Upsetting the Bike Community By Speaking Up About Sprawl Makers

Last night I resigned my position on the board of the St. Louis Regional Bike Federation. At issue was THF Realty, the builder of sprawling big box projects such as Maplewood Commons on Hanley.

Why would a developer be an issue to a bike group?

Simple, someone over at THF Realty likes bicycling so they give money each year to various local groups, including the St. Louis Regional Bike Federation. Because of this I’m supposed to show good judgement by not speaking out against them.

In a recent interview for Point to Point Cycling News I was asked the following question:

Resolve this conundrum: THF Realty is responsible for some of the most anti-pedestrian developments in St. Louis and elsewhere. Yet, they are also the biggest financial supporter, by far, of cycling events and teams in the area. Is this just a big PR stunt. Should cyclists be a bit more critical of this support?

Here was my response:

Thank you for asking this question. I’d love to see the entire cycling community refuse money from THF. THF is wreaking havoc on the planet and accepting their money is an endorsement of how they gained the money. While we are working to make the built environment more connected and friendly to pedestrians and bicyclists they are profiting while creating anti-bike and anti-pedestrian sprawl.

For the full interview click here (PDF, see page 18).

THF Realty’s chairman is Stan Kroenke, #164 of the Forbes list of 400 Richest Americans with a net worth of $1.8 Billion. Kroenke’s wife is an heir to the Walton Family of Wal-Mart fame.

A few thousand dollars is sofa change to them yet it manages to keep otherwise vocal transportation advocates silent. This is hush money in my book. It seems to be effective. You get a group used to some money and pretty soon they come to expect it. Once they expect it they become dependent on it and fear the loss of the money. Wait, we’ve heard this before haven’t we? From the Post-Dispatch:

If Belleville turned down the tax incentives, would Wal-Mart look for a site elsewhere? “Oh yes, I’m sure we would,” Bornstein [of THF Realty] said.

And that lies at the center of the debate over TIFs. Cities feel as though they must give them. The existing Wal-Mart, about a mile away, is the largest producer of sales tax revenue in Belleville. That store, by the way, was expanded in 1993 with another TIF.

If Belleville won’t play ball, THF could buy land a half-mile away in Shiloh. Belleville would be left with nothing.

So the local bike community is in the same boat as Belleville; dependent upon on money from the big box and afraid to do anything about it. It really is sad that an organization that purports to improve the region for bicyclists is afraid to speak out against a company that is arguably one of the worst offenders in the St. Louis region — topping even Desco. Any individual, group or municipality that is in such a position is compromised beyond the point of being impartial. They’ve been bought. Credibility goes in the trash once you’ve been bought. Just ask Metropolis. [Note: see the comment below on Metropolis & my reply; 11/9 @ 4:20pm]

I will continue to push for bike racks throughout the city and a downtown bike station, just not as a board member of the St. Louis Regional Bike Federation.

– Steve

[UPDATE 11/9 @ 9:15am – I want to make it clear that I fully support the mission and work of the St. Louis Regional Bike Federation. I have been friends with a number of board members for years. For me personally I cannot sit quiet while the THF’s of the world run amuck. I will support programs of the Bike Fed (such as pushing for more bike parking), just not as a board member. I wish them all the best of luck. – SLP]

Meeting on Ill-Fated Mississippi Bridge Tuesday, November 8th

The next public meeting on the over-sized and over-priced Mississippi River Bridge will be held later today — Tuesday, November 8th. From a recent mailer:

A recent Post-Dispatch story makes you wonder if the project will ever get off the ground:

Missouri is pushing for tolls to pay their share but Illinois says no. Maybe we’ll be lucky and this massive bridge to more sprawl project will finally be abandoned. But the mayor’s website says, “The new bridge will be built.”

The mayor’s site also says, “The new bridge would be good for Downtown and for the City of St. Louis.” Really? How exactly? Oh yes, the theory is some of the development happening in Western St. Louis County and St. Charles County will happen in the metro East instead. How is that good for downtown and the city?

Previously the mayor had indicated the new bridge would make it easier for people to get to us. Right. Easier to get downtown. Or perhaps easier to leave downtown? Yeah, that is it. I certainly don’t see a new bridge, costing nearly a billion dollars, helping improve our neighborhoods.

So what about the Page Avenue Extension from St. Louis County into St. Charles County. Does anyone actually think the bridge helps St. Louis County by making it easier to get there from St. Charles County? Doubtful. Our Metropolitan Planning Agency, East-West Gateway Council of Governments, expects sprawling St. Charles County to add 93,600 residents in the next 25 years while St. Louis County will lose 13,900 residents in the same period. The patterns are clear – the Page Avenue bridge is used to get people from St. Charles County into St. Louis County. St. Louis County must do all they can not to lose workplaces and retail outlets to St. Charles County.

