National ADA Symposium and Expo Assistive Technology Consumer Fair Monday & Tuesday

I would have been interested beforehand but now that I am disabled I’m very interested in the National ADA Symposium and Expo Assistive Technology Consumer Fair to be held Monday & Tuesday:

May 12-13, 2008
Downtown St. Louis, America’s Center

Paraquad and ADA Great Plains Center are pleased to announce the National ADA Symposium and Expo and the Assistive Technology Consumer Fair are collaborating on this joint event.
The Assistive Technology Fair will educate and empower consumers of assistive technology devices, equipment, products, and services to promote community participation and independent living.  This is the only show of its kind in the Midwest.
There is a wealth of products and services that enable people with disabilities to live life to its fullest.  The AT Fair provides community members with information on disability-related services and opportunities to try new products.
The AT Fair is free to the public and will be held in Hall 1 of the America’s Center from 12:00pm-8:00pm Monday, May 12th and from 9:00am-4:00pm Tuesday, May 13th.
The AT Fair is hosted by the Enabling Mobility Center, MS Society, Paraquad, and the Spinal Cord Injury Support Group.

For more information see atfair.org.  Come out and see everything from vans with slide out ramps to can openers for those of us with only one good hand.  Once you see some the products that are out there you begin to realize how much you take for granted.

Old North St. Louis 2008 House and Community Tour on Saturday, May 10th

My favorite former neighbor is showing off Saturday:

Join us for the Old North St. Louis 2008 House and Community Tour on Saturday, May 10th.  Ten homes and community gardens will be open to the public from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m.   You can also get a sneak-peek at the current redevelopment of the former 14th Street Mall.

Come see why Focus St. Louis declared Old North St. Louis “What’s Right with the Region,” why St. Louis Magazine says Old North St. Louis is “one of St. Louis’ most exciting up-and-coming neighborhoods,” and why Alive Magazine listed Old North St. Louis as one of “St. Louis’ Most Influential People, Places and Ideas of 2008.”

Visitors will be able to walk between the homes and gardens on the tour at their own pace or use the free “trolley” shuttle service.  With homes built over a span of 150 years – from the mid-19th Century to this year – the Old North St. Louis House Tour offers an opportunity to view a range of different housing styles.

Advance tickets can be purchased for $10 on our website at www.onsl.org or for $12 the day of the event.  Advance ticket orders will be available for pick-up at the registration area on the day of the tour, which will be on the south side of the intersection of 14th Street and St. Louis Avenue, at the edge of the former 14th Street Mall.

Your ticket includes a program and FREE ice cream cone from landmark Crown Candy located across the street from the neighborhood office. They may be purchased the day of the tour or in advance. If you purchase in advance, the tickets will be waiting to be picked up at the registration booth on the day of the tour.

Proceeds from ticket sales benefit the ongoing neighborhood improvement efforts of the Old North St. Louis Restoration Group.  ONSLRG is a 27-year-old neighborhood association committed to restoring and developing the physical and social dimensions of the Old North St. Louis neighborhood in a manner that respects its historic, cultural, and urban character.

For more information, call the Old North St. Louis Restoration office at 314-241-5031.

When I moved to Old North in 1991I was sure it would take off any minute.  It has taken a few longer but this area just North of downtown is really taking off now.

Lead with your strong side

Today I did something stupid which can serve as a good analogy for cities.  For new readers I had a stroke on Feb 1st that took out my left side.  Through more than two months of rehab I can walk again with a cane.  So today I decide to pick something off the floor.  In rehab I had done squats to pick up stuff before.

Here is where the analogy and lesson part come in…

I was in a hurry and ignored all that I had learned up to this morning.  Rather than positioning my feet and body so that I was more relying on my strong (right) side I just squatted down as I would have prior to the stroke.  Conditions had changed but I tried the old way.  I ended up sitting on my butt on the floor.
Cities do the same thing— they don’t use their strong side to support then.  St Louis’ strong side is great urban architecture on a nicely scaled grid of walkable streets.  The suburbs don’t have those strong areas.  Yet here we tend to lead with our weak side — suburban anti-city stuff.  The more of this we have the less of the strong side we have.  Ok, so I was sitting on the floor now.

