Riding the Bus, Changing Perspectives

This morning I had a meeting attend at the St. Louis Bread Company (Panera to everyone outside St. Louis) on Delmar in the Loop area. I also have a dangerously low back tire on my scooter than needs to be replaced. What to do?

I actually had two good choices, MetroLink (light rail) or MetroBus. Given that I can see from my balcony the #97 bus as it passes along Washington Ave and the fact it would drop me off across the street from my destination it was the winner between the two. Often I would not mind a walk to the Union Station MetroLink stop and then a walk to the Bread Co from the Delmar MetroLink stop but when it is cold and rainy and you’ve got to be there by 8:30am you look for quicker ways to get there. In this case, a bus on city streets was going to be faster overall — roughly 45 minutes.

On my scooter, in this weather but with a good back tire, I’d get there in about a half hour. Fifteen to twenty minutes in good weather. So it was going to take me a bit longer, but my choices were really limited. I could have gotten the tire aired up and hoped that it didn’t deflate midway. A cap would have been way too expensive. Others at the meeting were coming from other directions and I didn’t have their numbers anyway. So this morning I simply got up when necessary and made my way over to the bus stop.

The bus arrived on time, just past 7:30am. Of the twenty I was only the second white person, everyone else was black. I say that simply as a statement of fact. Shortly after the young white kid (maybe 20) got off the bus. Between downtown and the loop numerous folks got on and off, all black, and I was the sole white person.
Personally, I think it is good for non-minorities to be in places where they are suddenly the minority. For the male business person to be among a group of businesswomen, the college student to be among only seniors, and for the white guy to be on a bus where everyone else is black.

Sitting there, on the bus, I thought about what I was going to write today. Ah, this bus trip! But I can’t just talk about bus stops and such. Race, yeah that should be a good topic.

I think to many whites we see a bus full of non-whites, often black. And many people, be they black, white or any other, see bus riders as being poor. But this morning I looked deeper, closer past the color of skin or social class. What did I see?

Today I saw many people, just like me, simply going about their daily lives. They too, probably lacked a car. People were heading to work, or in the case of the VA hospital at Delmar and Grand, getting off work. The driver seemed to know many riders, likely the regulars. If we can all learn to get past issues of race and class, and simply see others as human, public transit and so much of our public lives will be improved.

As we all know by now, in two weeks I-64/Hwy 40 will be taken out of service for two years. For many, I think MetroBus is viable choice. Yes, it will take you longer to get from A to B (or to A-B). You know what, so will being stuck in your car on Manchester Road! Interestingly, the more people use the bus and/or light rail the better the roads will be for those who are driving. Those single occupancy cars consume a considerable amount of space when stored all day and when packed onto arterial roads.

Learn the schedule(s). Bring your iPod and some reading. At the very least, give it a try. While you are doing so, leave any pre-conceptions about the bus and who rides it back at the curb.

Individuals Fighting to Keep MoDot from Closing Portion of I-64

On the eve of shutting down a portion of I-64, still known locally as Highway 40, one traffic engineer is upset by MoDOT’s plan. It appears that he and others have built us an expensive roadway system that is critically tied to a single highway. Close it and our region will cease to function, he claims! Wow, brilliant planning to be so reliant on a single corridor.

From Joe Passanise’s stophighway40closure.com website:

Imagine ALL the lanes of Highway 40 are completely closed in both directions – for TWO years. You are one of about 160,000 motorists who normally travel Highway 40, but now have to find alternate roads. You are stuck in traffic every day this week going to and from work using alternate roads that are packed with traffic. You inch along with other motorists hoping to move faster – but you realize it is gridlock traffic again. You are getting frustrated and impatient waiting through the endless number of traffic signal cycles. Eventually you get home – drained, tired and angry at whoever is responsible for creating this traffic mess.

You realize that your travel time has increased about three times your normal travel time. This has increased your cost about three times more for gasoline. This means you are spending less time with your family and tripling your cost of traveling to and from work.

Well, Mr. Passanise, you actually need to have a grid to have gridlock! Back in the days before we abandoned how cities were built for centuries, we had a grid. It was a nice grid that took people in all directions. One street backed up, no problem, just go over a block or two and go through that way. Typically blocks would be 300-600ft long. Some streets were more prominent than others but this allowed local traffic to use a lessor street while through traffic used a more major street.

Along comes the traffic engineer and his buddies the urban planner and visionary architect and they dream up a better way, doing away with the grid in new areas. The new streets, with the promise of easy motoring, would go from the local cul-de-sac to the collector road to the arterial and finally to the highway. The only through streets would be the arterials and highways. The old grid was messed up as well, with new highways terminating the existing grid, rendering it only partially effective.

