City Needs to Ban Future Skywalks, Ameren’s is Latest to be added
What better way to destroy a city than to take pedestrians off the public street? Back a few decades ago skywalks were all the rage — every city just had to have at least one.
St Louis has it’s fair share and the most noteworthy is the one above as part of the failed St Louis Centre indoor mall. Making Washington Ave feel like a tunnel and blocking urban views up and down the street this is most certainly the largest. This bridge over the street is pretty universally accepted as major urban blunder even though it was hailed as wonderful just 20 years ago.
Many of the skywalks we have connect multiple buildings while others connect building to parking garage.
Above is a new skybridge at Lumiere Place on the formerly historic Laclede’s Landing area. This one connects a renovated hotel structure to the casino, saving guests from having to go outside on the sidewalk.
The latest skywalk being constructed is at the HQ of electric utility Ameren located just South of Union Station. This bridge doesn’t connect buildings or even a building to a parking garage. No, this skywalk goes to a surface parking lot.
In a prior post I was critical of the lack of street trees on 18th/Truman Parkway and as I was taking these images I felt like I was in the roadway given how close traffic was. We really should not be building pedestrian-unfriendly roads like this.
It should be telling that Ameren is going to such expense to keep employees from crossing five lanes of traffic. Their own HQ building and numerous surface parking lots has contributed to the destruction of an active and thus safe public sidewalk.
We need to stop removing people from the sidewalks in this manner — it only makes bad situations worse.
I hadn’t been walking downtown in a good while. I do notice how downtown near my old workplace (US Bank Tower) is kinda “dead” with St. Louis Center gone. I actually did like the tower there. Although after having more experience with what makes a city great. It’s streets, streetscapes, stores, people etc…. I figure St. Louis just doesn’t “get it”. Maybe Washington Ave is their “experiment”. Although one has to walk many “seedy” areas to get there. My wife and even my other “side” of the family did this to get to the Gelateria. One place that made me feel sad was a bottom level of what was a building probably for stores that was filled with cars (indoor parking)! Perhaps that is all the future people want in the City. They will have cars everywhere with little “tubes” to walk from their parking to their work and back again. They will send their little “grunts” out to get what little food is available or have it “delivered”. This is like not riding a bus or taking metro. We don’t feel the street is safe and we don’t want to mix with the “wrong elements”. Perhaps we can’t really be tollarant anymore because we are too busy trying to be with “our people”. Or to try to keep “our people” away from “those people”. More than one person I know has said St. Louis is one of the most segregated places in the nation. Works like this will just continue the trend.
my .02
For Ameren, I’m sure it’s all about the “safety” of their employees 😉 – it looks like the surface parking lot is also fenced in, so if there’s a guard shack providing security, it’s gotta make all those commuters feel safer than having to cross a public street and potentially having to mix with the local flora and fauna . . .
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While I’m no fan of pedestrian bridges, I’m also not inclined to go after a blanket prohibition. Given their expense, I’m somewhat inclined to favor case-by-case approvals, especially a process that would require public input (although I’m also concerned with the final say being with a single alderman). These two latest examples don’t have nearly the same impact on the built environment as the one at St. Louis Centre. Perhaps a better answer would be limits on both bulk/vertical height and minimum requirements for transparency. The big problem with the one at St. Louis Centre is just that, it’s big (a friggin 3-story solid wall across a major street). I could also see a lot of merit in prohibiting them in historic districts or downtown, but if someone like BJC or A-B or the Science Center can both justify and afford one, then why not? There’s usually a valid business reason for making the investment.
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A couple of Denver links to the subject. One, their Skyline Urban Renewal Area (vintage 1968) originally envisioned a separate pedestrian environment at the second floor level, with plazas and pedestrian bridges creating a “safe” environment separate from the street traffic. The reality is that the concept failed miserably (http://www.westword.com/1996-03-14/news/bridges-to-nowhere/), partly because all the links were never completed, but mostly because there was no there there – the 16th Steet Mall attracted most of the retail and combined it with a free transit spine, which in combination with eyes on the street and the perceived safety in numbers, which attracted (and continues to attract) the bulk of the pedestrian traffic and proved that the skywalk concept was a white elephant/stupid idea pretty quickly.
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Two, their new airport has a skywalk on steroids (see the end of http://www.flydenver.com/diabiz/info/research/passenger.asp). Originally, all three airside concourses were to be connected to the main terminal only with the subway train system. Continental insisted on having a pedestrian connection, so the skybridge was added, and it’s been a benefit to users of Concourse A ever since, who have the choice of walking or taking the train. (It’s also been hit once by the tail of a plane, so it now sports clearance signs on both sides.)
