World’s Narrowest Bike Lane Located in St. Louis

St. Louis may have the “honor” of having the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane.  How narrow you ask?  I didn’t take out a tape measure but the pictures reveal the sad reality of what constitutes a bike lane in St. Louis.

But before I show you the specific lane in question we need to step back and look at the big picture.  From BikeStLouis.org:

The Great Rivers Greenway District celebrated the opening of 57 miles of additional on-street Bike St. Louis routes through St. Louis County and St. Louis City on May 8, 2008 with ribbon cutting ceremonies in the Cities of Maplewood, Clayton and St. Louis. With the expansion, the Bike St. Louis system now totals 77 miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared traffic lanes.

The Bike St. Louis website has a nice map showing these 57 miles:

The map also has a nice graphic legend to help you understand which miles are shared lanes and which have dedicated bike lanes:

Recently a few blocks of this “system” caught my attention.  Specifically five blocks of dedicated bike lane along Chouteau Ave. from Tucker to Truman Parkway (17th):

It looks great of paper.  But what about on the pavement?  As the headline proclaims, I think we have the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane:

Bike lanes in St. Louis are simply a feel-good & cheap way to get rid of excess roadway.  It is not a functional or useful system as you might see in a city like Amsterdam.  This is our tax dollars hard at work!

So how wide should a dedicated bike lane be?

Minimum width of bike lanes, with curb and gutter: “(For a) bike lane along the outer portion of an urban curbed street where parking is prohibited, the recommended width of a bike lane is 1.5 m (5 feet) from the face of a curb or guardrail to the bike lane stripe. This 1.5-m (5-foot) width should be sufficient in cases where a 0.3-0.6 m (1-2 foot) wide concrete gutter pan exists….” Page 23 (Source)

Why they even bothered calling this dedicated bike lanes is beyond me.  It is embarrassing!  Of course shared lanes are little more than normal lanes with additional markers (on pavement or posted signs).  So we have 57 miles now.  How useful are they?

Gateway Transportation Center Officially Open, Tours Today & Saturday

I just returned from the ribbon cutting of the long-awaited Gateway Transportation Center (aka the Multimodal Transportation Hub), the new home for Amtrak & Greyhound in St Louis. I’ll have a full review next week but I wanted to let you know that Greyhound and Amtrak are welcoming visitors to check out the new building as well as examples of the latest bus and trains today (11/21/08) until 4pm and tomorrow, Saturday 11/22 from 9am – 4pm.

The following is the press release:

St. Louis City Opens New $26.4 Million Multimodal Transportation Hub
(Gateway Transportation Center)

ST. LOUIS – The City of St. Louis is pleased to announce the official grand opening of the Gateway Transportation Center (GTC), the city’s new $26.4 million multimodal transportation hub. Mayor Francis G. Slay, Comptroller Darlene Green, representatives from Amtrak, Greyhound, MoDOT, Citizens for Modern Transit and other local officials dedicated the facility on Friday, November 21 at 10:45 a.m. The GTC is located at 430 S. 15th street in downtown St. Louis, one block south of the Scottrade Center. The event is open to the public. Directions are available at the Gateway Transportation Center web page, www.stlouis.missouri.org/citygov/comptroller/gtc.

In conjunction with the Transportation Center’s grand opening, the city, Amtrak and Greyhound also invite the public to enjoy equipment displays and tours from 11:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. The displays will offer the public tours of new Amtrak state-of-the-art passenger rail equipment and Greyhound bus equipment. Also, Amtrak and Greyhound will offer the public a chance to win free travel vouchers to destinations in the continental U.S. City Treasurer Larry Williams has offered free parking on Saturday during the display hours at the Gateway Transportation Center lot and at the lot south of the Scottrade Center. Both of these lots are owned and operated by the City Treasurer.

For nearly twenty years, a multimodal station to connect Amtrak, Greyhound, MetroLink and MetroBus service has been an important concept in the overall design of St. Louis City’s transportation systems, but until recently, it was only a concept. When he was first elected Mayor in 2001, Francis Slay joined with other city officials to make the completion of this facility a top priority. This vision has now become reality, thanks to the cooperation of a variety of wonderful partners.

Today, the Gateway Transportation Center is the City’s state-of-the-art multimodal transportation hub operated by the City of St. Louis Comptroller’s Office, led by Comptroller Darlene Green. It is conveniently located in the heart of downtown St. Louis where Amtrak, Greyhound, MetroLink and MetroBus service converge. This new facility provides passengers with a clean, safe and friendly transportation center featuring 24-hour operations staff, security and food service.

