Edwardsville’s Pedestrian Tunnel for High School Students

Why did the student not cross the road? Because they were chicken? No, because they have a new $480,000 pedestrian tunnel in place of the former shuttle buses. And it is against school policy for them to walk across the two lane street in front of the high school. Seriously, I’m not making this up!

Last June I did a brief post on the planned tunnel after reading an article in the Belleville News-Democrat. This past Saturday morning I visited the now finished tunnel on a tour of Edwardville, Illinois (map).

So, there it is on the right: the long walk under Center Grove Rd with the massive high school campus in the background. Remember the days when you could walk or bike to school? Those times seem long gone. Now students drive their own cars to school and in Edwardsville some students, roughly 200, have to park across the street and walk under the street to get to the campus.

Don’t look for any steps or walkway to get you from the south side of Center Grove Rd down to the tunnel, it is assumed that nobody walks in this part of town. Probably true enough, it is nothing but tacky buildings set in individual seas of parking.

I should also point out the tunnel was planned from day one. It wasn’t built until this summer because they just received the funding to construct it. So when planning a new high school campus the concept of say placing it closer to walkable areas seems to have been ruled out. I’m actually told the school district is much larger than the City of Edwardsville and that the schools is pretty centered within the district. The solution then becomes two smaller high schools rather than one large high school. You can point to additional costs to do that but that can be countered with the additional costs of sprawl and, in this case, a pedestrian tunnel.

This is Center Grove Rd looking west from the parking lot entrance. That is not a sidewalk you see to the left of the road, it is the shoulder of the roadbed. You can see some of the recently built sprawl in the background. What a horrible environment they are subjecting their impressionable youth.

Sadly, they are in effect teaching kids pedestrians and streets don’t mix.

– Steve

Please Vote in the RFT ‘Best of’ Poll

The Riverfront Times is conducting one of their ‘Best of’ polls and the first item on the list is ‘Best Blog.’ I was very honored last year when the RFT editors named Urban Review the ‘Best Civic-Minded Blog.’ This year they are opening up the category and asking for votes.

St. Louis is fortunate to have many talented bloggers creating original content on their sites. While this makes for heavy competition is also makes for a more enlightened city.

Here is why I think you should vote for Urban Review. This week Professor Charles Bohl from the University of Miami’s School of Architecture summed it up quite well:

You are providing what 99% of communities in the U.S. lack – a critical perspective that directly takes up community design. The layperson often can’t visualize or articulate the shortcomings until someone starts revealing them as you are doing.

Indeed my perspective is not necessarily the majority but it is sparking discussion about place, a worthwhile exercise in any community. Furthermore, your comments, now numbering over 5,000, show the level of interest in the topics covered by Urban Review. The number of readers, just under 20,000 unique visitors in August, also shows the widespread level of interest in subjects that many may have thought to be too specialized. All this interest & discussion makes an impression on decision makers from local elected officials to bureaucrats to real estate developers. Collectively we are creating change in the local mindset — something other blogs cannot claim.

Vote here.

Thank you! – Steve

Reason Foundation Suggesting More Lanes Will Solve Congestion

Via StreetsBlog comes a story of faulty reasoning: more traffic lanes to ease congestion. From the Reason Foundation:

Missouri has one city that currently suffers from severe congestion, which this study identifies as those areas with Travel Time Indices (TTIs) of 1.18 or higher. The St. Louis area on the eastern edge of the state is tied with three other cities (Memphis, San Antonio and Cincinnati) as the 35th most congested region in the United States, with a Travel Time Index (TTI) of 1.22. This means that driving times during peak traffic hours are 22 percent longer than during off-peak times.

Unless major steps are taken to relieve congestion, drivers in St. Louis can expect to see a TTI of 1.42 by 2030. For an idea of how severe that level of congestion would be, note that this projection is worse than the traffic delays experienced today in all but five cities in the United States: Atlanta, Washington, DC, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

Sorry, but I reject the notion that adding additional lanes eases traffic congestion. This may be a short-term solution but it inevitably leads to simply more cars on the road which brings us back to more congestion. This is a cycle that must be broken, not continued.

The researchers have done a cost analysis to show the savings by reducing congestion. I will look into the full report to see if they have calculated additional costs such as health issues with driving vs. walking, costs of parking garages, etc… I’m guessing they have not taken so many interrelated factors into account.

– Steve

Ald. Kirner: “Very Little Community” at Gravois & Chippewa

Ald. Dorothy Kirner, D-25th Ward, was recently quoted in the Suburban Journal about the plan for the QuikTrip to move from near Gravois and Delor (14th Ward) to the former used car lot of McMahon Ford:

“There is very little community in there. It’s all businesses,” Kirner said. “I don’t see any problem with the residents.”

The message is basically we’ve long since wiped out any residents of the area and therefore nobody is around to object to yet another over-scaled gas station on a prominent city corner. In cities where urbanity is valued, not derided, such a site would become a mixed-use project with street-level retail and housing — helping to create community where it may not currently exist. Such limited view thinking will continue to prevent St. Louis from reaching its full potential as a vibrant urban center.

– Steve

Will McMillan Debate Herod?

Pat Herod, the spunky challenger to insider favorite Mike McMillan, has called for a debate in their race for License Collector. I received an email with his challenge letter but you can view the announcement over at the political paper, Arch City Chronicle. Here is what Mr. Herod’s letter said:

In respect to a fair and balanced campaign in which the citizens of the City of St. Louis may decide on who is the best candidate for the position as the next License Collector, I think it is only just that we hold a public debate between the two of us. I am more than willing to hold this open debate in the area and facility you see fit. I am proposing that this time-honored political tradition be held as soon as possible in order to let the voters make an appropriate choice this November.

Well stated Mr. Herod! I have now had the pleasure of meeting Pat Herod in person and I must admit he is quite interesting. He is, in my view, as captivating at McMillan but without the rather phony southern drawl. Herod is very genuine and not at all politically slick.

The McCaskill-Talent race may be the big one to watch this November I think a debate between McMillan and Herod would be an excellent show on local politics. But will McMillan, who is likely ordering new drapes for his new office, agree to debate Mr. Herod? My guess it won’t have the cojones to debate someone as dynamic as Herod. We’ll see if he is assured enough to agree to a debate, man to man.

– Steve