The irony is, of course, that if our suburban areas did have a grid the closing of the interstate wouldn’t be such a big deal. Motorists displaced from the interstate would have numerous alternative East-West routes. Instead, with only a few East-West streets like Manchester Rd, Clayton Rd and Olive, those seeking to traverse the mid-county area of the region are going to be royally screwed very soon. For reasons stated above, it is not going to be gridlock. More like artery blockage.

Suburban advocates have long cited the public choice theory for the rise of suburbia (and the fall of inner cities), that people voted with their feet and moved to where they wanted to live. Well, true enough. But now these same folks, their kids and grandkids, aren’t so pleased with their choice. With public infrastructure spread out over increasing amounts of land per person, they come to the public trough expecting everyone to subsidize their lifestyle choice, one totally dependent upon the car on limited-access highways. We’re not asked to buy the car, just everything else. Oh yeah, and fight off anyone that attempts to limit our supply of cheap oil so that we don’t have gas prices commensurate with the rest of the industrialized world.

Where does Mr. Passanise live? In suburbia, of course. Let’s take a look, shall we:

Mr. & Mrs. Passanise live in Creve Coeur, in a condo purchased in 2005 (lower right, near golf course). As we can see, the Passanise’s have a number of businesses, including a number of car dealerships, not far from their home. While sidewalks exist in some places, they are certainly not complete and you can’t walk door to door as you would in a traditional neighborhood of years past or newer versions such as New Town at St. Charles. Along Olive are several places to buy groceries; Provisions, Trader Joes and a Dierbergs (or is that a Schnucks?). However, I certainly wouldn’t want to walk to these from Passanise’s condo. I can see how someone living in this environment is saddled to car. This brings us back to the public choice theory, they voluntarily moved to an auto-centric part of the region (of course, that is hard not to do).

Interestingly, the City of Creve Coeur is not pleased with their suburban environs that lack a true downtown. The grid-less and congested streets, the increasingly larger parking lots, the dangerous sidewalks, and so on created by traffic engineers and others doesn’t really work. Today, a new set of planners are carving out a true downtown for Creve Ceour, just north of Old Ballas Rd. How are they doing this? They plan to construct a street grid of short blocks!

But let’s move on to Passanise’s main claim, the additional costs to motorists during the shutdown;

Ignoring the collateral cost of depression and stress to the personal lives of each of the 80,000 motorists, the collective cost for additional fuel and time for Highway 40 users for two years is estimated to be $592,400,000 [fuel]+ $6,979,200 [time] = $599,379,200 or approximately $600 million. Please note that this is more than the $552 million construction cost budgeted by MODOT.

How does his calculations compare to say keeping a lane or two open in each direction during the project? We don’t really know because he is only comparing from a base of doing nothing, not the suggested alternate of keeping traffic moving through the construction zone. Not only would keeping a lane or two open increase the direct costs by MoDOT but is not like motorists would be able to get through in the same amount of time they are today. Instead of two years of construction this might take three or more years to complete. People who are dependent upon the highway are going to have delays and unless they’ve got a Toyota Prius that shuts off when stopped, they will waste gas idling. If he is going to claim the delays will cost another $600 million we need to see the estimates for keeping a portion of the highway open. From a worker safety standpoint, keeping a portion of the highway open will increase the risk of injuries or death for those doing the work.

Granted, Mr. Passanise is right, people’s lives will be significantly impacted by the closure. We’ve become used to being able to get pretty much anywhere in the region, either side of the river, in under a half hour. That will soon change, one of the realities of sprawling to the degree that we have. We’ve had it easy up until now, time to pay the piper.

MoDOT is saying they need to shut down the interstate to stay on schedule and on budget. Given the flack over Metro on the extension of our light rail, it is hard to blame them for keeping the budget and time table in mind. But earlier tonight, at Passanise’s meeting, the speakers were all upset with MoDot for putting their budget as the top priority. Yeah, what are they thinking, not wasting our tax money?

Passanise, being the good traffic engineer, wants to keep cars moving 24/7. Based on his estimates, Mr. Passanise seems to think everyone will continue to drive their own personal single occupancy cars for the next two years. However, car pools will form, transit ridership will increase and yes jobs will shift around the region. It will be rough going at first but people will find ways to adapt.

However, it is true that not everyone can adapt. For example, those living in subdivisions just off say Clayton Road, near the epicenter at I-170, will have little choice but to use Clayton Road if they plan to ever leave their homes. Sidewalks and crossings are already poor in many of these areas and increased traffic will make it worse. Bicyclists, I’m told, are already getting told by police to get off the road and onto the sidewalk.

