave.

The view above is looking East at the historic Eads Bridge.    More people would use this bridge if they could actually see it.  Heading into St. Louis from Illinois visitors see the other side of this overpass.  It doesn’t exactly say welcome.  As Washington Ave matures this is the point where we connect restaurants to the riverfront.

Turn to the South and you see the Arch and the barriers to getting there.

Looking North you get a glimpse of Laclede’s Landing hidden beyond the elevated highway.

At the end of Delmar/Convention Plaza you can see Morgan Street coming uphill in the Laclede’s Landing area.

Now on the East side of the highway you can barely see the Edward Jones Dome through the space under the highway.

Down the hill you find diners out on 3rd Street.

Heading back up hill I saw a group of conventioneers looking for lunch.

Continuing up the hill I was confronted with the elevated highway again, quickly killing the historic scale of the old cobblestone streets.

The conventioneers I saw exited the convention center, not on Washington Ave, but out of the side exit at 7th/Delmar/Convention Plaza in the upper left corner of the above map.  They headed directly toward the river.  We are not showing our visitors the best we have to offer.  Connecting the convention center with Laclede’s Landing would be a huge win for St. Louis.

St. Louis’ Grand Experiment is the Norm in Chicago

The norm in the St. Louis region is for roads to have lots of lanes and no on-street parking.  On-street parking slows motorists and the traffic engineers will have none of that, it is all about speed for them.  But multiple lanes of speeding cars are bad for cyclists and pedestrians alike.

While the South Grand retail district (Arsenal to Utah) has always had on-street parking it has also had our lanes for through traffic.  Currently an experiment is being tested — reducing a six block section to three lanes (two plus center turn).  Have to see if these new radical ideas will work you know.

Anyone that has ever driven a car or ridden a bicycle in Chicago knows the configuration will work wonders.  Chicago has 120% more population density per square mile than St. Louis (12,649 vs 5,725).  They have lots of people, cars and bike.  Yet many of their major streets have the same basic configuration — two parking lanes, two travel lanes and a center turn lane.

Above is a view of this configuration on North Halsted.  On the right is Home Depot.  As you can see the travel lane is wide enough to accommodate motorists and cyclists.    New construction is built up to the sidewalk, in part, because streets have on-street parking.

In spaces you have a hole in the urban fabric (left above) with a parking lot here and there.  But they don’t toss out their urban principals and declare the area an auto-centric zone.

The above is a good distance from downtown Chicago.  The newish building on the right, with retail at grade and residential above, can relate to the street because it only has two lanes of traffic and because of the on-street parking.  But go out further into the inner ring suburbs and the pattern continues.

This section of Roosevelt is well outside the City of Chicago and many miles from downtown yet the street pattern is the same with only two travel lanes and on-street parking to support street oriented buildings.  Without the on-street parking you’d get standard sprawl — buildings isolated in their own parking lots.

Further out in the suburbs the two travel lanes become four but the on-street parking remains.  This ensures buildings will be built up to the street.

There is no need to test the 2 travel + turn lane configuration on South Grand.  It works and works well.

I believe if our streets were more like Chicago’s (fewer lanes, on-street parking, urban in-fill) we’d be in a position to re-urbanize & re-populate our city.  We need to extend this throughout the entire city as well as the first ring of suburbs.  Hampton, Kingshighway, Natural Bridge, Market — every street in town.  After a couple of decades we’ll see the change taking root.  If we can’t do it on six blocks of Grand I’m afraid we’ll never get to where I think we should be.

– Steve Patterson

If St. Louis Had the Density of Other Cities

Many think population density is all bad or all good.  To me it depends up0n how the population uses the land.

Much is said about St. Louis’ peak of 856,796 in 1950 and how over the last 50 years we lost over half a million people out of our small 61.9 square mile city.  We will never again be at that level but how we use our land with our current population level is important.  I think we can do better with the population we have.

For grins I thought it would be interesting to what the population of the City of St. Louis would be if we had the recent density of other major cities.  I picked 13 cities that came into my head and used density figures available from Wikipedia.  The results were both surprising and intriguing:

Portland OR has lower density than St. Louis?  Interesting.  I think they have a different mix — a very high density center transitioning to a very low density edge.  Oklahoma City is massive in total land area but with only a few rare exceptions it is uniformly low-density.  St. Louis of 1950 had greater population density of current day Chicago? Yes, St. Louis, in 1950, was more densely populated than Chicago today!

I’d like to think that with good planning (form-based zoning) we could aspire to a Seattle or Baltimore level of population density – at least 7,000 persons per square mile.

What this looks like is increasing the density along our major corridors such as Olive, Jefferson, Kingshighway, Natural Bridge, etc.

Goal posts should be something like:

• 6,000/sq. mile (371,400) by 2020
• 6,500/sq. mile (402,350) by 2030
• 7,000/sq. mile (433,300) by 2040
• 7,500/sq. mile (464,250) by 2050
• 8,000/sq. mile (495,200) by 2060

This growth will not happen organically like it did a century ago. Our current zoning and other policies prevents such growth.  It will require hard work to create the plan & zoning for dense corridors.  These will need, and will support, excellent mass transit.  Our tidy streets of single family, 2-family and 4-family buildings need not change from their current density levels.  The growth will occur along the corridors that last century changed into to-centric.  Hell, basically.

I doubt I’ll be around for the 2060 Census but I want to steer us in the right direction so by that time we can reach this goal.  Plus the US population is expected to grow some 45% by 2050.  If we grew at the expected national rate we’d have 514,000 by 2050.  So to have 464,250 by 2050 (31% growth) seems like a reasonable expectation.

We have the vacant buildings ready for new occupants.  We have the vacant land for in-fill construction. Still need to work on the schools to educate the youngsters.

– Steve Patterson