Nineteen year ago I started this blog as a distraction from my father’s heart attack and slow recovery. It was late 2004 and social media & video streaming apps didn’t exist yet — or at least not widely available to the general public. Blogs were the newest means of …
The new NGA West campus , Jefferson & Cass, has been under construction for a few years now. Next NGA West is a large-scale construction project that will build a new facility for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in St. Louis, Missouri.This $1.7B project is managed by the U.S. Army …
Book publisher Island Press always impresses me with thoughtful new books written by people working to solve current problems — the subjects are important ones for urbanists and policy makers to be familiar and actively discussing. These four books are presented in the order I received them. ‘Justice and …
This post is about two indirectly related topics: the new Siteman Cancer Center building under construction on the Washington University School of Medicine/BJC campus and an update on my stage 4 kidney cancer. Let’s deal with the latter first. You may have noticed I’ve not posted in three months, …
Just to correct my earlier post on our upcoming municipal elections (March primary & April general). I have not yet mailed out letters to all the candidates.
I’m still revising the online questionnaire the candidates will hopefully fill out. This task will be completed this weekend and letters will go out to candidates next week with instructions on how to complete the questionnaire. The deadline will be mid-February.
Most likely I will only send these out to those in contested races. I’ve got a pretty good list of topics already but if you have suggestions for more suggest them in a comment below.
St. Louis may have the “honor” of having the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane. How narrow you ask? I didn’t take out a tape measure but the pictures reveal the sad reality of what constitutes a bike lane in St. Louis.
But before I show you the specific lane in question we need to step back and look at the big picture. From BikeStLouis.org:
The Great Rivers Greenway District celebrated the opening of 57 miles of additional on-street Bike St. Louis routes through St. Louis County and St. Louis City on May 8, 2008 with ribbon cutting ceremonies in the Cities of Maplewood, Clayton and St. Louis. With the expansion, the Bike St. Louis system now totals 77 miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared traffic lanes.
The Bike St. Louis website has a nice map showing these 57 miles:
Portion of overall map from Bike St. Louis
The map also has a nice graphic legend to help you understand which miles are shared lanes and which have dedicated bike lanes:
Graphic showing dedicated bike lanes.
Recently a few blocks of this “system” caught my attention. Specifically five blocks of dedicated bike lane along Chouteau Ave. from Tucker to Truman Parkway (17th):
Center of above image shows the bike route on Chouteau changing from shared to dedicated as it goes West of Tucker.
It looks great of paper. But what about on the pavement? As the headline proclaims, I think we have the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane:
Route switches from shared lane to dedicated lane as you cross Tucker. The Bike St. Louis sign is visible on the pole.
The dedicated lane is not to the left of the curb but the gap between the two stripes!
A little further West at 13th we see the impossible narrow bike lane and on-street parking to the right of the lane.
Above we see how the parking lane squeezes down to make room for an auto left turn lane at 14th.
At Truman Parkway (17th) you see the too narrow lane continues straight while the sign points you left.
Bike lanes in St. Louis are simply a feel-good & cheap way to get rid of excess roadway. It is not a functional or useful system as you might see in a city like Amsterdam. This is our tax dollars hard at work!
So how wide should a dedicated bike lane be?
Minimum width of bike lanes, with curb and gutter: “(For a) bike lane along the outer portion of an urban curbed street where parking is prohibited, the recommended width of a bike lane is 1.5 m (5 feet) from the face of a curb or guardrail to the bike lane stripe. This 1.5-m (5-foot) width should be sufficient in cases where a 0.3-0.6 m (1-2 foot) wide concrete gutter pan exists….” Page 23 (Source)
Why they even bothered calling this dedicated bike lanes is beyond me. It is embarrassing! Of course shared lanes are little more than normal lanes with additional markers (on pavement or posted signs). So we have 57 miles now. How useful are they?
At the end of a painfully long meeting, Angie Singler received the Democratic ward endorsement in the 25th for the March 3rd Democratic primary. This race has four candidates. Incumbent Dorothy Kirner is not running for re-election.
Singler received the most votes with Shane Cohn coming in 2nd, Travis Reems 3rd and Debbie Kotraba in 4th. Kotraba wasn’t even present at the meeting.
My congrats to Angie for her many months of hard work already put into this race.
The project in my “Comprehensive Planning” elective at Saint Louis University will be to do a comprehensive plan for the City of Washington, Missouri. Our class will be divided into two teams with each doing their own plan. We will all visit Washington late next month.
My last time in Washington, MO was June 2006. I took out of town friends to Augusta, MO to visit the wine country and we returned to St. Louis via Washington, MO. Entering Washington from the North, crossing over the Missouri river, is my favorite way to enter the city. We ended up in the riverfront park enjoying a bottle of Missouri vino.
