5th Anniversary of St. Louis’ Downtown Bicycle Station

Five years ago today the ribbon was cut on a new concept in St. Louis — a bike station. A place where a bike commuter can shower and change clothes before going into his/her office.

The Downtown Bicycle Station is a project of Trailnet, which is located upstairs in the same building.

The Downtown Bicycle Station offers secure 20-hour access and features over 120 bike racks, showers and locker rooms, and is ideal for bicyclists commuting to work or looking to exercise on their lunch break.

Memberships are $20/month or $150/year.  Corporate memberships are $1,000/year for 10 users. A day membership is $5 — enter via Big Shark Bikes next door (limited to their hours).

Hopefully more and more young people will be attracted to high tech and other jobs downtown — walking, biking or riding public transit to/from work.

— Steve Patterson

Readers On Transportation Funding: Index Fuel Taxes To Inflation, Tax Miles Driven

The non-scientific Sunday Poll asked about transportation finding:

Q: Current state & federal fuel taxes aren’t enough, pick two alternatives:

1. Index fuel taxes to inflation 21 [32.31%]
2. Tax miles driven 20 [30.77%]
3. Tax roads (tolls) 16 [24.62%]
4. Tax cars (registration, etc) 6 [9.23%]
5. Tax barrels of oil, not gasoline/diesel 2 [3.08%]
6. Unsure/No Opinion 0 [0%]

As you can see, three got double digit responses. I personally like all three. Let’s look at some pros & cons of each:

Index fuel taxes to inflation

• PROS:  simple, easy to understand. An improved version of what we’ve had for decades
• CONS: electric vehicles don’t contribute to road maintenance

Tax Miles Driven

• PROS: fair to all drivers (internal combustion & electric), drive more — pay more
• CONS: privacy concerns about monitoring devices, fraud prevention a challenge

Tax Roads

PROS: no privacy issues

CONS: those who drive non-highways wouldn’t pay

Conclusion

The way we’ve been funding transportation hasn’t worked for a long time. Going decades with raising the fuel tax is foolish — it ignores inflation. We’ve also built too many roads and not enough public transit.

We can get out of this, but it involves changing the way things are done. We must recognize inflation and technology requires us to change. The first step is to raise state & federal fuel taxes and to index them to inflationism. The next step is to look at way to document miles driven that do need create privacy concerns.

— Steve Patterson

Olive & Tucker Designed for Pedestrian-Vehicle Conflict

The intersection of two major downtown streets — Olive St & Tucker Blvd — is poorly designed for pedestrians. The are a number of problems, but this post is about poor communication to pedestrians that puts them in harms way. Specifically, vehicles that get a left-turn arrow from Tucker to Olive are on a collision course with pedestrians that don’t realize cars will be turning left into their path.

Vehicles traveling Northbound & Southbound on Tucker each get a dedicated left-turn lane onto Olive, Westbound & Eastbound. respectively.  Each gets a left arrow, so drivers assume they have the right-of-way. “What’s the problem?” you ask. Pedestrians can also think,due to a lack of pedestrian signals, they have the right-of-way.

1. At the start of the cycle SB vehicles on Tucker get a green light, left onto EB Olive get an arrow.
2. After a bit the arrow goes away and NB traffic gets a green.
3. Later the SB traffic gets a red and those going NB get a left arrow onto WB Olive.

Pedestrians & vehicles can’t both have the right to be in the same place at the same time!

You might be thinking “pedestrians should just look at the vehicle signals to know when it’s OK to cross Olive.” For SB pedestrians on the East side of Tucker & NB pedestrians on the West side of Tucker the vehicle signals don’t indicate vehicles have a left-turn arrow.

So the first should be a relatively easy to get to achieve minimally acceptable communications — turn the signal head so pedestrians can see the green & left arrow. But the second isn’t as simple.

If possible, the bare minimum would be to change the signal head so it includes an arrow. The problem with this is the arrow might suddenly appear as a person is halfway across Olive. This really needs a pedestrian signal with a countdown timer. Another option is to redo the signal configuration — allow both left turns to happen simultaneously — then give them a red while NB/SB vehicles get a green.

