Public notice signs face drivers, not pedestrians

If you are not paying close attention you could miss required public notice signs.

The expectation must be that motorists driving by at 35mph are going to read the notices.  But even up close it is not easy.

With the curve of the sign on the poles I couldn’t see all the information at one point.  I didn’t spot these until after the fact.

We need a public notice system for the 21st century.  Where you register your address and then set your preferences to how far away you want to be notified: 100 feet, 1/4 mile , 3 miles, etc.  You’d be notified via email for anything within the set radius from your address. Perhaps it would be tied to your voter registration?  Such a system should be regional and cross the many jurisdictional boundaries.

In the above example the pedestrians on the sidewalk probably have more interest than the motorists driving by.  At least post the signs where both can see they exist.

– Steve Patterson

Seeing our downtown disconnect first hand

On Saturday I participated in the City to River walking tour from Busch Stadium to Laclede’s Landing.

Of course we could have walked North up Broadway and then used the Lumiere Link to go under the highway to reach Laclede’s Landing.  But we have this large urban park that is supposed to be an asset so including the Arch grounds on the route makes sense.

Some say Memorial Drive is the problem, not the depressed lanes of the highway. But it is the highway that makes Memorial Drive such a dead street. Get rid of the highway and we can begin the process of transforming the street.

Much of the problem is buildings adjacent to Memorial Drive present blank walls to the sidewalk. The Arch is the biggest attraction in town but the buildings on the edge don’t connect to the sidewalk!

Parked cars occupy what should be some of the best real estate. Of course tunneling the highway here would solve the problem in a few blocks.

But North of Washington Ave the highway is an overhead obstacle.  We are building a new highway in Illinois to replace the stretch of I-70.  Now is the time to place to eliminate the redundant lanes after the bridge opens in February 2014.

– Steve Patterson

Poll: What activity do you want to see added to the Gateway Mall?

Now that I have been appointed to serve on the Gateway Mall Advisory Board I’m thinking about the master plan and what details still need to be worked out.  One of those is activities in some of the blocks.  As a representative of the people I know to get a sense of what you think is needed somewhere along the linear park.

The question is:  What activity would you like to see added to the Gateway Mall? Pick only one:

• Tennis
• Ice skating
• Skateboard/BMX park
• Picnic/BBQ area
• Basketball
• Level field for kickball, etc
• Minature golf
• Farris Ferris wheel
• Dog park
• Unsure
• Other

I have some strong feelings about what will work better than others but I want to get your viewpoint before I share mine.   The poll is open until the morning of Sunday March 28, 2010.  I will share the results on Wednesday March 31, 2010.  Please vote in the poll on the right and share any thoughts you have below.

– Steve Patterson

Unexpected green on St. Patrick’s Day

On St. Patrick’s Day I had the opportunity to witness something remarkable in a most unlikely place:

St. Louis’ MSI houses over 750 inmates who stay roughly 80 days.  Built originally for men only, it also has a female section (apprx 10-15% of the total). So what was so remarkable?  Let’s go out back and see.

I couldn’t walk the distance from the front door to the back so they drove me through the gates and series of fences to our destination.

At left is Jerome Fields, the Correctional Program Manager for the City of St. Louis.  The three women in orange are inmates at MSI.  They were all working to take this pile of soil and get it into new garden plots, from the press release:

MSI received a neighborhood greening grant from Gateway Greening for the project.  The grant provides lumber and soil for five 4’ x 20’ x 10” raised beds, one wheelbarrow and one sprinkler.   The garden will be maintained by five to 10 female residents who volunteered for the project, some guards at the facility, along with assistance from Gateway Greening staff and volunteers from Lincoln University and UMSL. The food grown will be donated to two local food pantries:  St. Vincent DePaul and Church of God at Baden.

The facility attempted a garden last year but did so by trying to plant just in the existing ground.

Charles Bryson, Director of Public Safety helped out in the morning.

Cardboard was placed over the grass to kill the grass underneath. The facility tried gardening last year but it failed because they tried planting in the existing ground.

The base of one guard tower will serve as the tool shed for the gardening equipment.  Click here to see the Fox 2 story.

– Steve Patterson

Walkability/accessibility in auto-centric suburbia

I was in Chicago last weekend.  Saturday night we stayed at the new ALoft in Bolingbrook (map), near Ikea.

The location is highly auto-centric) but walkability/accessibility was given some minimal attention.  From our room I could see the sidewalk along the public road as well as the private sidewalk to the hotel. The above is the minimal I’d accept, not the goal.  All the buildings in the area are so far apart that no amount of perfectly green grass or upscale landscaping will make it a good walking environment.  These sidewalks are decoration, a feel-good measures to imply walkability.  Don’t get me wrong, it is better to have them than not, but hopefully we will cease building such environments completely.

To create walkable areas we must:

• Reduce the amount of auto parking in private lots.
• Reduce the distance between buildings.
• Reduce the distance from the public sidewalk and the building entrance.
• Allow on-street parking.

With every business having a huge parking lot the distances become to great to walk.  But if parking were scaled back they can be closer to each other and walking becomes a viable option.  The total parking in this area far exceeds the total number of cars at any given time.  By significantly limiting private off-street parking but permitting on-street parking you introduce affordable shared parking.  Shared parking is often thought of as a parking lot or garage structure but taking all the cars and spreading them out in a linear fashion along roads reduces the impacts from massive parking lots that  spread our destinations apart to the point we must drive to reach them.

– Steve Patterson