Reopening 13th Street, The Good and The Bad, Suggestions
When the Washington Avenue streetscape project happened more than a decade ago, 13th & 16th Streets shouldn’t have been completely closed to vehicles. Rather than become wonderful pedestrian spaces, they became dead isolated spaces. Sixteenth between Lucas & Washington Ave is still closed to traffic, but 13th Street was recently reopened.
So the St. Louis Police and the Partnership for Downtown St. Louis consulted with adjacent building owners, not the actual people impacted by a change, and got the city to act quickly to open a street designed to be closed to traffic. This will allow officers to direct eastbound motorists to turn right on 13th (now one-way southbound) to relieve congestion.
The two block stretch of Wash Ave from Tucker to 14th was designed as a festival street, to be closed to host special events. Because 13th Street to the south had been closed to traffic and 13th to the north just a single lane after most of the right of way was taken for restaurant patios there was no way to close just one block — both had to be closed regardless of the size of the event. Now, with 13th southbound open, it’ll be possible to close just one block for a smaller event.
I support reopening our street grid, it has been chopped up all over the city. My issue is with how this happened. It didn’t happen in a transparent manner, with input from many. Once again we failed to engage citizens in meaningful dialog, instead thinking building owners can speak for residents & business owners. They cannot, and don’t.
Here are my suggestions for what still needs to be done:
- Do something to direct motorists turning onto 13th from Wash Ave to stay centered so they stay on the ramp, not drop off the curb; planters, vertical reflective lane markers, etc
- Add parking meters on the west side for 24/7 parking except weekends when used by valets or taxicabs.
- Designate the corner next to Wash Ave as motorcycle parking, free or at charge if striped and numbered.
- Put up temp orange signs on Wash Ave & St Charles St to alert everyone about the recent change.
- Consult actual citizens, not just building owners, next time.
This is not to say residents of the immediate area should’ve been allowed to veto the change, just have been included in discussing the problems and possible solutions.
— Steve Patterson
I live in a condo overlooking this and was surprised to see the changes. I’m not necessarily opposed to this, but I think the streetscape needs to be redone accordingly. Even with striping I fear the intersection would cause confusion for drivers and endanger pedestrians. I do agree that the NE corner should be better utilized and motorcycle parking would be a good use. I suggested this area as a bikeshare stop before these changes, not sure if you could still squeeze it into that corner or not.
Residents are not being consulted in these changes which is the main issue and this needs to stop. Our valet parking on Washington has gotten out of hand, creating unneeded traffic tie-up when this could easily have been accommodated on side streets with little impact on Washington. We have also seem new taxi and delivery zones put up without resident comment. not to mention the ongoing parking changes. Washington Avenue is becoming a victim of it’s own success and we need to get our Alderman’s attention and vote her out doing the next election.
Why is this a surprise? No resident involvement and an Alderwoman managed by special interests who run the Washington ave area like a cartel is our norm. Born and raised in the city, I can tell you that this is nothing new. Our alderwomen bought the election using absentee ballots – FTR: she lost at the polls – does whatever the special interests tell her to do and worse yet does nothing to improve the lives of the actual residents of the district. We had a chance to vote her out last year and we allowed her to buy her way back in using her north side connections. Now we have this?