Something Big Happening in St. Louis Tuesday-Thursday but not about Baseball

Yes, Tuesday-Thursday the World Series comes to town. If all goes well, the St. Louis Cardinals will defeat the Detroit Tigers all three nights for a World Series win in St. Louis on Thursday evening. But those same three days involve something far less monumental but in the long run much better: future mass transit routes. Three meetings will be held in different parts of town. The presentations will be basically the same although each one will focus a bit more heavily on alternates in that part of town:

Downtown

Tuesday, October 24, 2006 4:00 p.m.- 6:00 p.m. Presentation at 4:30 p.m. Regional Collaboration Center One Metropolitan Square, 12th Floor St. Louis, MO 63102

Southside

Wednesday, October 25, 2006 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Presentation at 5:30 p.m. Lift for Life Academy – Cafeteria 1731 S. Broadway St. Louis, MO 63104

Northside

Thursday, October 26, 2006 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. Presentation at 5:30 p.m. Fifth Missionary Baptist Church Fellowship Hall 3736 Natural Bridge Avenue St. Louis, MO 63107

In the past I’ve attended all three but as I have class on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings I’ll only be able to make the Northside one on Thursday evening. If you want to be involved in shaping the future of St. Louis this is certainly a good way to do it.

The reality, however, is Metro is broke and needs more tax money simply to operate the current system. We must certainly plan for the future but until our leadership gets serious about funding priorities it is hard to take this too serious. Who among us will still be around in 15+ years when these proposed routes might have their ribbon cutting?

More information can be found at northsouthstudy.org

Alderman Seeks to Vacate Street Grid for Bottle District

Ald. April Ford-Griffin (D-5th Ward) will introduce Board Bill 247 tomorrow which would further erode our street grid. Here is the bill’s summary:

An ordinance recommended by the Board of Public Service to vacate public surface rights for vehicle, equestrian and pedestrian travel in 1) Biddle: 7th to Broadway, 2) Carr: 7th to Broadway, 3) Sixth: O’Fallon to Cole, 4) O’Fallon: 7th to 6th, 5) 20 feet wide north/south alley in City Block 557 as bounded by O’Fallon, 6th, Biddle and 7th in the City of St. Louis, Missouri, as hereinafter described, in accordance with Charter authority, and in conformity with Section l4 of Article XXI of the Charter and imposing certain conditions on such vacation.

This is unacceptable. Many developers say they can’t develop a parcel at a time, that they need to assemble larger parcels. Fine, but must they take away our streets in the process? These developers own five and a half city blocks, why must they remove the street grid as well? If you cannot produce a good urban project on nearly six blocks of contiguous land you need to go back to the drawing board. [See Google Map]

In reviewing the various drawings for an editorial I did in the West End Word I saw they will have a 6th Street — actually called 6th on the drawings. In looking through the legal language of the bill it looks as though the city will still retain the ground — we’d just be vacating the “surface” rights. This gives the developer the ability to remove the public street and control what does back. They cannot, however, build upon this land unless another bill were to go further and actually give them the land.

The problem here is we are taking a public street and making it a private street. So while the new 6th Street may have some visual appearance of a public street it will not be. It will be under the control of the management of the Bottle District, just as Westfield controls the food court at a suburban mall.

We need to keep our public streets public. Let them develop all the real estate around the public streets. Work on some public financing to make necessary capital improvements to the streets and sidewalks . But do not turn over control of our public streets to private corporations!

I ask that you all contact April Ford-Griffin and ask her to look at keeping these streets public. I’d also let Streets, Traffic and Refuse Committee Chair Freeman Bosley Sr. if you are not keen on our public streets being turned over to private entities.

Portable On-Demand Storage Bill Still in Committee

Nearly a month ago Ald. Lyda Krewson (D-28) introduced Board Bill 191, relating to Portable On-Demand Storage better know by the trademark name, PODS. The basic idea, as I understand it, is to require a permit to place these on the street and call for fines if they are not removed within the timeframe of the permit. Seems logical and similar to the procedures for having say a construction dumpster on the street.

For weeks the bill has been stalled in the Streets, Traffic and Refuse Committee where not everyone was on the same page. You see, debates on the floor of the Board of Aldermen are rare — any differences on legislation gets worked out in committee hearings which are, of course, open to the public. Truth be told, a number of differences probably get worked out via email and phone calls that we, the public, are not privy to. Still, much of the face-to-face time between the aldermen does seem to take place in the committee meetings. Look for a revised version of this bill before the committee soon, possibly as early as next week. [Note: it is on the schedule for today but I understand the committee will not hear this bill as revisions are not yet ready.]

You likely say, “who cares?” Or, BFD. Well, to some it is a big deal when they’ve had to stare at a storage box across the street for weeks on end. But this brings up an important point. City governance is not just the exciting/controversial things — the BJC/Forest Park Lease, the Ballpark Village or a new riverfront proposal. No, city government is pretty mundane and often about the little details that really have little impact on the majority of residents.

If you’ve read enough of my posts you know I relish the details, but I’m also concerned about the big picture. Currently we have 28 aldermen trying to go at it alone in their section of the city with virtually nobody at city hall plotting an overall vision or course. At the ward or city level it is simply about the projects, the ribbon cutting, the photo op. I’m glad to see Ald. Krewson continuing to push for this portable storage legislation because this is a good example of quality of life details that are important. But I’ll be really happy when the city begins to seriously look at a vision for the city and passes some new zoning to compliment the land use plan approved in 2005.