Since the March 2006 groundbreaking, the City of St. Louis worked in partnership with Bi-State/Metro, the Missouri Department of Transportation, the Federal Highway Administration, Amtrak, and Greyhound to complete the new Gateway Transportation Center. Construction was managed by the City’s Board of Public Service and built in three phases.

Jacobs Engineering and Kennedy Associates were the primary designers for this $26.4 million project. Development Programming Associates provided coordination and oversight. K & S Associates served as general contractor for the $14.2 million terminal and concourse linkage project. R.V. Wagner, Inc. was the general contractor for the $4.5 million track package. RQC Quality Constructors was the general contractor for the $2 million Bi-State/Metro bus facility. The total project cost also includes design and other pre-construction expenses. The MetroLink portion of the complex was previously constructed as part of the original MetroLink alignment.

Amtrak Service

At St. Louis, Amtrak offers five daily round trips to and from Chicago via Springfield and Bloomington-Normal, two daily round trips to and from Kansas City via Jefferson City, and one daily round trip to and from Arkansas and Texas, via Little Rock, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio. Amtrak passengers also have access to a daily shuttle connecting St. Louis with Carbondale, Illinois, and a daily train to and from New Orleans, via Memphis.

Most of the service to Chicago is sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Both Kansas City round trips are sponsored by the Missouri Department of Transportation, which recently announced plans to rename the service. More information about the “Name the Trains” contest will be available at the new St. Louis Gateway Station.

Amtrak has relocated its trains and ticketing from a building at 551 South 16th Street, which has served as an interim station since 2004. Designed as part of this project, that facility will be converted into an operations base for Amtrak train, engine and maintenance crews.

Greyhound Service

From the Gateway Transportation Center, Greyhound offers 35 daily scheduled trips to destinations across the United States, including Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, New York, Kansas City, Denver, Springfield and Los Angeles. Greyhound also provides Greyhound PackageXpress (GPX) shipping from the St. Louis Transportation Center location.

Greyhound has been serving the St. Louis area for nearly 80 years. Greyhound is the largest North American provider of intercity bus transportation, serving more than 2,300 destinations with more than 10,500 daily departures across the continent. The company also provides GPX, as well as charters and shore services. For fare and schedule information and to buy tickets call 1-800-231-2222 or visit the Greyhound’s website at www.greyhound.com.

MetroLink and MetroBus Service

The MetroLink Civic Center station (located immediately adjacent to the Gateway Transportation Center) offers daily arrivals and departures to destinations like Lambert Airport, Scott Air Force Base and Clayton. The MetroBus terminal (located just east of the GTC) offers daily routes to destinations throughout the St. Louis metro area. For a complete listing of all MetroLink and MetroBus routes, visit www.metrostlouis.org or call 314-231-2345 from Missouri or 618-271-2345 from Illinois.

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Reconnecting St Louis to the Mississippi; Don’t Cover the Highway, 86 It.

People are naturally drawn to large bodies of water — rivers, lakes and oceans. In St Louis we’ve got the mighty Mississippi as our Eastern border. Sadly we’ve made it far too difficult to actually reach the river.

Last week I did a post announcing the National Park Service’s open house to review their proposed General Management Plan for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial (aka the Arch & Arch grounds). I had jokingly suggested that the city wanted to replace the arch with the world’s tallest parking garage. Reader comments quickly turned to Memorial Drive and I-70 that divides the Arch grounds (and the river) from downtown.

Mayor of Affton wrote:

I think there’s room for 1 and 2 story buildings on the east side of a much smaller, narrower Memorial Drive, with a service road behind them on the arch grounds. Further, let’s really connect some neighborhoods with a train or trolley that goes from Soulard, to Chouteau’s Landing, across the Arch grounds on the east, up to the Landing, Lumiere, the Bottle District and North Broadway.

‘the dude’ wrote:

Highway 70 is already being rerouted – over the new Mississippi River bridge. The “Lid” plan is seriously flawed. The idea of building a lid over the depressed lanes is based on assumptions made before the new Mississippi River bridge became a real project and before we were attacked on September 11th. The Lid is a bad idea on many levels.