Map of Washington, MO.
Like most older cities, big & small, commerce has moved out of downtown to the auto-centric edge. It is fascinating to me how a town of less than 15,000 can have so much residential & commercial sprawl.
Their Zoning Code looks typical, everything separated out. Their historic downtown is in the “C-3 Central Commercial District.” They have a long section detailing how much parking is required for a lengthy list of uses. Like most codes they have height restrictions although I don’t think they are in any danger of getting buildings in excess of one or two floors. They have another commercial district which indicates it is designed to allow residential & commercial to co-exist.
I’m excited by this project as I see it being something I might be doing after graduation. Cities of all sizes need to continue to evaluate their land and development policies to ensure they stay current with changing demographics and community desires.
What comes to mind is how, from a legal/zoning perspective, would we modify the code to ensure future development in the sprawl zone would be more walkable and connected. Washington, MO, an old river town, now functions as a far suburb in the St. Louis region. I have not reviewed the last census data in any detail but they certainly do not have the industry they once had. Years ago workers would often walk to their jobs. Those days are long gone.
Al in all an interesting assignment. If you have any thoughts on the process please feel free to share below.
Last week, while at Penn Station at Gravois Plaza, I look out the window and I’m struck by the massive amount of parking. Parking so far away from most stores it has likely never seen any use.
Excessive parking along the Eastern edge of the suburban Gravois Plaza.
When I pulled away I went that direction to get another view:
Looking North along the Eastern edge of Gravois Plaza
The excessive parking you see is either mandated by the zoning code or used as filler space by the developer. Either way it is unnecessary, a waste of land and a bad decision for the environment by causing more water runoff. From above it is really stark:
Aerial view of Gravois Plaza.
For a hint of the excesses required by out 60 year old out of date zoning code let’s take a look at Parking regulations (26.40.030) within the F-Neighborhood Commercial Zone (26.40)
The parking in the “E” Multiple Family Dwellings District, except as modified by Section 26.40.040 shall apply. (Ord. 62588 § 5 (part), 1992.)
26.40.040 Specific parking and loading regulations.
In addition, the following uses shall provide parking space within 1,000 feet of the main building:
A. Retail stores within floor area of more than 3,000 square feet shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate one motor car for each 700 square feet of floor area in excess of 3,000 square feet which is actually used for the selling of merchandise.
B. Banks and office buildings with floor area of more than 7,500 square feet shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate one motor car for each 1,250 square feet of floor area in excess of 7,500 square feet which is actually used for banking purpose or for offices.
C. Restaurants, bars, taverns, and exhibition halls with more than 1,000 square feet of floor area shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate one motor car for each 200 square feet of floor area in excess of 1,000 square feet which is actually used by patrons or customers for such purposes.
D. Theaters shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate one motor car for each 12 seats.
E. Mortuaries and funeral homes shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate three motor cars for each chapel or parlor.
I. Private clubs and lodges shall provide parking space sufficient to accommodate one motor car for each one hundred (100) square feet of floor area used for purposes of dancing, assembly or dining. (Ord. 62588 § 5 (part), 1992.)
Did the authors of this code, back in the 1940s, have some great wisdom about parking? No! They were guessing. They were enamored by the “motor car” and wanted to ensure if they gave up the streetcar and bought one they’d be able to park it where they liked. They wanted to remove on-street parking because they felt they needed all the lanes available. So for sixty years we’ve been building massive parking lots because guys who are long dead made bad guesses about how much parking would be necessary in the future.
Furthermore, developers are free to build beyond the too high minimums. Desco bragged about having more parking than required at Loughborough Commons. Oh Boy!
The Board of Aldermen need to stop focusing on stop signs and petty “constituent service” and authorize a complete overhaul of our zoning code. Short of a complete overhaul they need to simply remove all off-street parking mandates. Developers & business owners will ensure they have the parking necessary to serve their customers.
Rather than parking minimums we need parking maximums. This would cap the number of spaces provided so land is better utilized.
I don’t expect the Slay administration or the members of the Board of Aldermen to do anything about this aging and destructive code. Rollin Stanley, the former director of Planning, wanted to update the code to bring it current with all we’ve learned in the past 60 years but we ran him off.
The code was written and adopted we had half a million more people within the city limits. So much has changed but the city clings to this code like it is etched in stone. Slay — pretend the zoning code is a treasured historic building and raze it!
AARP Livibility Index
The Livability Index scores neighborhoods and communities across the U.S. for the services and amenities that impact your life the most
Built St. Louis
historic architecture of St. Louis, Missouri – mourning the losses, celebrating the survivors.
Geo St. Louis
a guide to geospatial data about the City of St. Louis