The irony here, of course, is that if more people walked or biked the problem wouldn’t be as bad. Still, we very much have a one person, one car mentality. There is a reason your sedan has four doors and extra seat belts! If we actually had a street grid in many parts of the county, residents could access nearby stores without adding to the congestion on main arterials.

Tonight’s meeting was poorly attended, maybe 15-20 non-news people. The speakers were an interesting group, besides engineer Passanise we had Missouri State Rep from Frontenac, T. Scott Muschany (R-87) and former school board member and a former candidate for every office, Bill Haas. Muschany has filed a bill to make it illegal to shut down a highway for more than 60 days at a time. Haas intends to file a lawsuit to attempt to block the shutdown.

Me? I say shut it down. Not just for a couple of years, but permanently. Make a nice boulevard out of it with 4-6 total through lanes and slip roads on each side with on-street parking in front of urban buildings lining the corridor. This through section in the middle would have limited intersections but many more streets would be able to cross the roadway, so that you would not end up with homes on one side of the highway able to see stores across the way but have it be a long drive around to get there.

Yeah, I know, it ain’t gunna happen, just had to put it out there again. I also registered shutdown40.com which links back to my Highway 40 category here at UrbanReviewSTL.com. A gimmick? You bet, I can register domains with the best of them.

We are going to get a big ugly rebuilt highway that will be great until it fills up with traffic in short order. More cars & truck, more infrastructure, more pollution, more maintenance, more sprawl, more dependency, and more foreign oil. Frankly, I’m glad MoDOT is shutting down the highway. Maybe folks will get the message that living in a physical environment that forces people to drive everywhere isn’t very bright.

No December Preservation Board, Meeting Tonight on Highway 40

There will be no December 2007 meeting of the St. Louis Preservation Board.  Well, technically they will meet by teleconference this week to set up a date for a second meeting in January 2008.  Normally their meetings are held on the 4th Monday of each month, which happens to be Christmas Eve this year.  In these cases, the meeting is often moved up a week.

Tonight (12/17/07), at 6:30pm, a public meeting will be held by traffic engineer Joseph Passanise regarding his opposition to the full shut down of portions of highway 40 through 2009.  This meeting will be at 6:30pm at Maggie O’Brien’s located at 20th and Market (map).   For more information see stophighway40closure.com.  I think I’ll walk the half mile to the meeting rather than take highway 40 to get there.

Two Years After Wheelchair Bound Resident Killed by SUV, Sidewalks Still Not Passable

Yesterday a jury found the city responsible in the death of a woman who was using her wheelchair in the street when she was struck by an SUV. Elizabeth Bansen had wheeled the three blocks to the Mobil station east of her apartment to get a sandwich. The Mobil was and is the closest place to get food in the area.

From the Post-Dispatch in November 2005:

Federal law makes wheelchair access a civil right. St. Louis has responded aggressively in the past decade by putting curb ramps at 90 percent of the city’s intersections at a cost of $7.5 million, said city streets director Jim Suelmann.

Despite these efforts, certain areas — such as Bansen’s midtown neighborhood — fall through the cracks. Sidewalks are the responsibility of property owners, Suelmann said. The city offers to pay for half of a sidewalk repair if a property owner asks for help or if there is a complaint about the condition of the sidewalk, he said.

From Today’s paper:

Thomas McDonnell, an attorney for the city, had argued that the sidewalk on the south side of Delmar Boulevard was passable, and that in two years of living nearby, Bansen had never complained about its condition.

I like that argument, if you don’t complain to the city your heirs shouldn’t have a claim for negligence. And sorry McDonnell, the sidewalk between the store and her former home is not passable today. Clearly the city is not sure on this point, also from today’s paper:

The city’s director of streets, Todd Waelterman, said Wednesday afternoon that he was not sure whether the sidewalk had been fixed. “I can only tell you the truth: I do not know.”

But [City Attorney Patti] Hageman said she understood it had been fixed.

Well, it ain’t fixed! Is it better than it was when Bansen was struck and killed? Yes. But is it passable? No.

As we learned from Barden v. Sacramento, courts have ruled that sidewalks are part of the ADA and basic service cities provide to citizens (source and legal brief from the Dept of Justice). The city must now pay the parents of Elizabeth Bansen $250,000 — a nice sum of money but nothing compared to a love one.

I wanted to check out the conditions myself.

This morning I started at the Mobil store and walked both sides of Delmar from Jefferson to the apartment three blocks to the west where Bansen resided until she was killed. I was wearing gloves as I took the pictures so you’ll see a couple of fingers in a few pictures, sorry about that.

