Notes From a MetroLink Luncheon

Yesterday I attended a luncheon hosted by CMT & WTS and sponsored by consultants HNTB. Speakers were Metro CEO Larry Salci and East-West Gateway Project Manager Donna Day.

Salci painted a rosy picture of the Cross County MetroLink extension, promising they will meet the budget and time table set in March 2005. That budget, $676 million, is $85 million per mile. Salci also indicated their budget for FY2007, which begins on July 1, 2006, is balanced. However, for FY2008 they are projecting at $28 million deficit due to various reasons such as deferred payments on Cross County, new rules on funding of employee pensions, and operations of the new lines. Salci indicated they plan to ask voters for another 1/4 cent sales tax just to break even.

Salci indicated the public will be “pleasantly surprise” by the completion date. The expected completion is around October but he said they are doing well on their schedule and that we’ll be seeing testing soon. Expect more news next month.

Donna Day elaborated on the Northside/Southside Study that her team is conducting. For the most part her talk was not much more than what we’d get from the study website. For a few months now we’ve been hearing talk of the team evaluating alternate routes to those that were considered the locally preferred routes back in 2000. Well, she showed these alternates for the first time. But, following the meeting, I was asked not to share what they were. Nothing would be gained by telling you now so I’ll just give you a hint.

One alternate to the Northside route was shown. It was, for the most part, a variation of the published route. On the Southside a couple of variations on the published route were shown in addition to a few completely different choices. The original 2000 routes as well as these alternates will be shown during a series of public meetings to be held next month:

Northside

Tuesday, June 13, 2006
5:00 p.m.-7:30 p.m.
Herbert Hoover Boys and Girls Club
2901 N. Grand
St. Louis, MO 63101
Presentations at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

Downtown

Wednesday, June 14, 2006
3:30 p.m. -6:00 p.m.
Downtown St. Louis Partnership
906 Olive Street
St. Louis, MO 63101
Presentations at 4:00 p.m. and 5:15 p.m.

Southside

Thursday, June 15, 2006
5:00 p.m. -7:30 p.m.
Monsanto Center
Missouri Botanical Garden
4500 Shaw Blvd. (at Vandeventer)
St. Louis, MO 63110
Presentations at 5:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m.

If we look at our current MetroLink system, as well as the soon to open Cross County extension, we can see that it has only a few at-grade street crossings. The new line, in fact, goes to great lengths to avoid any intersections. So it is no wonder East-West Gateway is taking a safe approach to suggesting the new proposed routes run in-street. That is, they are suggesting “reserved” lanes rather than mixed traffic. Physically this would look like a median down the middle of the street with poles for the overhead wires.

The implications are that crossing the street by foot, bike or car would only be possible at major intersections. The pros, they argue, is as a regional system the travel times are simply too high in a “mixed-traffic” system. At issue is how new systems are funded, they must show the new line will provide a time savings for commuters. So, the modern streetcar system I’ve advocated here before can provide excellent localized service but cannot compete with car travel from the suburbs. So, all we need to do is get Congress to change how they fund new transit systems…

– Steve

Forest Park Lease Review Committee To Meet Wednesday & Friday

Did anyone else catch this in the Board of Aldermen calendar?

05/17/2006
Title: Forest Park Lease Review Committee
Meeting Type: Committee Meeting
Sponsor: Board Alderman
Time: 1:00pm – 2:00pm
Location :Room 234
Message: To be announced.

Room 234 is not a readily accessible conference room. Known as the Congressional room, it is accessed through the Citizen’s Service Bureau offices numbered 234 and located in the NW corner of the 2nd floor of City Hall. The same committee also looks to be scheduled for Friday at 11am, same location.

This is presumably the four aldermen selected by Mayor Slay to review the terms of the deal to lease 12 acres of Forest Park to BJC for the next 90 years. From MayorSlay.com:

As the general plan now heads to the Board of Aldermen for its consideration, I have asked four senior aldermen – Lyda Krewson; Freeman Bosley, Sr.; Fred Wessels; and Steve Conway – to look over the financial details and report back to me. If they believe the City should get more money, we will ask for more.

So if you are interested in the BJC/Forest Park issue I suggest you make a showing at these meetings.

– Steve

Denial of Service Attack Attempts To Silence Urban Review

If you tried to reach this site yesterday between 1pm and 2:30pm you may have noticed it acting really slow. Well, the reason is my site was being repeatedly attacked.

From my web host:

The computer that’s flooding your site with requests has an address of […I’m not quite ready to go public with the IP just yet].

