40 Broadway 8:19 PM

In my absence from posting, my St. Louis excursions to blog about kept piling up to the point where the heap became incredibly intimidating. While they continue to accumulate, I thought I'd take a night off and post about one of the more recent ones--my trip to Badenfest, in North City, via the #40 Broadway bus.

St. Louis has plenty of amazing bus lines--ones that casually weave through our city's storied urban fabric and allow a passenger a finer look into our city than if he is driving himself. Take the #73 Carondelet, for instance, which offers glimpses into Lafayette Square, Benton Park, Dutchtown, and, of course, Carondelet.

Besides a short a jaunt over to the Anheuser Busch tourist center, the #40 is not a bus I'd recommend a visitor to our city hop aboard for some sight-seeing. It mostly sticks to Broadway itself, which, north of downtown, can be less than visually stellar. Even so, this is St. Louis, and even the most forlorn and neglected parts of town have an amazing backstory. While Rob Powers can show you each and every surviving house left in this now-mostly industrial district, I can only offer you what's visible from the bus.

Here are a few captures from my bus ride from downtown to the Baden neighborhood in North City.

Now arriving in Baden:

The Baden business district, seen above, is one of the city's most intact and attractive commercial corridors. The wide street made crowds seem a bit sparse at Badenfest this past Saturday, but the mood was lively and the smells wafting from barbecue pits were irresistible.

If you're ever hankering for an adventure on a Saturday or Sunday morning, there's really no better way to do it than to hop on a bus that you don't know very well (or at all!) and see where it takes you. See something interesting? Pull the chord and stop there!

Just as an FYI to all current and potential transit users: Metro is restoring yet more service on August 30. So before I send you to bus schedules, be forewarned that they're nearly all about to change. For more information on Restoration 2010, Round Two, click here. Soon, you'll have less of an excuse not to hop a more frequent bus to exotic parts of our city and region.

Metro Can Bring Us a United Cherokee, from Lemp to Grand 8:58 AM

Post-Proposition M in November 2008, Metro's service reductions would litter streetscapes everywhere with plastic bags placed over bus stops that, we now all know too well, read: "We Regret Due to Lack of Funding Service to this Stop has been Suspended".

Sadly, St. Louis's most exciting business district--Cherokee Street--was among those areas without transit service. Vanishing St. Louis observed at the time that "Downtown St. Louis [would] be without street level transit for the first time since before the Civil War". Likewise, Cherokee Street, the South Side's downtown, would lose its historic transit service as well, present since the 1890s in the form of an electric streetcar and later, of course, as a bus.

Today, the #73 Carondelet bus serves the eastern portion of Cherokee, between Lemp and Jefferson, which is known as Antique Row. Yet Cherokee between Jefferson and Grand is without service. This is unacceptable. All great cities, and by extension all great streets, should offer the opportunity to live without a vehicle. Living on or around Cherokee Street west of Jefferson is now made more difficult without direct transit service. Even a relatively short walk to the nearest bus stop can make a commute a headache. Living in the heart of the Cherokee District, say at Nebraska Avenue, one would have to walk six blocks to the Jefferson bus (#11 Chippewa), more than seven blocks to the Gravois bus (#10 Gravois-Lindell); nine blocks to the Grand bus (#70 Grand); and four elongated blocks to the Arsenal bus (#30 Soulard). This is not an impossible journey in any of these directions; just frustrating and inconvenient. We must press for a United Cherokee!

Image borrowed from WeLoveCherokee and edited by me.

Plus, currently, Cherokee Street and Grand South Grand seem miles and eons apart. Mostly this is due to the fact that Gravois is such a wide street with high-speed traffic. Transit has a way of healing unforgiving urban environments. If I lived in Old North St. Louis, for example, I'd likely never choose to walk the roughly one and half mile distance between Crown Candy and downtown--I'd take the bus. Without this bus service, Old North would feel like a distant planet from relatively nearby downtown--and a much less attractive place to live. Luckily, though, the #30 Soulard can get me to City Hall (to apply for a building permit to renovate my row house?) in less than 10 minutes.