No harm done, people stumble just as cities stumble.  Unlike many cities I had a backup plan.  You see getting off the floor with only one good arm, one good leg and one weak leg is not just a pop back up sort of affair.  In therapy I practiced getting up off the floor — the assumption being that I’d end up there eventually.   Cities and their political leaders just don’t practice how to recover when they fall.  I knew to scoot across the floor and make it to the sofa.  From there I could leverage my strong side to get myself off the floor and seated again.  Cities don’t have such a backup.
St Louis has had a number of bad falls —such as the very expensive downtown indoor mall, St Louis Centre.  Had St Louis built up its strong side rather than coming from a weak position we would have focused on traditional storefront shops along streets.  Instead we went with the suburban mall model sans the acres of free parking and it flopped big time.   St Louis, like me this morning, was trying the quick route.  I recovered fairly quickly but a city’s mistakes are harder to recover from.

Remember that is is best to use your strong side for needed support.

Gas Tax Holiday a Vacation from Market Realities

Presidential hopefuls McCain and Clinton are both suggesting we take a summer vacation from collecting the federal tax on gasoline. Obama is coming the closest of all the major candidates to just putting it out there — China & India are now crazy about cars, just as we are, the world only has so much oil and the refineries can only convert oil to gas so fast.

We’ve spent nearly a century investing in infrastructure that only works when oil is cheap. Now that most Americans live in auto-dependent suburbia the world market rules have shifted. This is our new reality. There is no good short term solution. The long term solution is invest in different transit systems that move people more efficiently. Of course we are so spread out now that becomes increasingly costly.

Government is going to have to make some tough decisions. In the St. Louis region, for example, we need to rethink the idea of MetroLink being a regional system. I don’t think we can afford to build enough lines to encompass our region. We need to think at the local street level — how can mass transit get the average Joe to work, to the store and so on.  We also need to think about goods — where do they come from, can we ship them more efficiently and better yet can we produce that same good locally for less?

We are in the midst of the reality we created for ourselves.  No summer vacation from the gas tax is going to change that.

We Have Our Own Stupid Bike Lanes

Proponents of bike lanes use arguments of increased safety to advocate an increase in such lanes. That would be nice and all if it were true. What is true enough is the perception of increased safety.

To the novice rider getting out into traffic can be intimidating. Bike lanes give these riders a mostly false sense of security. It is not the fault of the lanes but how they are designed in the US. Here they are largely left over roadway whereas in other areas where they are more effective they are part of a connected network, sometimes with their own signals and such. Here bike lanes simply start and stop out of the blue, leaving the rider on their own when the lane ends. This is where the safety argument falls apart.

Recently Slate did a couple of video segments looking for the stupidest bike lanes, click here to watch both. Go ahead and watch — they are brief and interesting. OK, back?

In July 2005 I did a report on a local bike lane that was more dangerous than stupid — it intentionally placed riders going straight ahead to the right of right turning vehicles.

The bike lane is that area nearest the curb. As you can see the cars in this lane above are required to turn right — right into cyclists heading South. The above is where 8th merges into 7th which at this point is basically Broadway.

Broadway is one of those hit or miss streets — the bike lane stops and resumes all of a sudden. A reader sent me a few pictures from further South, just South of A-B in fact:

Above as we approach the I-55 overpass we have two Southbound travel lanes, but no bike lane.

Under the bridge the roadway widens and a right turn lane begins to form for people going to Cherokee St or Southbound I-55. A brief bike lane appears to separate Southbound bikes from right turning motorists.

This is the exact spot where a cyclist should be at this point. But any rider skilled enough to get to this point doesn’t need a 10ft long bike lane to help them. The novice rider that hugs the right curb still needs help getting positioned in the right spot. If anything this tells motorists to not use all the road when turning right.

Bike lanes can be a good thing but only when they are consistent.  Having then only in spots where the road is too wide and not where it narrows again is just inviting a bike accident.