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The only other place I’ve seen pedestrian bridges work with any degree of success in an “urban” environment is on the Las Vegas strip, where the volume of pedestrians and the volume of vehicles at a few major intersections made sparating the two the only viable solution: http://www.accessclarkcounty.com/newsletters/sand_m/2006-march/mar_pedestrian.html. And given the supersize scale of the casino architecture, the bridges’ impact on the views and the vibe are minimal.
Downtown StL…Welcome to the ‘Burbs!
Don’t forget that Locust Street north of the Macy’s will also be free of its pedestrian bridge as well when St. Louis Centre is redeveloped. I will be interested to see how that enlivens that street.
Jeff said:
“One place that made me feel sad was a bottom level of what was a building probably for stores that was filled with cars (indoor parking)!”
Sounds like you’re referring to the former Woolworth’s space in the ground floor of the parking garage at Broadway and Locust. After Woolworth’s closed, the space sat vacant for a long time – Keith Barket (who is considering re-purchasing the Arcade Building from Pyramid) purchased the lease and converted the space for parking.
The good news is that the space is slated to be a part of the Mercantile Exchange project (which I’m guessing is still a go under Spinnaker), so perhaps it will be used for retail once again. It’s certainly large enough to accomodate a large user like a national retailer.
What? No one’s been to Minneapolis/St. Paul? Over 13 miles of skyway (8&5 respectively). The Minneapolis network alone cover 80 blocks of downtown (yes, they have 80 blocks of downtown, more than that actually).
It functions fine, doesn’t feel like a second system at all. For all intents and purposes it is part of the sidewalk. yes, even in the summer.
sorry forgot the link:
http://www.minneapolis.org/page/1/skyways-minneapolis.jsp
Given the speed North bound traffic goes plus the twist in the road just prior to getting the Ameren crossing I think the company is responding logically regarding the safety of their employees. Walking along 18th St sidewalks all the way up to Lafayette makes me nervous. Lets face it, the parkway was designed to be the north south distributor highway and that is what it is doing.
the elevated walk way is just another symbol of the failed capitalistic society. It’s typical of corporate america to place its minions above where the common American must walk. The real vulgarity will begin when an even more elevated walkway that is for the exclusive use of only executives is constructed making the one below look like the gerbil tunnel that it is.
The pedesterian traffic I see and what should be promoted in my mind is the Ameren HQ headed back/forth to Union Station. This walkway doesn’t take away from that nor do I see the brief moments of foot traffic at the start of and after work really giving any Ameren employees a sense of safety when crossing Truman Parkway. In the meantime, I can see how the the walkways connecting ATT One Center (formerly SBC One Center) with the older office building to the west as well as their parking garage are much more detrimental to the surroundings by taking away foot traffic from an area that has some urban density.
“Lets face it, the parkway was designed to be the north south distributor highway and that is what it is doing.”
I agree, but have you ever noticed how horribly timed the traffic lights are on that street? I’ve sat for 5 minutes (a very, very long time in automobile terms) at Chouteau, even when there were no cars anywhere in sight. I won’t take the parkway anymore because it’s so annoying.
One other thing: I’ve lived throughout America, in small towns and large cities, and St. Louis IS NO MORE RACIST AND SEGREGATED than any of the other places I’ve lived. At least we admit we have a problem.
Truman lights must be timed better!
Also, I am soooo tired of St. Louisans saying “we are the MOST racist city”…we’re not. We have our problems that need to be addressed, yes. But, we are in no way the worst. Go to Atlanta, Minneapolis, Denver, Kansas City and Chicago and you will see segregation and overt racism. I hate to burst all of your bubbles but St. Louis is actually pretty progressive on the racist front.
Having crossed that wide and dangerous street at various hours (I was working at Ameren for quite a while) I can say that I was really glad to see them putting up SOMETHING that lets the employees access not only that parking lot, but the other auxiliary building on the east side of the street. There are a number of offices, training facilities and labs over on the east side of the street. They are not huge buildings like the corporate headquarters so you might not have noticed them.
There is actually Ameren foot traffic crossing that scary wide and speeding-car-filled street most of the business day. As a person who now drives that stretch of road pretty regularly to get to and from my new job (not Ameren anymore) I am hoping it will let that light stay green a lot more of the time during business hours. Those lights on 18th really are annoying.
I don’t think the Ameren campus will ever really be a central part of the pedestrian downtown because of the lack of other places to walk to on that side of the huge railroad canyon they are just south of. People from Ameren often cross the bridge to go to Union Station for lunches and such, but it is really too far to walk to many other places during a 1 hour lunch break.