The #73 Carondelet should therefore cross Gravois and connect with the city's best used bus line--the #70 Grand. At that point, it would not be a stretch for St. Louis University students (and other people who live along the long and populous Grand Boulevard) to take the #70 to the "Cherokee bus" and explore the city's most bustling commercial district.

People living in Benton Park along the #73 could then use just one bus line to get to a grocery store (the South Grand Schnucks, where an influx of shoppers might finally force the management to substantially refurbish that location. That's enough of an incentive, huh?).

 The current route of the #73 Carondelet. Can you even spot the pitifully short leg on Cherokee Street?

Now, would I love this bus to become a streetcar? Of course. But let's get the transit service restored first and see what else we can do later. Who's with me? Let's make sure Metro takes its funds from the Prop A victory and reestablishes a bus line down Cherokee in its 2010 Restoration plan!

Please do any and all of the following if you support a United Cherokee, from Lemp to Grand!

Email Metro officials: restoration2010@metrostlouis.org (thanks, Paul!)


Comment on Next Stop, Metro's transit blog, indicating your support for a United Cherokee.

Contact the two alderman who could have sway over such decisions: 9th Ward Alderman Ken Ortmann and 20th Ward Alderman Craig Schmid:

Ken Ortmann
(314) 622-3287
(314) 776-0161 Additional Phone

Email here.
Craig Schmid
(314) 622-3287
Email here.
 
Tweet Metro or its orderlies (note: term of endearment) with your support!
 
Official Twitter feed for Metro: http://twitter.com/STLMetro
 
Twitter feed for Courtney Sloger, Next Stop blogger and Metro Social Media Maven: http://twitter.com/STLTransit
 
Facebook Metro and leave a wall post indicating your support for a United Cherokee. Link to official Facebook page.
 
Thanks, all, and thanks to Cherokee Street News for giving me this idea!

STLToday Commenter Greatest Hits: Post-Proposition A Win 7:27 PM

I read through the Stltoday.com comments on Prop A's passing...so you don't have to!


Category: Doesn't Understand How Cities/Transit Work

There are many commenters who believe transit should serve all areas equally, despite the fact that population density and transit need do factor in. There are others who believe that the prosperity of suburbs is somehow related to the fact that there are no or few transit options. There are many others who believe St. Louis, in particular, is not fit for any sort of investment and is dying. These people don't seem to understand urbanism, transit, or St. Louis.

suburbianite April 7, 2010 2:23AM CST St Charles County prospers despite the lack of public transit!

MyOpine April 7, 2010 10:46AM CSTCan anyone tell me what is the business model of Metro? Is it to turn a profit or is it to subsidize transportation? Either way, it's Christmas time for Metro. I see a Vegas convention in the near future for their management. I wish I worked for a company that when their business model failed and couldn't turn a profit, could just go out and propose a tax. Let's raises taxes during a recession. Makes perfect sense. This is a permanent tax, not something temporary to just help them get out of the red. Yep, we need more 50 foot buses employing $30 an hour drivers out on the road driving out to West County to pick up 5 people. Makes perfect sense. $75 million a year? Heck, it might be cheaper to just pay the cab fare for everyone who needs a ride. What kind of management runs a business that needs $75 million a year just to survive? This was put on the ballet in April because it would of never passed in November. The supporters were well organized though. The supporters rolled out the "go green" t-shirts and stuck them on the backs of college students who still live at home.

Reality_Czech April 7, 2010 5:13PM CST Can someone list me the major employers that relocated to STL along a Metro line? I'm trying to think of one, but all I can see is downtown emptying out and the areas along the lines being "Escape from New York" sets in miniature.

Category: " All Transit Users Are Low-Lifes / Transit is Entitlement"

By far, the most popular sentiment among negative commenters is that they are paying for a good they will never use. This may in fact be true, but to call transit an "entitlement" ignores the huge cost of interstates and driving in general. While the fuel tax does indeed pay for a portion of interstate highway maintenance, local roads receive no such funding. Many drivers don't use interstates and yet are helping to fund them when they purchase fuel. Air and water pollution, noise, traffic, autocentric land uses, and personal injury/death are all an unfortunate byproducts of driving that are significantly reduced or ameliorated by taking mass transit. It's also rarely mentioned that transit use can save the commuter hundreds of dollars per year, as cars are not only expensive to society, but to the individual in the form of insurance, gasoline prices, oil changes, regular maintenance, collisions, etc.

