Wheelchair Users Unable To Pay Parking Fee In City Parking Lot

The City of St. Louis Parking Division operated by the Treasurer’s office recently built a surface parking lot at 3019-35 Olive Street to serve Midtown Alley businesses, including Hamburger Mary’s next door. The parking fee must be paid 24 hours per day.

I’ll be interested to find out if the Board of Public Service designed this for the Treasurer or if it was done separately. Regardless, it must be changed to comply with the ADA.

Larry Williams, the current Treasurer, is in his last month in office. Tishaura Jones will be sworn in as Treasurer on New Year’s Day. Jones indicated during the primary she’d work to remove parking as a responsibility of the office.

— Steve Patterson

Poll: Do You Think Climate Change (Global Warming) Is Affecting The Weather In The United States?

November temperatures in St. Louis were all over the charts, with some highs in the 70s and lows below freezing (source). Hurricane Sandy did massive destruction in the Northeast at the end of October. A few months earlier Hurricane Isaac hit the northern Gulf Coast.   This weekend California is getting pounded by heavy rains (NYT).

Normal conditions or changing conditions based on man?

A new study published Thursday in the journal Science provides the most definitive — and accurate — evidence yet that polar ice caps on Greenland and Antarctica are melting.

Shrinking ice is not the only telltale sign that climate change is real. From rising air and ocean temperatures to stronger storms to record droughts, evidence of a changing global climate is all around us. (Business Insider)

The poll question this week asks if you think climate change (global warming) is affecting the weather. The poll is in the right sidebar, mobile users will need to switch to the desktop layout to vote in the poll.

— Steve Patterson

Today Is Rosa Parks Day

Today marks an important day in history:

Most historians date the beginning of the modern civil rights movement in the United States to December 1, 1955. That was the day when an unknown seamstress in Montgomery, Alabama refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. This brave woman, Rosa Parks, was arrested and fined for violating a city ordinance, but her lonely act of defiance began a movement that ended legal segregation in America, and made her an inspiration to freedom-loving people everywhere. (source)

I was born less than a dozen years later, my oldest brother was 5.  I can’t imagine  the kind of trouble I’d have gotten into trying to fight racial segregation.  Or would I have thought it was the way the world worked?

— Steve Patterson

More Thoughts on Bike Parking

Tuesday’s post was  about a bike locked to a lamp post while two empty bike were further from the building entry, see: Locate Bike Racks Near Building Entrances. Today is a similar post about trying to find a place to secure your bike.

Transportation cyclists are resourceful types for sure and the above is a perfect example. While this makes an interesting visual I’d much rather see our streets lined with bare-bones inverted-U bike racks located on the outer edge of the sidewalks, near the entrances to active spaces.

Unfortunately too often things like bike parking are on a green checklist and they get checked off as being covered even though functionally few cyclists will ever use the supplied racks, much less 22 at once, opting instead for a sign or lamp post near their destination.  This space should’ve been planted to catch water runoff.

— Steve Patterson

Locate Bike Racks Near Building Entrances

Public bike racks, if existent at all,  often end up in the worst locations.

Maybe the engineers/designers of the streetscape thought someone would bike downtown to sit on a bench and face another bench? Several of these bike racks in adjacent blocks have been removed because their placement interfered with cafe seating and pedestrian flow.

Bike parking needs to be obvious as to use, visible to others, and near building entrances.

— Steve Patterson