Another bridge from Illinois to Missouri can have the same results. I’ve seen nothing to prove St. Louis City would benefit from this new bridge. One might argue we’ll gain some money simply from the construction process but if we need to create massive building projects to create jobs lets do it in the form of new housing. Congestion is a claim for the new bridge but even that comes into question. The same report from East-West Gateway, named Legacy 2030: The Transportation Plan for the Gateway Region, indicates St. Louis ranks below average in congestion. Their congestion maps show severe morning congestion on the Poplar Street Bridge (PSB) into Missouri and then on I-64/Hwy 40 Eastbound into Illinois in the afternoon. It also shows severe congestion in relatively new interchanges such as I-64 & I-270.

From the propaganda site promoting the new bridge:

East-West Gateway says Madison & St. Clair Counties in Illinois will add 35,200 residents between now and 2020. This is an increase of just under 7%. And from what I can tell these estimates are based on the new bridge being built. As a whole our region is expected to increase in population about 6.4% between now and 2020. So how is it our 90 minute rush hour becomes three hours? Or delays go from 10 minutes to 55 minutes? Part of the answer is the estimate is that more younger people will be driving but we’ll also have an older population that most likely won’t be driving. The answer is that our urban policies will continue to encourage people to drive single occupancy vehicles and live further and further from the center of the region.

Illinois is the one paying for the bridge website and likely more than half the other expenses. Why? They have the most to gain. The idea this bridge will help renovate downtown St. Louis and East St. Louis is false. In Illinois this will help those in sprawling subdivisions continue driving long distances to work in their SUVs but now with the added benefit of not having to actually drive through East St. Louis on the highway. I can see this new bridge being used by people in suburban Illinois to drive to St. Charles County — bypassing the areas that are supposed to benefit from this bridge.

If Illinois officials and St. Louis officials were genuinely concerned about the core of the region being competitive they’d be fighting sprawl throughout the region. They can start with THF Realty’s proposed development on a large tract of land in Belleville Illinois for a Wal-Mart anchored strip center. From a recent Post-Dispatch story:

Imagine the possibilities of a 140 acre site next to MetroLink. This is an excellent opportunity for a Transit Oriented Development (TOD) that would allow residents to take MetroLink to work in St. Louis or after next year, Clayton. But, THF will squander the proximity — just like they did on Hanley Road in Maplewood.

Increased transit ridership comes only when it is more convenient than using a car. This bridge will discourage use of our existing mass transit as well as reducing calls for expansion of the system. The transportation project that will have the single greatest positive impact on the City of St. Louis would be the Northside & Southside MetroLink lines. Period.

Mayor Slay — if you want to get something built forget about the riverfront and this bridge — go for more MetroLink. By 2030 you’ll be seen as a hero rather than the guy that frittered away millions on floating islands in the Mississippi River.

For my prior post on the new Mississippi Bridge, click here. Today’s preview of the latest bridge design will be held at Webster Middle School, 2127 N. 11th, St. Louis MO 63106.

– Steve

There Is A First Time For Everything

Everyone goes through a long list of first times in their lives — walking, going to school, riding a bike, flying, etc. Over the weekend, at age 38, I took my first hit of pot.

The when and where isn’t important. Neither is the how and why.

Marijuana is not an urban drug. Cannabis can be found throughout the world everywhere from the most rural places to the most urban and everywhere in between. Even in the posh suburbs.

Unfortunately our laws don’t seem to distinguish between a simple joint and crack. The dealers, users and social implications in an urban context are radically different.

Drugs — hard drugs — are indeed an urban problem. Not that crack & cocaine don’t exist in other places. It is the open presence of drug dealing in the city that you simply don’t see in other places.

I’ve witnessed, first hand, various drug transactions. In at least two former residences I have had drug dealing across the street from me. Spotting the deal became routine — you can see a lookout on the corner, the person that takes the money and then another person that is radioed to give them their merchandise.

If I wanted any sort of hard drug today I can think of several corners within a mile where I’d find plenty. The police know the same locations but seem helpless to do anything about it. These dealers move from place to place seemingly on a monthly basis yet hang out at the same corners.

I’m not even going to pretend that I have a full understanding of the complexity of the issue. I do not.

What I do know is I have many friends that partake of a hit of pot now and then. They are responsible citizens and far from being pot heads. They do not drive around looking for some dealer on a street corner. Their suppliers likely don’t carry guns or engage in gang warfare to protect turf.