The important part of this debate is that funding transit is a value statement for any society: that we wish to allow for mobility for all, for a cleaner environment, for a more walkable metropolitan region, and so on. Putting a price tag on these values is difficult, but most of us think these are worthwhile goals--which is why Proposition A overwhelmingly passed.

Comments that depict the non-car owner as a deadbeat, thug, or low-life are based on pure ignorance and an unhealthy civic state in this country. It shows that private automobility so limits social interaction that a whole class of people (car-dependents) have no clue how a significant portion of the population even lives. We are sharply divided as a metropolitan region and as a country. Comments like these highlight our divisions and lack of civility that is inherent when interaction between different groups in society is limited. What is most puzzling about a good swath of the comments is suggestions that students somehow won't pay into the system, but nevertheless voted for Prop A. Since when do students abstain from any purchases?

Underwhelmed April 7, 2010 5:54AM CST Now the majority will pay MORE for the minority. I don't like to pay for something I don't use. Charge the users more to ride, make them pay their own way. Transportation entitlements?

jwr8369 April 7, 2010 6:17AM CST And so it goes. I will have to hand over even more of my hard earned money for people with no ambition to make better of themselves. I like the quote at the end of the story, it pretty much describes St. Louis. No common sense. "We sunk a lot of time into it and effort with all our volunteers," Burns said. "But I think more importantly the lesson to be learned here is that an enormous amount of money can defeat common sense in St. Louis County." Enjoy your free rides, it's on me.

Vincent Gallagher April 7, 2010 6:35AM CST How can anyone cheer paying higher taxes? Because the people who voted for this tax increase don't pay taxes. They belong to Obama's entitlement constituency that sponges off the government. They had time to vote today because they don’t work and contribute to the tax base that supports all of these government programs and services. The middle and working class is having their income increasingly redistributed to the entitlement class.

Skooter April 7, 2010 7:56AM CST This is NOT a victory for St. Louis. It is a victory for the left wing socialists and entitlement queens. I pray this gets repealed at the earliest opportunity. Yeah, and the kids in the picture don't have a clue as to what they're really celebrating. If they did, they'd all be moving to different schools in different cities...(if they were smart).

38N90W April 7, 2010 8:18AM CST They look so happy! It really IS fun to spend someone else's money!

Hardsheller April 7, 2010 8:44AM CST The Soviet Union didn't die. It just swam across the ocean. The people of St. Louis just voted to enslave their fellow citizens so they can have something they desire. It's pathetic.

38N90W April 7, 2010 9:05AM CST Hey, maybe if they restore all the bus routes and add more MetroLink trains, the car thieves won't need to "appropriate" cars and get into high-speed chases! Wow, a real win-win! (the preceding massage brought to you by "Naive Citizens for Mis-Managed Mass Transit")

Category: Metro is Stealing My Money and Hasn't Changed a Bit!

I have addressed the notion of Metro being mismanaged on this blog. Metro booted the leadership that led them into a cost overrun on the Cross County extension and a resulting losing and expensive law suit. The agency has labored to open its operations up and involve the public. What else do these people want?

Ghetto Prez April 7, 2010 7:58AM CST I think the majority of voters rode the short bus. If you don't pay income tax you shouldn't have a vote. This is the biggest bunch of BS I've ever seen. A grossly mismanaged agency that spends like a drunken sailor just passed a tax hike. Un-friggin-believable.

Category: Just Buy Everyone a Car!

While this could have been included in the "Doesn't Understand Transit" category, it does deserve special attention. I found one comment that by a South Countian who commutes every day to St. Charles County for work. I was expecting him or her to proclaim a "no" vote for Prop A and to complain that he or she was not served by transit, so why should they vote for it. Instead, the commenter voted "yes"--s/he didn't want any more cars clogging up the highway and thought a reduced Metro system would lead to just that! Buying everyone a car (or calling each commuter a cab) ignores the incredibly high costs of driving and creating more traffic. Since this is an especially outlandish claim, I thought it deserved a specific counterpoint.

