Crossing Tucker at Olive
I’ve written before that Tucker south of Washington Ave needs to be redone. Here’s a reason why: the ADA ramps are incomplete putting pedestrians like me in harms way.
Tucker is excessively wide so crossing it is bad enough, but when there’s no ramp you have to wait for traffic to break so you can use the north-south ramp. A ramp could be added here but this part of Tucker needs curb bulbs like the revolt stretch north of Washington Ave.
Of course bad situations exist all over the city. As I go to various places in the city I encounter similar problems. I’m not sure how the city prioritizes which streets get new streetscapes, and when. It may take a while…
— Steve Patterson
they should prioritize where people actually walk, downtown for example. btw, i got banned from nextstl, i hate alex inhen, typically county doosh
Please keep your dispute elsewhere.
no
I’ve said it before,but if we want to purport to be a REAL city, the basic human connections (or lack thereof) need to be addressed. Whether that’s neighborhood to neighborhood or street corner to street corner, there’s a severe lack of common sense in much of our planning.
For starters, Tucker through downtown needs, as you said Steve, direct pathways across. It helps pedestrians AND drivers. I’d add further that Tucker needs countdown timers throughout its length (and really, any intersection with crossings over, say, 55 ft or thereabouts).
I know, I know…show me the money and all that (Hi, J271!), but it’s not unreasonable to expect St. Louis’ downtown to fully understand and implement standards of basic human movement.
Hey, I agree! One good way would be to pass a bond issue dedicated primarily to fixing these sorts of missing links, on both established pedestrian and bicycle corridors. Relying on the individual annual generosity / priorities of our individual aldermen means that we’ll be waiting years, if not decades, for any meaningful, focused efforts . . . .
I think that federal stimulus money was involved in the Tucker Blvd overhaul, and if not for that and the new I-70 bridge, the portion between Washington Ave and the Post-Dispatch building would probably still be relatively awful in all respects. However, I don’t really have an answer as to how the city can repair all the outmoded sidewalks and such in the city. In Milwaukee as I recall, the city would simply pronounce judgement that work needed to be done, and (I think) assess the owners of the adjoining property for the cost. I was told that there were people on the city payroll who did nothing but walk the sidewalks of the city, looking for sections that had heaved or cracked excessively. That was about ten years ago, and I’ve been gone for five, so I don’t really know what the state of all that is at present.
“there were people on the city payroll who did nothing but walk the
sidewalks of the city, looking for sections that had heaved or cracked
excessively.”
Nowadays you could just ask smartphone users to photograph broken sidewalks whenever they see them, and email them to the city. (That would have the extra bonus of focusing repairs on sidewalks that people actually frequently use.)