Yesterday between 1 p.m. and 2:30 p.m., the computer with that IP address hammered your site, sucking up 109,324 pages, 109,853 hits and 5.51 GB (gigabytes!) of bandwidth. It was making 20 requests a second. It’s possible that somebody wrote some sort of automated script that went awry. It’s also possible that someone was maliciously trying to shut down your site.

Here’s a typical line from the access log:

[The IP address was here] – – [15/May/2006:14:06:26 -0400] “GET / HTTP/1.0” 200 12765 “-” “Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.1.4322)”

In the 18+ months I’ve had my blog this has never happened. Now what could I possibly be saying that would warrant an attempt at shutting down my site?

The code above, I’m told, makes a request for the home page twenty times per second. Other code included a repeated search. Several internet experts are now examining the log as a denial of service attack is illegal. Our server’s ISP will be contacted to help in the investigation of the source.

I know where the attack appears to have originated. At this time I am not releasing that information until after the web gurus have had a chance to verify if this was actually the place of origin or if the IP was falsified to implicate an innocent party. All information gathered will be turned over to law enforcement.

– Steve

Ald. Gregali on Florida, McDonald’s & Status Quo.

Today I received the following comment on the post about the effort to recall Ald. Jennifer Florida:

You all really need to focus on something else. One, Patterson is crazy. Why didn’t he put out the recall for Ald. Vollmer over the St. Al’s development on the Hill? Why isn’t he taking on the Mayor? Is he going to take on the whole BOA? He’s a wanna be. He lost to Dorothy Kirner and he is spreading his discontent, bitter seed. If he were a leader in the Community he wouldn’t be doing this. It’s malcontent not leadership or the resolution to his problem. He doesn’t even live in the neighborhood.

And who is the real problem? Schmid couldn’t get anything done. Jennifer inherited the mess on Grand Ave.

Schmid created the problem. Ald. Florida has taken the initiative and has made a marked improvement in the Grand and Gravois area.

You can’t let a few zealots control what elected officials are doing. Most of the electeds ideas are good. They will never please us 100% but I think she is doing 100% better than Schmid ever could. He can’tr make a decision or complete a project.

Focus on Schmid and shut Patterson up!!!

The email address used for the above was the work email of 14th Ward Alderman Stephen Gregali. Of course, as you all know, email addresses can be false. Rather than assume it was actually from Ald. Gregali I emailed him asking as much. Shortly after Ald. Gregali responded:

Mr. Patterson, I believe someone is using my name in vain.

If you could forward to me the content of the discussion I would appreciate
it. I do not appreciate someone trying to disparage my reputation.

I took him at his word and sent back the link.
… Continue Reading

HUDZ Committee & Aldermanic Courtesy

The controversial Board Bill #39, to amend the Grand/Gravois/Meramec redevelopment area to allow a drive-thru on a single parcel along the mile-long area (encompassing 61 acres), is not on the formal agenda for the Housing, Urban Design and Zoning Committee meeting for this Wednesday morning at 10am (room 208 city hall).

Committee Chair Alfred Wessels (13th Ward), probably one of the strongest supporters of aldermanic courtesy, has the ability to allow for last minute additions to the agenda. We’ll see if he tries to pull a fast one to help out his colleague in need.

Wessels has told me directly he supports the old practice of “deferring” to the wishes of an alderman as they assume he/she knows what is best for their own ward. Back in the day when nothing new was being built and aldermen were just handing out patronage jobs and putting up stop signs, where requested, such a practice might have been OK. Wessels has been in office so long it is likely a challenge for him to think any differently than they have for decades.

But this old school tradition sells the city short — big time. Today’s developments are bigger in scale than anything we’ve seen for a good 40 years yet we are treating major planning issues like small time concerns. Nobody in city government is looking out for the city as a whole. We’ve adopted a new strategic land use plan but it is a worthless document until our zoning is modernized from its 1940s roots.

Planning wise the city is in a mess. Aldermen are selfishly protecting their territories to the detriment of the city as a whole. Aldermanic courtesy must end if we are to update our zoning and look at how we are to redevelop those areas of the city that have been damaged through suburban sprawl and abandonment over the last 50 years. We cannot thrive under the current political structure.

Those aldermen, such as Florida and Wessels, who support Aldermanic Courtesy need to be sent back to their day jobs or at the very least get a strong message that we will no longer tolerate them deferring their legislative duties to the wishes of a single person.

– Steve