Scott Akins April 7, 2010 9:07AM CST I'm all for doing what's right for STL, but this tax doesn't make sense.If I do the math, since 1993 we've spent $15B on MetroLink and currently have 62k riders/day. That comes to a total fixed investment of $242,000 per rider! That doesn't even factor in the cost of financing. At that rate, it would've been more cost effective to buy cars for everyone.I don't see ridership growing enough to ever make the math work. If we can't prove viability over 17 years, we never will.In this economy we need to find better things to do with our precious tax dollars.

The Award for the Dumbest / Most Insensitive / Least Constructive Comment Goes to:

Speaks for itself. Welcome to Reagan County, Missouri. I wonder how Claytonites would feel about being the county seat to this new separatist county?

Skooter April 7, 2010 10:55AM CST I wonder if we can split the county in to two parts. We can use I-70 as the dividing line and evertything north of there can be 'St. Louis County' and everything south of there can be....'Reagan County, Missouri' or something like that. Than the RESPONSIBLE citizens can set their own rules and tax rates.

----

I hate to put too much weight on Stltoday.com's many trolling commenters. And it would appear that they are indeed in the minority given the wide margin of victory for Proposition A (also considering that there are more than legitimate reasons to have opposed it). Still, some of the arguments raised demonstrate a need for not just our local government, but our state and federal governments to show leadership in the arena of transportation. While other nations are building advanced systems that include high speed rail and excellent inter-urban transportation systems, the U.S. is still stuck in the modern era (1945-65), too often privileging automobiles over alternative forms of transit. In order to compete, we must upgrade our infrastructure and quit relying so much on fossil fuels and private automobiles. Proposition A positions St. Louis closer to peer cities who have already shown forethought in alternative transportation. Welcome to the "Portland, Oregon" club, St. Louis!

Transit Maps 11:46 AM

Washington D.C., 2010

Source: D.C. Kaleidoscope


St. Louis, 2040?

Source: Moving Transit Forward

This system can now be a reality in St. Louis's near future due to St. Louis County's overwhelming support for Proposition A last night.

The above map includes a handful of new light rail lines (including a Westport extension from Clayton, and a city-centric line known as the Northside-Southside Line); two commuter rail lines; and several Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines, including one down Grand Boulevard. Have no clue what BRT is or does? Check out this video from Curitiba, Brazil, the city credited with crafting this transportation idea.

I have seen t-shirts, posters, and other swag honoring the colorful, extensive D.C. rail transportation system. I'm excited by the possibility of St. Louis having a transit map worthy of swag as well!

Proposition A Passes! 10:44 PM

An early call, but likely a safe one!

Thank you, St. Louis County, for investing in the future of our region's transportation system! Today's vote triggers the enactment of a 1997 vote by St. Louis City to kick in a quarter-cent sales tax increase there, in addition to the half cent sales tax increase in St. Louis County. With a relatively reliable funding source, Metro may now plan its future. The agency may now expand rather than contract!

What's the next stop...err, step? Fighting for a greater share of the state of Missouri's transportation funding pie--one of the most road-centric in the country.

For more coverage of this exciting victory for St. Louis transit, see UrbanSTL.

Spoiled 6:55 PM

A woman rolls her eyes. "SIX minutes?" she whines, clearly exasperated.

She's waiting for the next Yellow Line Metro train toward northern Virginia. She's clearly used to the morning and evening rushes, where two minute waits are considered an inconvenience. But this is D.C.--its Metro system is the envy of many cities. In my eyes, she's spoiled.

Proposition A in St. Louis County can put us on the track to expanding our system and making it the best it can be for the realities of our region. A six-minute wait time for a bus or train will likely always be acceptable, even desirable, for St. Louis--but it will be unheard of if Prop A fails tonight. Buses every 45 minutes to an hour will likely be our (permanent?) reality. Our rail system, including its recent expansion, will suffer as well. Many eyes will be rightfully rolled. A bevy of groups won't even consider St. Louis as a place to live with such limited transit options--certainly not this woman trying to get to Virginia.