Ald. Krewson is up for re-election next Spring.

Trying To Get to South County Via MetroBus; My Scooter Awaits

I figure I preach enough about walking and using mass transit I should make such a person attempt myself. You see, my beloved scooter got a flat tire from a nail on Monday evening as I was heading to dinner downtown. I ended up pushing it the last 6 blocks to meet my friend, late. I left it in another friend’s parking garage downtown until the dealer could come and pick it up. I’d been meaning to take it in for routine service anyway so the timing was actually OK. Now it is ready this fine Saturday morning and I need to pick it up and ride back home. It is located at Mungenast Motorsports behind Dave Mungenast’s St. Louis Honda on South Lindbergh.

This obviously excludes me driving my car down there as I’d have to go back somehow later and get my car. My first thought was to get a friend to drop me off but then I wondered if I could just take the bus to get there. Why inconvenience a friend and use more gas when the bus is likely going that way anyway. Plus, I can’t let Joe Frank be the only blogging about taking the bus.

So I pull up Metro’s recent “TripFinder” website where you can put in your starting point and destination and it gives you options for bus and light rail — a Mapquest for mass transit. But I was getting these weird results all wanting to take me downtown and then up North with results in excess of two hours. I discovered that although I entered the destination address of 5939 South Lindbergh Blvd the software dropped the “South” part and wanted to take me to Florissant in North County. Zip codes are not allowed or at least I haven’t found any combination of commas or whatever that permits them. Some mapping software will ask do you mean “South” or “North” 5939 Lindbergh just to make sure. This, however, gave me no such option. From past observation I knew I had two bus routes near my house that both ended up at South County Mall which is not far from my destination but probably further than I’d be willing to walk both due to distance and environment (suburban hell). I pulled up Metro’s system map and confirmed that #40 and #93 both make it to the mall.

The TripFinder offers another way to find the address, I can use a map or find a street and look for stops on that street. So, I pull up Lindbergh and they have a very long list of stops on Lindbergh — 5 pages of stops. Makes sense, the street is very long cutting across a wide swath of the region. And Lindbergh is listed as “Lindbergh”, “Lindbergh US-61”, “Lindbergh Blvd” and so on with the cross streets coming after that. I looked up the area on Google and saw that Mueller Rd was probably a likely stop. I picked page 3 of the list and found the Mueller stop relatively easy. Plug it in and I’ve got my logical route to South County Mall via the #93 with a transfer to the #49 along Lindbergh. Total travel time, just a few over an hour. Total time figuring this out, about 10-15 minutes. For a frame of reference, Google says the drive is 8.2 miles and should take 13 minutes.

So I am debating. The fare is $2.25 (bus w/transfer) which is not a big deal but I had to check my wallet to make sure I had some singles as they don’t make change. Looking at the schedule I see that half the hour travel time is spent waiting at the JC Penny at South County Mall, not exactly my idea of a good way to spend a nice Saturday. I do have class reading to do but I’d have to carry a backpack and my motorcycle helmet on the bus and while I am waiting. The bus leaving near my house on the #93 is on an hourly headway so I have to work on that schedule as well.

I just called my friend, he is picking me up in an hour.

On a somewhat related note: Dave Mungenast Sr. recently pass away from cancer. I had the fortune to meet and talk with him earlier this year while visiting his Classic Motorcycle Museum on Gravois in South City. I, of course, bent his ear about opening a new shop in the city for his Honda scooter sales. I had hoped to talk to him more in the future as he had great knowledge about what the city was like in the 1950s. The motorcycle museum location on Gravois was one of his early auto dealerships before he and nearly every other business fled to the once greener pastures of the suburbs. My condolences go out to the Mungenast family for their loss.

Youth on Bike Hit by Motorist

Tonight, on my way home, I witnessed something I never thought I would: a youth on a bicycle getting hit by a car. I could see it about to happen and I was helpless to prevent it. As someone trained as a bicycle safety instructor (League Cycling Instructor is the proper title) we hope to prevent such accidents from happening, not be a witness to them.

I ask that you keep the youth in your thoughts. I can think about nothing else.

I don’t want to go into any of the specifics of the accident. In short the kid completely disregarded the traffic signals (Grand & Chippewa). I was heading South on Grand and I saw the kid crossing the intersection even though those of us on Grand had the right away. A northbound car struck him. I was on my scooter and was able to stop right there — others ran from their cars to the boy. While others attended to the boy (making sure not to move him) I called 911 (it appears others did as well). At first we all thought the car left but I think it took him a second to figure out what happened — the driver couldn’t have seen the kid crossing in his path until the moment of impact. The driver was understandably shaken. After giving my statement to the police the paramedics were about to take the youth to the hospital.

Please, everyone, if you have children teach them how to cycle properly. Don’t let them out on the street without a helmet (and properly adjusted). Yes, as kids we all rode our bikes without helmets and we survived. Well, not all survive. Don’t let them out on the street by themselves at 10pm at night —- on a bike or otherwise. If they are bicycling at night lighting is critical. Bicycling can be safe and enjoyable but only if done properly.

Many members of the St. Louis Bicycle Federation are also trained as an LCI (League Cycling Instructor), perhaps we can put together some local youth training sessions. I’ve already alerted this group to the accident.

Here are a couple of good sites to learn how to teach your kid to properly ride a bike:

•Bike Safety
•Safety City

I ask that you take the time to teach your kids about bike safety. Don’t have any? Teach your niece or nephew or have a conversation with the parents down the block.

Peace,

Steve