I Might Have Ended Up in a Car Dependent Situation

When I was in the hospital following my stroke the level that I would recover early on was not known. While I was sedated family and friends discussed where I might end up. A nursing home was an option. One of my brothers though I should go live with him back in my birth town of Oklahoma City so he could attend to my needs. Thankfully my recovery progressed very well and was able to return to my own place in downtown St Louis.

But what about my brother’s place? It features many bedrooms & bathrooms and a predominate 3-car garage. Both of the subdivision’s entrances are gated. It is the complete opposite of my downtown lifestyle.

Using walkscore.com I confirmed what I already knew about his place — it is car dependent. The Walk Score was a low 38 out of 100. Helping it get that high of a score is a grocery store & pharmacy just 0.22 miles as the crow flies. Walking out his front door and looking left you can spot the parking lot lights for the store. Getting there, however, is another thing completely.

A couple of years ago while visiting I walked over there for something. This required a walk through the curving streets of his subdivision and passing all the 3-car garages. The internal sidewalks end at the gate. To leave on foot you must walk through the gate used by motorists. Now out at a busy arterial that has yet to be widened to four lanes you basically end up walking in the drainage ditch as no sidewalks are provided. This route about doubles the distance to the store.

The home where we grew up is not much better getting 45 out of 100. Again zero sidewalks which is not something factored into the scoring. The drive-in theater listed at .99 miles away has been closed for 30+ years. The restaurant about the same distance away is a drive-in! Returning to Oklahoma would not have been an option for me.

My other brother’s place in the Bay Area gets a “somewhat walkable” score of 68 out of 100. I’ve walked with him and his wife while visiting and though it is not the same as being in San Francisco it is pretty decent. They’ve got a nice market reachable by sidewalks and a cute old downtown nearby.
But none of those are home for me. My loft between 16th & 17th gets a “very walkable” 83 out of 100. Put in the address for say the Paul Brown rental lofts at 816 Olive and it gets a rating of “walker’s paradise”, a 100 out of 100! Lumiere Place in Laclede’s Landing gets a 78 out of 100 — still “very walkable” in their rating system. All are downtown but each has a different score.

Walk Score acknowledges their system is not perfect:

We’ll be the first to admit that Walk Score is just an approximation of walkability. There are a number of factors that contribute to walkability that are not part of our algorithm:
Public transit: Good public transit is important for walkable neighborhoods.
Street width and block length: Narrow streets slow down traffic. Short blocks provide more routes to the same destination and make it easier to take a direct route.
Street design: Sidewalks and safe crossings are essential to walkability. Appropriate automobile speeds, trees, and other features also help.
Safety from crime and crashes: How much crime is in the neighborhood? How many traffic accidents are there? Are streets well-lit?
Pedestrian-friendly community design: Are buildings close to the sidewalk with parking in back? Are destinations clustered together?
Topography: Hills can make walking difficult, especially if you’re carrying groceries.
Freeways and bodies of water: Freeways can divide neighborhoods. Swimming is harder than walking.
Weather: In some places it’s just too hot or cold to walk regularly.

Kirkwood’s city hall also gets a “walker’s paradise” score of 100 out of 100 while Manchester’s gets a “somewhat walkable” at 65. Sorry but Manchester Rd at 141 isn’t even remotely walkable. Downtown Kirkwood is a much different feel than 8th & Olive yet they get the same score. Take it all with a grain of salt. It does give you a good glimpse into an area and shows you what is nearby. Density is a good thing — the more goods and services nearby the better. I guess I should develop an urban score rating system?

As the technology advances and they can begin to show a walking distance then places like my brother’s house that is within visual sight of a grocery store but a long walk will see their scores drop in relation to other places that have a good street grid to get you there directly.

I’m just so thankful that I’m home in my very walkable neighborhood and not in my brother’s nice but car dependent home.

Some People Shouldn’t Procreate or Have Firearms

We’ve all met someone that as we walk away think they shouldn’t procreate the human species nor should they have access to anything stronger than a water pistol. Yesterday one such unstable person shot & killed a Maplewood firefighter and injured two Maplewood police officers. The man is presumed dead in his burnt out & collapsed house.

Last week a divorced couple died in a murder-suicide outside a suburban St. Louis mall. Earlier this year a man went on a shooting rampage at the Kirkwood City Hall killing several and injuring several more, including the mayor.