It's nearly 7PM EST here in Baltimore--which means, back home, folks in St. Louis County have another hour until polls close. Please vote yes on Prop A to ease the stress on our rolling eyes and tapping feet! Let's make spoiled commuters out of St. Louis's transit riders.

Transit Tales: All Aboard the Architecture Express! 2:41 PM

First of all, I have to say to my St. Louis County readers: please vote YES tomorrow, April 6, 2010, on Proposition A, a one half of one percent sales tax increase that will be dedicated to the funding of St. Louis's mass transit system. Your "yea" vote on A will ensure Metro transit does not endure another crippling round of cuts, causing hundreds to lose their jobs instantly and rendering many riders unable to reach their workplaces as well. Beyond that, a failed Prop A means a third class transit system in a city struggling to compete with its peer cities across the Midwest. As almost all progressive cities are in the process of expanding transit systems, St. Louis would be foolhardy to allow the drastic cutting of its own.

If you live in St. Louis County, and need to find your polling place or read the text of the ballot, etc., please click here.

If you would like some convincing on why Proposition A is important and what Metro has done to turn itself around, please click here.

And now, a transit-related story.

Several years ago, I was riding the #10 Gravois (now the Gravois-Lindell) downtown from the Bevo neighborhood to meet my father for a late lunch near City Hall. When I boarded the bus at Gravois and Itaska, a woman in her 50s nearly came sailing into my arms; she had not braced for the bus to quickly rear back onto the travel lanes of Gravois. I offered her my arm to keep her from falling. She had a particularly heavy camera and I'd have winced to witness that one break. She thanked me as she regained her footing, but to my surprise, did not take a seat. Well, not exactly anyway. She knelt on one of the seats closest to the bus driver, facing the window that was perched above. Her camera's lens tapped the window several times as the bus bounced through that unique tangle of city blocks that diagonal Gravois creates.

"Whoa!" she kept exclaiming. "Oh my word, are you looking at this, Frank?" I now noticed that the much more sedate man sitting (the correct way) beside her was her husband, or at least an acquaintance. "Look at all of this! Just look at it!" Dutifully, he did, eventually joining her in what looked to me an impossibly uncomfortable posture--his arms holding the back to her seat, twisting his torso to meet her demands for his visual attention.

More than interested, I wondered where the two were from but decided not to guess.

"Oh we're from Arizona," she responded in an excitable tone. "We have just never seen anything like all of this! That windmill [I guess the Bevo Mill hadn't escaped her view]...all of this brick architecture. It's just fabulous!" She wouldn't commit to facing the inside of the bus very long. Speaking to me, planted on the opposite side of the bus, seemed only to help her realize there was a whole other side of the Gravois streetscape that she was neglecting. Gasps ensued, then clicking--especially as she spied St. Francis De Sales--the Cathedral of South St. Louis. But Benton Park West's red brick streetscapes didn't fail to mystify her either and employed her camera with equal vigor.

I inquired a bit more into the circumstances of the affable Arizonans' visit, but I don't really remember what they said. What did stick with me is how the woman would not shy from a--GASP!--mid-sentence, like that, when another piece of our architectural heritage astounded her to the degree necessary to encapsulate it in a photograph.

I also remember thinking how my ordinary bus ride down a street I could navigate eyes closed suddenly seemed so memorable. The Arizonans made me even more proud of my city, even more assured of its beauty. It's a moment I'd never be able to relate to you right now if I were in that moment shrouded in the privacy of my own vehicle.

Public transit allows so many of these human moments. Driving my own car, I feel like an integral cog in an impersonal but practical machine--"integral" in the sense that if I make the wrong mistake at the wrong time, the machine has the potential to be destroyed! It's all so mechanical and inhuman, evidenced by the fact that people that would smile at me on a sidewalk instead race around my vehicle in a fit if I've lingered at a stop light too long.

