Maintaining Infrastructure in Sparsely Populated Areas
At 61.9 square miles of land area, St. Louis is a relatively small city. But many parts of this area are sparsely populated and sidewalks are few. The above sidewalk at North Florissant Ave at North Market St. was passable, I saw worse between here and the new sidewalks on two blocks of North 14th (Warren to St. Louis Ave.)
Which comes first? New residents or new sidewalks? The residents aren’t going to arrive until conditions improve and conditions won’t improve until there is more residents to help justify the capital expenditure on the infrastructure.
A future light rail line has been studied for North Florissant so improvements to the entire right of way would presumably come with that investment. Â Population, it is expected, would follow. Â A hundred years ago develop happened along new transit lines lines. Â More recently, development happened along investment in highways. So I’d say the new sidewalks need to come first. Â Of course, buildings and population aren’t going to just appear because some new sidewalks have been installed in a few places. Â Someone has to put together a vision for how, in this case, this corridor, might look.
Maintenance, clearly, just isn’t done. And really, minimal maintenance is probably just a waste of money. So much is needed here to populate the area.
– Steve Patterson
It's all about priorities and making choices. The adjacent street looks like it's in pretty good shape, so obviously making the drive in (with those doors locked?) the priority . . .
The buildings along North Florissant have been cleared away but I'll bet those sidewalks have been there for 40-50 years.
How much development has occurred around the Wellston Metrolink station? North Florissant is no different. How about we focus on developing the areas where people might conceivably want to live (and where the existing residents are not fleeing as soon as they get the resources to).
Northside proposal. That was my first impression of your post. Its a vision with a plan on how to finance the very infrastructure improvement you posted about.
I don't believe your even trying to tackle the bigger question. How and who and why pay for a new sidewalk when every community can identify with their own concerns and items to pay for.
As I understand it, city properties are “cleaned up” by the city once they receive a certain number of complaint calls about it. Similarly, based on complaint calls, private property is inspected by the city and prop owners are sent a notification to clean up or pay the city $100 to clean up on their behalf.
I don't know how property tax money filters down to paying for common area maintenance and upkeep. What I realize is that city maintenance is an ad-hoc supply that is based on demand. As you rightly suggest that demand is less likely to occur if people are not moving in because of current conditions. This makes me wonder why the Alderman and other property owners in this area are not focussed on developing it. You'd think that they'd have a stake in their property improving in value.
You “wonder why the Alderman and other property owners in this area are not focussed on developing it.” It's much, much bigger than these folks. It's a combination of structural economic change (manufacturing moving offshore), little financing (recession, banking crisis, redlining), perceptions/reality (race, crime, taxes, schools) and multiple other opportunities (locally, regionally, nationally and internationally). Why invest here when you do so more “safely” in south city, the county, St. Charles County, Dallas or Bangalore? It's gonna take a lot more than new sidewalks or keeping the weeds cut back . . .
Funny you mention Bangalore, since I'm from there. That could be said of anything though. The world is a large and complex place, but there are always catalysts that cause ripple effects. Regularly it is the local economics that catalyze change, but local people can too.
Why invest here ?
– because a local leader infused you with their future vision to capitalize on
– because an alderwoman created an incentive or property tax break to make it attractive
– because the locals are putting all the other tiles in place towards improving the area
The people who are already invested in the area (with money, life or politics) are the ones who have the most interest in bringing and seeing improvement. We could all sit back with any aspect of our life and wait for “structural economic change”, racial perception shifts or other opportunities to become exhausted. But if the stakeholders had the will, then they could surmount these. So the question remains why they don't have the desire ? Or perhaps it is not a desire that is strong enough to overcome other factors. Which could also be because they're expending their energies elsewhere.
Actually, FTA will often view sidewalks on New Starts projects outside immediate station areas as “betterments,” or items to be paid for locally. Additionally, FTA just told Portland that any project over $1 billion in total cost will be capped at 50% federal share of funding.