Above: Starting at the Mobil store we see from the sidewalk that the car wash exit comes between the public sidewalk and the front door of the store. Pedestrians must go to the auto exit to go around this obstacle. The orange cone in the above is in the middle of the no parking area adjacent to an accessible parking place, likely to keep people from parking and blocking the ADA ramp.

I cross Delmar and headed Westbound toward her apartment. Above is looking back at the Mobil, Jefferson is to the right our of view.

So here we are on the South side of Delmar facing West. To the right, out of view is the Mobil station. To the left and behind me is 2600 Delmar, the offices of general contractor EM Harris. Their sidewalk is new as part of their recent renovation of the building. Immediately to my left is a vintage car dealership, also a new addition to the street. The sidewalk here is fairly new. Just ahead, past the tree, you can see part of it is not finished yet.
It was in this general area, I believe, that she was struck. A streetlight was said to be out at the time, presumably this one.

Further up we see broken sidewalk in front of offices of the state Department of Natural Resources. This is next door to the Scott Joplin House museum operated by the state.

This may look fairly passable but to someone using a manual chair with small front wheels, going through here is a good way to get stuck.

Again, sorry about the glove blockage. Anyway, after crossing Beaumont St we can see recently installed sidewalks, so new street trees have not yet been planted. The adjacent land is owned by the state which may have paid to have their sidewalks done.

Then we run into a problem, a very old and un-passable sidewalk. The owner of the vacant land to the left is N & G Ventures, LC (aka Paul McKee). This land was purchased about six months prior to the accident. Not surprising, the falling down building on the corner is owned by the city’s LRA (Land Reutilization Authority).

Looking back where we had just been, we can see that at that corner there is no curb ramp.

Bansen’s apartment was here, on the North side of Delmar. This accessible unit is located not on the front sidewalk but off the back. Given the either incomplete sidewalks or those with steps, I’m uncertain how she would have gotten out to Delmar.

Heading back Eastbound now toward the Mobil, the sidewalk in front of the apartments where she lived are fine.

Getting back to Leffingwell Ave, however, and we are again faced with a curb rather than a ramp. This would force anyone in a wheelchair to use the street instead.

Besides the broken sidewalk in front of the existing business on the street, much of the sidewalk area on this block is completely impassable to a person in a wheelchair. It does, however, have a new curb cut at the corner.

Looking back West after crossing over Beaumont, we can see the new sidewalk adjacent to state owned land. This stretch of Delmar is in the 6th ward where Kacie Triplett was just elected earlier this year.

This city doesn’t know how to construct environments for pedestrians. Subsidized new construction is being built lacking any means for pedestrians. Drive-thru places are popping up throughout the city and region while pedestrian access is ignored.

One of my next steps will be to request a copy of the city’s latest ADA Transition Plan, to see how they plan to more. Will it continue to be hit or miss — installing the corner ramps to sidewalks that are not passable? We already have places like Loughborough Commons where it was suggested the partial lack of sidewalks along Grand as a reason to blight the area only to have the developer remove all the sidewalks along the East side of Grand — even though the West side of Grand is also not compliant by not having curb ramps. That was why I spotted a guy riding his mobility scooter in the street last May (see post).

Despite millions, make that billions, being spent around this region on various projects we are seeing the quality of life for the pedestrian continue to decline overall. Sidewalks are basic service of cities — one we need to demand. Aldermen need to stop funding pet projects in their wards so that we can get some real money to connect real places together.  For example, one block North of here along MLK we see new sidewalks and curbs from Jefferson to Grand.  Looks pretty good, especially from an SUV windshield.  However, in all that distance is has one crosswalk — yes, one!!!  It was designed to look pretty but not actually function well for citizens attempting to use the sidewalks.   See prior post on this MLK streetscape fiasco here.

At some point we must begin to build our public rights of way for those using means other than the private car to get from place to place.  It doesn’t mean at the exclusion of motorists, just not at the exclusion of pedestrians.

“Clowns” on Jury Award Metro Zip!

The Post-Dispatch is reporting this afternoon that the jury in Metro’s case against four contractors reached a decision — Metro gets nothing out of the $81 million it sought. The contractors counter-suit against Metro? They get not quite half of their requested $6 million — $2.56 million. Ouch, that has to hurt.

Larry Salci, the head of Metro, must be a tad upset. He is probably calling folks more than just clowns. Earlier this month he said of KTVI’s Elliot Davis, “He fits right into St. Louis, he’s a (expletive) clown.” Salci later apologized.

Will this impact voters in St. Louis County in February when they are asked to approve a half cent sales tax to keep Metro solvent as well as raise money to extend the light rail system? Has Salci’s job security changed?

UPDATE 11/30/07 @ 7pm — link to article from St. Louis Business Journal.