Ok, so one intersection — fix it and move on, right? If the woman in blue in the 2nd image keeps waking North she’ll encounter the same conflict one block up at Locust St!

These are just a few examples of the dangers designed into our auto-centric system. I’ve been through these intersections many times, but had never noticed the conflict — because I’m familiar with the vehicle flow. A downtown visitor, however, might not be confused, or worse, became a pedestrian death statistic. If a pedestrian is hit by a left-turning car in these examples it’s no “accident” — it’s by design! Sadly, these conflicts have likely existed for years — perhaps even decades!

Every intersection in the city/region needs to be critically evaluated to catch conflict by design. Prioritize then and then set about correcting them. I pointed out the conflicts at Olive to St. Louis’ new Bike/Pedestrian Coordinator, Jamie Wilson, last week as we walked/rolled to lunch.

I’ve volunteered to:

• Start a custom Google map where I can catalog problems I encounter.
• Go out with him and other, upon request, to demonstrate the problems with out pedestrian infrastructure

Below is time-lapse video looking South and then North

— Steve Patterson

A Decade Since Jane Jacobs’ Death

Ten years ago today, one of my heroes died. Jane Jacobs, author of The Death & Life of Great American Cities, was 89. Her 1961 classic was a sharp critique of Urban Renewal — the erase & replace thinking that was commonplace at the time.  New York’s Robert Moses & St. Louis’ Harland Bartholomew were among the top advocates of Urban Renewal.

At 45, she and many others directly challenged Moses’ plan to cut an interstate highway through lower Manhattan:

Jacobs chaired the Joint Committee to Stop the Lower Manhattan Expressway (a.k.a. Joint Emergency Committee to Close Washington Square to Traffic, and other names), which recruited such members as Margaret Mead, Eleanor Roosevelt, Lewis Mumford, Charles Abrams, and William H. Whyte. Papers such as The New York Times were sympathetic to Moses, while the newly created Village Voice covered community rallies and advocated against the expressway. The Committee succeeded in blocking the project. On June 25, 1958, the city closed Washington Square Park to traffic, and the Joint Committee held a ribbon tying (not cutting) ceremony. Jacobs continued to fight the expressway when plans resurfaced in 1962, 1965, and 1968, and she became a local hero for her opposition to the project. She was arrested by a plainclothes police officer on April 10, 1968, at a public hearing, during which the crowd had charged the stage and destroyed the stenographer’s notes. She was accused of inciting a riot, criminal mischief, and obstructing public administration – after months of trials conducted in New York City (to which Jacobs commuted from Toronto), her charge was reduced to disorderly conduct. (Wikipedia)

Following her arrest, and in protest of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War, she, her husband (an architect)  and two draft-able sons, moved to Canada. They settled in Toronto.

A few months after her death, I was in standing in front of the home where she lived in Toronto. Crying.

The following are some videos about her, some of her speaking.

Jacobs still inspires me today, I just wish I’d known of her in high school — I would’ve studied urban planning instead of architecture, in the mid-late 1980s. May 4th will mark the 100th anniversary of her birth.

— Steve Patterson

Sunday Poll: Best Alternatives For Future Transportation Funding?

At state & federal levels, money for transportation infrastructure is running out; fuel taxes haven’t been raised in years, vehicles are more fuel efficient, electrics are set to go mainstream, etc.  States, like Illinois are looking at other ways to fund construction & maintenance:

There is a proposal in Illinois for the state to put a device on cars to see how many miles citizens are driving.

The state would take that data to use in order to charge a tax on drivers depending on miles driven. It’s all in an effort to make money because the state is losing out on gas tax revenue thanks to more fuel efficient cars on the road. (KMOV)

Other states are testing the same idea, driving more miles costs you more. Which brings us to today’s poll — using alternatives listed in the WSJ:

The poll answers are in random order, open until 8pm.

— Steve Patterson