Riding a bus or a train brings me to a totally different mental state. I rejoin the human race. I put faith in a driver I don't know. I sit next to and around strangers. I absorb conversations, sights, and smells I'd otherwise never take in. Not all of this new sensory information is necessarily pleasant, but it's all a part of participating in the human experience. On the whole, it's life affirming, though: watching people trudge through wintry sleet and huddle all together to make it to work on time, for example.

Even the simple things get me...like the elderly woman who thinks she's pulled the string for her stop with the right degree of pressure. She hasn't. No "Ding!". No light lit up saying "Stop Requested". The woman behind her notices, though, and, herself not getting off for several more stops, pulls the chord anyway. The old woman departs never knowing someone saved her aging joints a couple extra blocks of walking.

The city looks and feels different from the elevated position of a bus, too. As the drivers yell out each major intersection--"GRAND!" "COMPTON!" "ARSENAL!"--a sort of hyper-local patriotism reigns over me. These are our streets. We all share this network. The city before me is not a selfish figment of my imagination. I am proud to share it, too.

I just hope the next time the Arizonans visit St. Louis that they're still able to hop aboard another "architecture express" in a restored and expanded transit system--not an ailing and shrunken one.

Metro (St. Louis Transit) Now Has... 12:03 PM

 Source: Tracking Progress

...new and effective leadership. Bob Baer (pictured above) has reversed the public relations nightmare of the Larry Salci-era and all of its bungled law suits and expensive, over-budget Metrolink expansions. As a result of Baer's leadership and other restructuring, Metro transit now has all of the things below as well.

...credit card machines to make those of us who travel without bills and coins happier. I had a picture, but it's not working. Sorry. You can imagine what they look like though!

...heaters at nearly every Missouri-side Metrolink station. Sorry, no picture...yet.

...a new website interface. They also have started an excellent blog called Next Stop. Beyond that, Metro is on Twitter and Facebook. The agency participates in a bi-weekly live chat on STLToday.com every Wednesday at noon. So keeping up with developments and news with Metro is easier and more fluid than ever. If your questions still aren't answered, Facebook, Tweet, or live chat with them and get a nearly immediate response!

...plans for a new transit plaza at the Grand Metrolink stop (see above).

 Map of the proposed transit network, courtesy of Moving Transit Forward.

...a long range transportation plan, which has been approved by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments. The plan calls for an expanded system, including light rail, bus rapid transit, and commuter rail over the next 30 years. The plan is appropriately titled Moving Transit Forward and has its own website.

 Rendering of potential Transit-oriented Development project near Forest Park, via West End Word.

...plans for REAL transit-oriented development! Metro is working with McCormack Baron to develop a mixed use building atop its current parking lot at DeBaliviere and Pershing. The adjacent strip mall may be torn down and incorporated into the development as well. While development has occurred around Metrolink stops, there has not yet been a self-consciously urban transit-oriented development, with the stated goal of appealing to transit users.

A screen capture of Google transit directions.

...Google Transit compatibility. When Google Maps began adding a transit feature, St. Louis was one of the first cities to provide Google with the information needed to place transit-based directions on Google Maps. That's owed to Metro. Another great side story here: Metro initially abandoned its clunky though functional TripFinder feature available on its website in favor of more streamlined Google Maps. When several users complained about not being able to figure out the Google Maps feature, Metro put TripFinder back up and uploaded a video tutorial about how to use Google. That's great customer service if you ask me!

 The Hive, located at the Delmar Metrolink station. Courtesy of Next Stop; photograph by Dan Donovan.

...more art at Metrolink stations. While a controversial expenditure for the cash-strapped agency, art in transit is important for the system. Metro was quick to respond to its critics about why art is crucial to transit...and how it's a requirement for agencies receiving federal funding. I think the art adds a visual punch to transit and makes our transit system look invested and full of character. See the Arts in Transit website here.

...transit schedules available via text message! Note that this is NOT officially provided by Metro, but by a third party company, but still...it's an important feature that improves the whole transit experience.

Metro has been working hard to reverse its image as a poorly run and inefficient agency. All of the above improvements help tremendously to that end.

St. Louis County voters will decide the fate of a one half of one percent sales tax increase dedicated to Metro on April 6, 2010. While I intend to write a longer post explaining my reasons and reservations, I wish to let readers know that this blog endorses Proposition A and asks all St. Louis County voters to support it. Please vote yes on April 6!