Another first happened last week. Denver, known as the mile high city, became the first U.S. city to decriminalize the possession of a small amount of marijuana. Colorado law, however, still criminalizes the possession regardless of quantity. From USA Today:

I think it is time we differentiate between soft and hard drugs in our laws and enforcement policies.

– Steve

“A Good Old Building Is Better Than A Bad New One”

I ran across an interesting commentary on St. Louis:

Except for the arch and the old courthouse, which form some genuinely provocative urban views, downtown St. Louis is a monument to chamber of commerce planning and design. It is a businessman’s dream of redevelopment come true.There are all the faceless, characterless, scaleless symbols of economic regeneration — luxury apartments, hotels, a 50,000 seat stadium and multiple parking garages for 7,400 cars. Sleek, new, prosperous, stolid and dull, well served by superhighways, the buildings are a collection of familiar profit formulas, uninspired in concept, unvarying in scale, unrelated by any standards, principals or subtleties of planning or urban design. They just stand there. They come round, rectangular, singly and in pairs. Pick your standard commercial cliche.

The new St. Louis is a success economically and a failure urbanistically. It has the impersonal gloss of a promotional brochure. A prime example of the modern landscape of urban alienation, it has gained a lot of real estate and lost a historic city.

Wow, pretty harsh words. Tragically they are nearly as true today as the day they were first published — February 4, 1968. Yes, the words above are from nearly forty years ago.

Ada Louise Huxtable, Architecture Critic for the New York Times from 1963 – 1982, had plenty to say about Architecture and planning. I read a compilation of articles called Goodbye History, Hello Hamburger: An Anthology of Architectural Delights and Disasters while I was in architecture school in the late 80’s. Today while boxing up some stuff I ran across the book, long since forgotten. I recall enjoying her writing when I was in college so I look forward to re-reading the book to see how her views have stood up to the test of time and my own personal experiences in the last 15 years.

I’ll leave you with another quote from Huxtable. Remember that in 1968 our symphony hall, Powell Hall, had just opened:

The success of Powell Symphony Hall in St. Louis is probably going to lead a lot of people to a lot of wrong conclusions. In a kind of architectural Gresham’s law, the right thing wrongly interpreted usually has more bad than good results.

The first wrong conclusion is that Powell Hall represents the triumph of traditional over modern architecture. False. The correct conclusion here is that a good old building is better than a bad new one. Powell Hall represents the triumph simply of suitable preservation. And, one might add, of rare good sense.

Ms Huxtable was awarded the first Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1970.

– Steve

Why Doesn’t the St. Louis Region have HOV Lanes?

HOV Lanes, short for High Occupancy Vehicle lanes, are used in most regions larger than St. Louis as well as a number that are smaller than our region. The concept is simple — designate the center lane on the interstate for buses, vehicles with 2+ people, motorcycles and in some cases, hybrids.

On my recent trip to Seattle we used the the HOV lane on I-5 when traveling North to visit a weekend cabin as well as traveling South to the Airport. Seattle’s I-5 HOV lane requires at least two persons per vehicle. Their floating bridge requires 3 or more persons to use the HOV lane.

These lanes do a couple of things. One they remind the people in single occupancy vehicles (SOVs) they could be moving at a better rate if they had carpooled with someone. It also rewards those people that do carpool or take mass transit.

This would seem like a reasonable step for the St. Louis region to consider. We have issues of congestion on our interstate highways throughout the region as well as air quality concerns.

HOV lanes should be tried throughout our region before we spend hundreds of millions of dollars on new lanes and bridges to ease congestion.

UPDATED 11/5 9AM CST:
I found an interesting review of HOV lanes from Canada. They look at HOV lanes in North America — what worked and what didn’t. This review is now eight years old so it may not be very applicable.

HOV lanes are created one of two ways – adding a new lane to the existing system or taking a lane from the current roadway. Both approaches have some drawbacks. By adding a new lane to the system you encourage more driving. By taking an existing lane you have protests from people that think highway lanes are a God-given right. Seattle’s I-5 HOV lane was originally for 3+ vehicles and showed good results from carpooling and transit ridership but due to political pressure the requirement was dropped to 2+. Carpooling dropped as did transit use.

We are already planning to add a new lane to I-64/40 from Spoede to I-170. Why not mark this as a 3+ HOV lane to try it out to see how it goes?

Committee on High Occupancy Vehicle Systems seems to be an excellent resource for information but they are clearly biased in favor of HOV lanes.

Does anyone have any arguments in favor or against HOV lanes? Speak up in the comments below.

– Steve