In 2005 John Alexander of Frontenac shot and killed his wife Kelli Alexander and her friend April Wheeler on Bopp Rd. The Alexander’s young children were in their mom’s vehicle and witnessed the shootings. A few years earlier I met the Alexander family at their Frontenac home. They (he) had called my employer about remodeling their home. I had done the design on a major renovation to a neighbor’s home so I was one of three people that met with them. He wasn’t right and we all knew it. When he decided against remodeling the home I know I was relieved that I’d not have to spend another minute with him. His wife Kelli must have realized it to as she had filed for divorce. After he killed these two women he led police on a brief chase which ended when he lost control of his SUV, flipping and killing himself in the process.

Now I love our Constitution and Bill of Rights but some of these folks had no right to have access to guns. The young Maplewood firefighter would still be alive today if that nutcase didn’t have a gun.
I’ve never liked guns. They are designed to take life. Period. Yes I know ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people.’ Well then we need to stop arming people with the tools they need to kill other people.

Advocates of the right to carry a concealed weapon claim that if criminals know someone may be packing heat that it deters crime and gives people an ability to defend themselves. But the unstable person doesn’t care if they die in the process. More guns just increases the risk of innocent persons getting caught in crossfire.

Yesterday’s event in Maplewood was certainly a tragedy. My condolences to the family & friends of the killed firefighter. Best wishes to the two injured officers on a speedy recovery.

Would Pedestrian Access Have Saved This Starbuck’s?

As we’ve all heard Starbuck’s is closing some 600 under performing stores nationwide.  A number of those are in our region.  One is still very new.

It was just in October of last year that I posted about a suburban-style strip center being built with an adjacent Starbuck’s drive-thru (see St. Louis’ Leaders Critical of New Urbanism while Supporting Sprawl Development in Old Urbanist Areas).

And it is closing because it is under performing.  I guess that means cars are not lined up in the drive-through lane wasting $4/gal gas.  Good.   7th & Russell is on the edge of Soulard and hardly the right spot for a drive-thru.  It was only after I pointed out the lack of an ADA required access route that the strip center got such a connection to the public sidewalk.

The Starbuck’s, however, opened without providing the federally required access route.  Why should it, they’ve managed to open other locations in the city and county without meeting this ADA requirement (see post with examples).

I doubt that providing a sidewalk from the public sidewalk to their front door would have saved this location from closure but it couldn’t have hurt.  It would also make the site compliant so that the next occupant could easily accept walk-in traffic from the adjacent dense neighborhood.

Post-Dispatch Editorial Board Weighs In on the Lid vs Boulevard Debate

Today’s paper has an editorial giving widespread attention to the idea of abandoning a section of I-70 once the new Mississippi River bridge is complete and remaking Memorial Drive sans the depressed lanes of the highway:

There appears to be widespread acceptance of the concept of the lid among local leaders; less so the concept of the as-yet-unspecified attraction, at least not yet. The National Park Service — the mission of which is the preservation and protection of the national parks, monuments and other entities over which it has stewardship — has reservations about it. And within the local architectural and planning community, there is some concern that the lid itself might not be the best way to solve the problem of access to the Arch grounds.

For the full editorial with links back to this blog, to Rick Bonasch’s blog and to a KWMU commentary by Michael Allen click here. Hopefully this will put an end to the costly “lid” nonsense and we can move forward with fixing major gashes in our city.

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

Today I upgraded the software that manages this blog and added some new features. Along the way something managed to wipe out the list of categories. Ugh!

Within the last week I added a new feature which gives you the option to share each individual post with friends. At the end of each post you’ll see a “share/save” option. Just mouse over this and you’ll get a list of options such as emailing a link, bookmarking the post, or using sharing services such as Digg & Delicious. Email addresses are not collected by me so no need to worry about that. Of course you are still free to just copy & paste the post URL to send to others. One step forward.

Today I added a feature that I’ve wanted for a long time — a listing of the posts with the most comments for the last week. Over in the right sidebar between the calendar and recent comments is now the posts that have received the most comments in the last seven days. I have the option to change the number of days so I might make it five, ten or even fifteen days. For now I’ll stick with seven days. This feature is great because it quickly lets a reader see the most recently active posts. Another step forward.

I hadn’t upgraded the WordPress software that manages this blog since switching to it in November 2006. The upgrade took far less time than it took to upgrade my iPhone to 2.0! In the process though it managed to wipe out the names for my nearly 60 categories. Restoring that table of names from my backup is beyond my limited abilities so fixing that goes on the list for the programmer that I need to keep on a retainer. Two steps back.

Also on that list for the programmer is to figure out how to get comments to display paragraph breaks.
So enjoy the new features and my apologies for the missing category names.