Finally, I need to disagree/clarify – if you truly believe that “St. Louis is actually pretty progressive on the racist front”, yes we are . . . we are more racist than you apparently want to admit. Are we “the MOST racist city”, I agree, no, we’re not. And I agree, “We have our problems that need to be addressed, yes.” But as far as “actually [being] pretty progressive” in addressing racist issues, no, unfortunately, we have a long way to go. If we were actually tolerant, progessive and color blind, we wouldn’t be “dealing” with a segregated north side, white flight, especially from SLPS, a local political system where race plays a huge role and a rampant perception among people who live outside the city limits that going into or working in the city requires a huge amount of risk.
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Racism in Denver is different than racism here. There, the majority minority (yes, I know it’s an oxymoron), and within the city limits, the actual majority, is the hispanic community, and they get labeled and judged in much the same way the african-american community is labeled, judged and avoided here. In Denver, where blacks make up less than 10% of the population, there’s much less overt racism directed toward them as a segment of society, except, unfortunately, toward young black males, who, as it seems to be everywhere, tend to be lumped together and assumed to be either gang members or rappers.
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Yes, Chicago, KC, Detroit, Atlanta, Louisville, Philly, DC, Miami, Memphis, New Orleans and Cleveland (to name but a few) are all cities that are more segregated than they probably like or want to admit. Heck, even down in Tampa, racism is raising its ugly head (http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/article607830.ece) this week. But to assume that we can equate St. Louis with being in any way “progressive” in addressing overt or institutionalized racism, is to be naive, at best, or a closet racist, at worst. If we were truly progressive, would there be a need for affirmative action and quotas for government contracts? The St. Louis American? The Call to Oneness? A link on the Post-Dispatch website to St. Louis’ homicide statistics (which shows a direct correlation to race)? The controversy over the Fire Chief? The effort to recall Mayor Slay? We have a very real problem (and challenge), and it’s directly impacting our ability as a city to reinvent our economy. It may not be fair or even based in fact, but it is the perception (and yes, perception IS reality) outside the city. But until we can all accept that we actually do have a problem, we will never reach any sort of consensus on how to address the underlying issues that continue to hold us back . . .
Actually, I kind of dig pedestrian bridges. Like the one from the science center that spans I-64. I enjoy the views from them, and they have a very space-age feel to me (envision Metropolis or other futuresque cityscapes). Sure, there could be a lot of improvement as to the design of the bridge (GIS pedestrian bridges for some hella cool double helix looking examples), and I wouldn’t necessarily want 13 miles of elevated walkway spanning the entire downtown area, but a complete ban on them I feel to be out of the question. In fact, I feel bans on pretty much anything to be absurd, because zero tolerance has no place in a free society. Part and parcel, everything occupying a public space, or the area over a public space, such as a roadway, should be subjected to a public approval process where designs can be reviewed, ideas suggested, and, in the end, approval met by the citizens before construction can begin. Sure, it’s a hassle for a company, but if we’re ever going to get to the point where we can zip around in vacuum operated space tube people movers, it’s a necessary step.
To “Dude,” I was laughing at your comments! I disagree with you but it’s having a diversity of views that makes Steve’s blog posts so entertaining and educational….
I do not like the pedestrian bridges at all either and would like to see a ban. On the other hand I see a need for safety. How about putting up a sign stating pedestrains have the “right of way” and having a cop hidden and waiting to pounce on anybody that speeds past people trying to cross…and write $500 tickets to those drivers. I’ve seen signs saying such in parking lots in Massachusetts and people take them serious.
I’m curious what people think about sky bridges that are much higher off the ground? I’m thinking of those at complexes such as Barnes.
Dude? Are you serious??? “…failed capitalistic society? What Rage Against The Machine song did you snag that line from?
Let’s get back to reality Dude. Stop letting Maximum Rock And Roll form your opinions and think for yourself. If “failed capitalistic”
St. Louis was like China this website would’ve been censored and there goes your manifesto. Have you ever tried to cross that
intersection in the rain? In snow?…with trucks blazing down the road. I think they’re more worried about employee safety than
what some crusty punk thinks. Have fun living at home with mom and avoiding the scary capitalists.
standing committee chairman of (NMMC) Sandeep naik said Navi Mumbai to get five skywalks
After Mumbai’s ambitions plans to have 50 skywalks, it’s now the turn of Navi Mumbai to build five such modern structures on the two major highways- Sion-Panvel and Thane-Turbhe-passing through the satellite township.These skywalks are proposed at Vashi, nerul, Koperkhairne, Ghansoli and Airoli.”These have been several instances of fatal mishaps in these spots. Most of them were pedestrians who were trying to cross the road and tracks while trying to catch a train. In these areas, industries, railways stations and which complicates the problem, “Said standing committee chairman of Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) Sandip Naik. ”
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Mumbai/Navi_Mumbai_to_get_five_skywalks/articleshow/3742777.cms
http://sandeepnaik-navimumbai.blogspot.com
http://sandeepnaik-navimumbai.blogspot.com/2008/12/new-bombay-plus-connect.html