The above improvements are only the beginning. An expanded funding source for Metro will only see to it that a system poised for greatness is not instead cast into third class status. What will become of these investments if Proposition A fails? Not just a civic embarrassment, a crippled transit system will hurt our economy and put us well behind peer cities in the enhancement of transportation infrastructure.

Vote "Yea" on A come April 6, 2010, St. Louis County!

St. Louis Transit Ridership Grows at the 7th Fastest Rate in the Nation 2:32 PM

Check out this graphic from Nate Berg's article "Transit Use is Growing, But Not Where You Think":

According to the article and graphic, the St. Louis region was the 7th fastest growing region for transit use from 2006 to 2008, showing a 16 percent increase in transit ridership between the two years.

Most comments about the reason for the jump in some seemingly unlikely cities (Charlotte, Detroit, Riverside, etc.) center around rising gas prices and a sinking national economy.

Transit use will continue to increase in St. Louis if the costs of driving increase. Another thing that will help decrease the rate of driving vs. transit is the growth of "road diet" streetscape improvement projects in the region and especially in the city. With Manchester and South Grand as the highest profile re-dos, these streets could demonstrate the importance of privileging pedestrians' safety and convenience over that of drivers. The usual saying "you can get anywhere in 15 minutes" should apply to hopping on a train or a bus and not so much to driving. Let's capitalize on the growth of transit ridership by continuing to cut subsidies to private automobile users.

Who says St. Louis never gets positive accolades?

Would Bus Ridership Increase... 6:44 PM

...if the bus stops looked like this?


Source: Planetizen, via The Design Blog

Instead of rusting in a junkyard, these decommissioned school busses contribute to the urban streetscape and busrider comfort.

Metro's Arts in Transit program's director should consider contacting the artist.

Speaking of Arts in Transit, the Poetry in Motion program seems intriguing. I'm assuming (it's not explained on the website) that these poems and the graphics that accompany them adorn the sides of busses and possibly Metrolink cars as well.

This poem, by Mary Ruth Donnelly, was my favorite:



Bringing art and life to transit will only endear people to it. Well done on both accounts.

Transform Missouri...via Transit! 3:03 PM

Governor Jay Nixon has wisely set up a website (Transform Missouri) where Missourians can submit recommendations as to where stimulus dollars should go.

Please, take some time out and let Governor Nixon know that putting all of this taxpayer money into new road building is simply unacceptable. Tell him that:

# St. Clair County, IL fully funds its Metro operations under a service contract funded from both local sales tax and funding from the State of Illinois. In 2008, Metro received more than $27 million from the St. Clair County Transit District.
# In contrast, the State of Missouri contributes $1.4 million per year to Metro. If the State of Missouri used the State of Illinois ratio to population, they would provide $150 million annually to Metro.

Source

Also mention that new roads only funnel investment away from already existing infrastructure. Take a look at I-70 through St. Charles County, or the Page extension: these new road and road expansion projects only suck residents and retail away from existing sites and fuel growth on the exurban fringe. This shifting of resources is bad for everyone in the state of Missouri except for the few residents who enjoy the new infrastructure.

Let Governor Nixon know that a first-class city needs first-class transit!

Have St. Louis County's western reaches warmed to transit? 11:52 AM

See the St. Louis Beacon's article: "West County talks to Metro about contracting for bus service".

The title says it all.

Might this spur a re-vote sometime in the near future to actually fund transit in the St. Louis region?

Interstate Rights-of-Way: Future Rail Corridors? 5:00 PM

Sure, we've all tossed this idea around in our heads. But think of it more seriously in the context of this economy and in the context of increasing prices for oil.

What if our interstate system, and the impending transportation stimulus package being discussed by our new president, were reformatted to include high-speed rail?

Read the article by Karrie Jacobs here.