‘Kevin’ wrote:

It seems that nobody wants to discuss that the problem with the arch grounds is not the grounds them self, but the private land around the arch. Pretty much every building adjacent the arch grounds has its back to the arch. Imagine if when you looked out the Eiffel tower or the Colosseum all you saw was the back of buildings. The city needs to require all buildings adjacent the arch to have store fronts facing it. Imagine sidewalk dining or shopping looking the park. Its the only way to integrate the monument into a downtown experience.

And no, I have forgotten about the thing called I-70. If they are going to put in a new I-70 bridge they need to remove the section cutting the arch off from downtown. Have the highway end at broadway and fill in the I-70 trench. Do we really need to connect the two bridges?

‘dude’ wrote:

For starters, the NPS should complete a traffic and design study to determine the feasibility/desirability of abandoning the depressed lanes and replacing them with a new Memorial Drive as compared to going with the Lid option.

Forever people have complained about how downtown is cut off from the river and the Arch. The interstate is obviously the barrier. But none of the higher ups are talking about removing the barrier! Instead, they are proposing a literal band-aid solution. One that leaves some 80+ percent of the barrier in place.

‘Scott’ wrote:

My problem with the Arch grounds is that there is not much down there to draw me there and to stick around. The museum is a huge snooze and residents can only enjoy going up the arch so many times. We need attractions to pull people down there and keep them there and spend some money. An aquarium would be a great idea. We need dining options too. Leave the arch alone and develop the grounds around it.

All valid points. At the time the Arch won the design competition the highway was an assumed. It was just thought we’d all drive our single occupancy vehicles there. Those that would walk would do so only at the center of the Arch. To make sure we only crossed at the center new buildings both North and South of the center blocked off the downtown street grid. The result is that Memorial Drive is barely tolerable as a place to drive and not at all as a place to walk. To illustrate this point I’ve put together a short video:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6h6r_S-zU-o[/youtube]

The NPS is incorrectly focusing all their attention on connecting to downtown at one single point — in the center aligned with the Old Courthouse. A better connection to the Arch grounds and down to the river is more than a single bridge or even a 3-block “lid” can address.

The solution?

• I-70 needs to be removed from the equation (more on that further down).
• Memorial Drive needs to be reconstructed as a grand boulevard and renamed 3rd Street.
• Buildings fronting the existing Memorial need entrances facing the Arch.

The new Mississippi river bridge, when built, will become I-70. While some traffic uses this portion of I-70 as a pass through between North & South they can use my proposed 3rd Street Boulevard or other North-South streets on our street grid. I’d remove I-70 from the new bridge on the North all the way to I-44/I-55 on the South. This would permit a larger portion of the downtown and near downtown to begin to heal from the damage caused by the highway cutting off streets.

San Francisco’s Embarcadero Freeway carried 70,000 cars daily when it was destroyed by earthquake in 1989. Today the new boulevard still carries a considerable amount of traffic while encouraging pedestrians to walk along or cross it. San Francisco took the opportunity to connect the area into their streetcar system. I say we use this new 3rd St boulevard project as an opportunity to introduce a modern streetcar loop to downtown with a section passing right by the Arch.

This new modern streetcar line, complete with accessible low-floor cars, would use Broadway in one direction and the new 3rd in the other. The line would go North of the Edward Jones Dome to the site that has been hyped as the Bottleworks District. At the other end the line would use both Market and Walnut (or Clark). This would connect the Arch grounds to the future Ballpark Village, MetroLink light rail, and numerous hotels. On this end the line could turn around at 22nd with new development on the extra state land that was reserved for the abandoned 22nd Parkway. Back at the other end, when the dome is imploded after the Rams leave or we build them a new dome the line will connect to new development there. The line could be extended east along Cole to eventually reach the old Pruitt-Igoe site as a location for a new dome or whatever Paul McKee has in mind.

With high activity points along the route the line would be well used. Zoning along the line would need to mandate urban buildings with frequent entrances, not blank walls. Ditto along the new 3rd. The buildings we have now are a disgrace. Cars in parking garages have outstanding views of the Arch while the pedestrian on the sidewalk is subjected to a wretched environment.

A little bridge or a lid over the highway just isn’t enough. Earlier generations dreamed big and it’s time we did too if we plan to fix their mistakes.

Update 7/9/08 @ 3pm

I’ve been a bit busy lately and behind on my reading.  One item I overlooked until now is ‘The Case for a New Memorial Drive’ by my friend Rick Bonasch over on his site, STL Rising.  He covers the same topic in a detailed look at various issues – highly recommended.

