Poll; How Long Is Your Commute to Work?

For nearly five years now I’ve worked from home.  My commute is as long as it takes me to walk from bed to my computer, 20 feet away.

Granted, I do have to stop by the real estate brokkerage on South Kingshighway as well as meet buyers at properties and planning clients at their offices.  But for the most part my daily commute is measured in seconds, not minutes or hours.

I’m the exception, not the rule.  Most of travel further than your bedside computer.  Take the poll on the upper right corner of the main page to share your commute time & mode.Use the comments below to share your thoughts on commuting.

Making Bike Lanes Visible & Useful

When visiting Portland, OR you notice a lot of bicyclists.  Then you notice why.

The city of Portland has bike parking everywhere and many connecting bike lanes to help the cyclist navigate through the city.  Above, the green on the pavement is to mark the spot where motorists can get over for a right turn.  It alerts the motorist they are crossing a bike lane.  The cyclist is alerted to be on the lookout for right turning cars.

Look further into the picture, the bike lane continues on the other side of the intersection.  Yesterday I was driving home across the new Jefferson Ave viaduct. On the South end was a sign indicating the start of a bike lane.  Sure enough, at the end of the bridge a sign indicated the end of the bike lane.  So cyclists are on their own to get to the bridge and to keep going after they cross.  Brilliant.

Portland has cyclists not due to great weather but due to great thought into bicycling as transportation.  In St. Louis bike lanes are simply a way to rope off exceess pavement.

Spring Break By Multiple Modes

Last night I returned from a 9-day Spring Break to the Pacific northwest. Specifically, Seattle & Portland.

At home I can drive thanks to a couple of minor modifications (steering wheel knob & turn signal lever) that permit me to drive with only my right hand.  Last August I drove to Oklahoma to visit family for a brief weekend visit.

But in flying to Seattle I knew driving would not be an option for me.  While many trips during my visit did involve private vehicles, I still managed a few other modes.  I took a bus to downtown Seattle, rode Seattle’s new streetcar loop in the South Lake Union area, rode two ferries, and rode Portland’s streetcar loop. I typically take transit or walk when traveling. Before my stroke I’d walk considerable distances in strange cities as well.

I saw a lot in both cities and future posts will share my observations and photos.  Stay tuned.

Seven Lanes, No Waiting

Seven lanes, no waiting.  No, not the checkout, that has plenty of waiting.  I’m talking roads.  We’ve got ridiculously wide roads around here.

Jefferson & Market come to mind.  Jefferson North of I-64 and Market West of Jefferson each have seven lanes — three travel lanes per direction and a center turn lane.  Seven!  These wide roads pre-date our interstate system.  Roads like these two, Natural Bridge and others were widened to serve a city with a population over 800,000 and expected to top a million by 1970. Instead of passing a million residents we were at 622,236 in 1970 and by 2000 we were under 350,000.  Yet our roads are still designed for much greater traffic than is typically present.

When the highways like I-70, I-64, I-55 and I-44 these excessively wide roads returned to their prior status as local arterial roads.  Except that somebody forgot to come back and trim down the road width.

The new Jefferson viaduct between I-64 and Chouteau is finally open in both directions.  It contains two travel lanes per direction, a reasonable number.  I can think of no arterial roads in the City of St. Louis that need more than two travel lanes per direction.  It is no surprise that the areas adjacent to these wide roads are lifeless.

Formerly wide streets like Delmar (West of Kingshighway) have received new planted medians to consume excess width.  Ditto for Grand between Arsenal & I-44.  I’ve expressed before my wish to use the width for modern streetcar lines.  However, medians can be built down the center now and streetcars run in the outside lanes later.  One thing is certain, these streets are not going to magically reinvent themselves.  Government intervention created the current widths and it will take government intervention (aka $$$) to remake them in a more reasonable for.

Of course funding projects in the city today is more challenging because we have fewer people to split the cost.  Back then they were clearing away obstrucxtions to make room for an increasing number of automobiles.  Today we’d be spending money for different purposes — to reactivate the streets and the private property along them.  Some of the adjacent land is public such as the long vacant Pruitt-Igoe site at Jefferson & Cass (map).  Redoing Jefferson & the Pruitt-Igoe site go hand and hand.

If only we had slimming these streets ready to go as “shovel ready.”

Missourians Against Red Light Cameras

This just in from local singer and anti-red light camera activist Jesse Irwin:

The bill that would ban red light cameras in Missouri, SB211, is being ambushed. It was granted a premature, unexpected hearing by the Senate Transportation Committee scheduled for this Wednesday, February 18th at 8am at the capitol in Senate Conference Room 1. We have to keep them from killing the bill before it gets to the senate floor. I need people to do one of three things.

1. Call or email one or all of the senators on the committee. You can find them here:

http://www.senate.mo.gov/09info/comm/tran.htm

Let them know you don’t like the cameras and you support the passage of SB211

2. Give me a written statement saying they do not like these cameras, etc. You can fax it to 968-5981 or send it to irwinjes@webster.edu. I  will take it to the capitol for you and enter it into the record

3. Ride to jeff city with me on Wednesday morning to sit in on the hearing.

There is a lot of big money trying to stop us, so we are going to have to be loud and persistent.

I am organizing a group of people who will be driving down to attend the hearing. If anyone is interested in going and would like a ride, they can send me an email at irwinjes@webster.edu or call me at 314-775-5760.

Thanks again,

Jesse Irwin

http://www.redlightcameraban.com/

Now that I’m driving a car again I’m concerned about the cameras.  Not that I might get caught doing something I shouldn’t — that a camera might falsley cite me.