Forced into the street to reach the bus stop
Last Saturday I decided to catch the #30 Soulard bus northbound to go to Old North St. Louis. For new readers, I often use a motorized wheelchair to get around.
So you can imagine the challenge of getting past 14th & Lucas to reach the bus stop on the curve, just before the building in the background. I ended up going in the street until I got to a drive just before the stop. My only alternative was to go several blocks further in the opposite direction. The lack of accessibility was no fault of the transit agency. No, the blame is squarely on the city. Just a hundred feet away is Washington Ave where tons of money was spent some years ago on a fancy streetscape. So if I stay on one street the accessibility is decent.
– Steve Patterson
Just another example of aging infrastructure, limited resources and having to make choices. I'm sure the city would like to make every intersection fully-accessible (better for its constituents, more public works jobs for small contractors), but when it boils down to adding a curb ramp or repairing a traffic signal or filling a pot hole or paying for another week of a retired employee's pension, the curb ramp ends up on the bottom of the list. The small number of people with disabilities, out of the small number of people, in general, using our sidewalks, combined with a low profile/not much agitating to fix the problem, results in little progress. Like Eliott Davis pointed out last night, we (Shane Cohn) can find $22,500 to decorate 400 fire hydrants in “his” ward / Dutchtown, instead of, in this example, improving accessibility. Bottom line, we get the government, and the services we deserve . . . http://www.fox2now.com/news/ktvi-you-paid-decor…
“…we (Shane Cohn) can find $22,500 to decorate 400 fire hydrants in “his” ward / Dutchtown” Oh, good grief! Of all of the stupid things to spend money on! Shane, call me. I live in Dutchtown, and right off of the top of my head, I can give you at least six other ways in which this money could've been spent. Quit listening to John and Kaya on this. How about improving the soccer field in Marquette Park? How about some traffic calming measures on Louisiana and Compton? Some planters strategically placed would do the job. At $300 a pop, cheap, too. This beautification crap is OK for neighborhoods which don't have as many real, pressing needs as Dutchtown. We've got more important things to do here than someone's pet project on Meramec. As for the Jersey barriers here, someone asked for these, obviously. A business, an institution, what have you. It isn't only the City's fault.
The lack of a curb cut, however, is on the City's head.