ADA Curb Cut No Longer Compliant After Street Resurfaced

The city has been resurfacing several streets downtown. Initially they were grinding up the old asphalt in the evenings, forgetting people live downtown. After people complained they shifted the schedule so the noisy grinding work was done during daylight and the new asphalt laid after 5pm.

With the top most layer of asphalt missing for a few days it presented some challenges for me & my wheelchair. The biggest issue was avoiding the man hole covers that were now suddenly sticking up but still in the crosswalk. But it was temporary and I managed by changing my route or picking crosswalks that were less problematic.

One of the streets that was resurfaced was 11th. A few corners along 11th still lack an ADA ramp. For example the city has the top two floors at the building at 1015 Locust which is on the NE corner of 11th & Locust. The same corner lacks an ADA curb cut. The other three corners have cuts but that doesn’t help when the direction you want to go doesn’t.

BTW, corner ramps suck! They were basically a cheap way for cities to comply with the ADA — building one ramp to serve two directions rather than building two ramps at each corner — one per side per crosswalk. It did allow more curb cuts to be built with limited funds so that is a good thing. The trouble is now getting people to stop insisting the curb cut must be pushed to the very corner.

The problem with the curb cut at the very corner is that is it not in the natural line of travel down the sidewalk. All the time now I’m having to continually maneuver to the outside corners of the sidewalk. Not so bad when the sidewalks are empty but when others are around it often means I’m crossing in front of them or having to stop to cross behind them.

But these are also dangerous on streets with no curb lane. With traffic driving in the outside lane near the curb and these corner ramps means those of us in wheelchairs are being forced out near or, in some cases, in the travel lane of moving traffic.  Talk about a sitting target!  But this post is supposed to be about a single ramp that got worse after the street was repaved so let me get on with the main topic.

Above is the corner curb cut at the SE corner of 11th & Washington Ave.   As you can see the street now casts a shadow as it dips down to meet the ramp.  It didn’t do this before.  The ADA has guidelines on the slope of both the ramp and of the adjacent street.  The street can of course go downhill as needed but I’m talking about the “crown” ot the street — how high it is at the middle and how much does it angle off to the curbs.

Excessive slopes present a number of issues.  Those using manual chairs can have a harder time getting up the slope.  In the case above the slope is steep and sudden. In my power chair I feel like I’m going to tip backwards, the slope is that steep. Manual chairs often have anti-tippers to prevent falling backwards (little extra wheels at the back that prevent tipping back) but electric chairs have no such devices.  So with anti-tippers in the above situation a person may find as they try to cross that curb cut because as they go up the slope their anti-tippers may catch on the backside. This point is also now more prone to hold water.
My guess is the crew just put down too much asphalt in this section and didn’t realize the implications of their actions.

U.S. stopping oil shipments into reserve

In past commentaries I had suggested that dubya might try to do something (other than a tax holiday) to impact gas prices. Comments went like this:

“Can someone explain how the President has any effect on gas prices?”

He doesn´t. Only an idiot would suggest that he does. Oil prices, and by extension gas prices, are set on a world market. It´s that pesky supply and demand thing.

The sad part is, these idiots are allowed to vote, which is why we get the “leaders” that we do.

My response had to do with the federal strategic oil reserve, that two month supply of oil owned and stored by the feds. In the news last week:

Responding to congressional pressure, the Bush administration on Friday said it is suspending oil deliveries into the government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the remainder of the year.

The move came days after Congress passed legislation requiring President Bush to temporarily halt shipments into the reserve in hopes of lowering gasoline prices. The president is expected to sign the bill.

It remains to be seen what impact this move will have on global prices, if any. Still, congress can tell their constituents they tried.

Meanwhile, in parts of the country (like Chicago) motorists are paying over $4/gallon for self serve and nearly $5/gallon for full serve.  Diesel is quite a bit higher.  While some can afford to continue filling the tanks on their Escalades many others cannot.  The working poor are most impacted but they are also most likely the segment of the population not adverse to taking public transit.

I don’t think stopping shipments to the oil reserve will have much of an impact — about as much as a federal gas tax holiday would.  Releasing the millions of gallons of oil in the reserve back onto the market— that could have an impact.

This is our new reality folks.  Do we listen to groups like MoDot and build more highways based on their prediction of more trucks or do we realize we must as a society do a better way of getting people and goods from place to place?