...it’s time for us to look at the interstate system not as an aging network of highways in need of repair or replacement but instead as we might look at a navigable river. Congressman Earl Blumenauer, of Portland, Oregon, a noted infrastructure advocate, says the system represents “a tremendous national untapped resource.” It encompasses a lot of land. Funds were appropriated at the outset for the purchase of two million acres; according to one estimate, the system actually takes up 40 acres per mile, or 1.87 million acres. But what if we could make those highways beautiful, not by removing bill­boards, as Lady Bird Johnson did in the 1960s, but by using the corridors for more than moving cars and trucks? What if we thought of them as the backbone of a new, more diverse 21st-century transportation system? “It’s time for a different vision,” Blumenauer says. “And a principle for that is how we coax more out of existing resources.”

(Emphasis added by me)

While I've tossed around the concept of conversion of interstates into urban boulevards or transit corridors in the urban core, I never really though of the idea of converting the entire right of way, countrywide, into transit. Certainly, the bolded passage above is correct: interstate highways are so well funded and ubiquitous that their permanence as a national system seems guaranteed--much like a navigable river (well, the permanence part, anyway).

And so, it's not all that crazy to capitalize on their convenience and on their adjacent development to build transit corridors.

Imagine, I-55 becoming less a "highway" than a Metrolink line, at grade, throughout the city. It would theoretically be possible, then, to both restitch the urban fabric lost to interstate construction and to transport people effectively and efficiently. These highway-transit hybrids would function as cross-country rail in rural areas (think Amtrak), commuter rail in exurbs/suburbs (think Metrolink, the Illinois extension), and interurban rail in the city, which could then connect to existing urban transit systems.

I'm all for this innovative idea. The proposed funding imbalance favoring roads-as-we-know-them will be the biggest blunder of the new Obama administration if not addressed soon.

The New I-64 may border on scandal. 12:45 PM

We taxpayers have spent millions.

The media nearly gave us heart attacks last year, predicting that the closure of the western portion of the "New I-64" project was an effective "Sorry, We're Closed" sign for the whole region.

And, after all of that, this is what we got?

I guess I should have looked at the plans more closely; I didn't realize it was merely a highway widening project. What a waste of money: turning old Highway 40, whose bridges actually had some character, whose roadway is actually historic, into the Page Avenue extension!

I truly thought that thoughtful design would go into new bridges; that clover intersections would be going on a "road diet" and give up right-of-way for future development.

I think that it's a scandal, in 2008, to be widening roads, for this much money and energy wasted, without consideration to non-motorized regional transit--no parallel project to expand light rail--just another widened road. It's our portly roads that ensure an ease of access in and out of the city that have proven so stifling to attempts to bring retail (and residents) back into the City of St. Louis.

This is a waste.

And it further christens the automobile, far and away, as the unrivaled king of transportation in the St. Louis region, especially after the failure of Proposition M, which would have plugged a Metro budget leak into the hundreds of millions. Instead, we as taxpayers have allowed those hundreds of millions to be shifted to car users, for the umpteenth time in St. Louis history.

I think it's a scandal. And I and other urbanists have dropped the ball; we should have acted sooner. Might it be early enough to intervene in the eastern section?

A harrowing statistic about the future of Metro 12:01 PM

Will St. Louis County approve a tax increase for the region's transit agency come November?

According to the U.S. Census Bureau's 2006 American Community Survey, only 1.8 percent of St. Louis County residents use public transit to get to work. In the city of St. Louis, the figure is 10.3 percent.

Will that 1.8 percent plus whatever percentage uses Metro to go to ballgames, restaurants, shows at the Fox, et cetera help fund Metro so that the region can improve its transit system rather than witness it languish?

The Best News in a Long Time! 2:33 PM

This is late in coming, but reading this Post-Dispatch article almost brought a tear of joy to my planner's eye:

Crowds flock to Metro's trains, buses

Best of all is this quote:

Metro has reported serving nearly 5.5 million passenger trips in May — believed to be the highest one-month tally since the early 1980s.

With any luck, St. Louis County will pass a proposed sales tax to support Metro, which is the least publicly subsidized transit agency in the country.

New Orleans' Regional Transit Authority (RTA)'s bus and streetcar fare is $1.25--much cheaper than St. Louis's $1.75.

Fare increases should not be an option if Metro wants to assist residents in ditching their cars.