Eleventh Gets Curb Ramps, Problems Still Exist

Many of the city’s intersections have curb cuts to aid those of us that use wheelchairs and mobility scooters. Unfortunately many intersections have the cuts only on a single side of the street. When streets are improved using federal funds the accessibility is to be upgraded — those sides of the street missing ramps are to get them.

Last month (June 08) several downtown streets were resurfaced but missing ramps were not done prior. I don’t know the source of the funds so its possible that it was Kosher to ignore them. On June 26th I wrote:

One of the streets that was resurfaced was 11th. A few corners along 11th still lack an ADA ramp. For example the city has the top two floors at the building at 1015 Locust which is on the NE corner of 11th & Locust. The same corner lacks an ADA curb cut. The other three corners have cuts but that doesn’t help when the direction you want to go doesn’t.

Today the above is no longer the case.

Today I spotted new curb cuts at both 11th & Locust and 11th & Olive — both locations that were missing such ramps.

At Olive (above) the SE corner gets a ramp that will serve well for crossing Olive. For crossing 11th, however, the location forces the user into moving traffic. Certainly less than ideal. To be safer another ramp should be located to the left of the sewer inlet.

The block of Olive seen in the background above is between 11th & Tucker. It is one-way Eastbound in two travel lanes with the two outer lanes for on-street parking. With ramps like this one having the outside lane for parking rather than through traffic can be very helpful. In the above example, when the light changes and I’m crossing 11th I have to enter the outside lane to get where I can get across the street. Interestingly this is one of those odd blocks where Olive West of 11th has parking on both sides but East of 11th (to 10th) it has parking primarily on one side only.

The curb cut shown above at 11th & Olive is just out of view to the right in the image above. Two lanes of traffic suddenly opens to three for a single block between 11th and 10th, except for two on-street spaces just prior to 10th. This block could easily accommodate another 4-5 on-street spaces that would help generate much needed revenue for the city. Parked cars in this right lane would also serve as a buffer for pedestrians on the sidewalk as well as those of us entering the lane to cross with the flow of traffic.

But back to accessibility issues. Besides missing curb cuts the other problem I find is not with sidewalks but with crossing alleys:

The above is just one the numerous problems I encounter downtown. Besides the sitting water we have the steep slope up to the sidewalk on the opposite side. On the near side there is a hefty drop. So behind me is the new ramp at Olive and up ahead is another new ramp at Locust. With these conditions, however, I don’t know that I’ll go this way often.

Budgets are limited.  The city can’t make the ideal route for me.  I do know of two other downtown residents that also use these streets in wheelchairs.  I know of two more that don’t get out in the chairs the way some of us do.  It needs to be about connecting the dots not just a corner here and a corner there.

Gas Seems Downright Cheap at $3.689/gallon

What a bargain, only $3.689/gallon.  As I’ve made clear before I think the gas prices we’ve seen are a good thing in the long-term although painful in the short term. The $4+ prices have managed to push consumers away from gas guzzling SUVs and toward more fuel thrifty choices.  Total miles driven has also dropped markedly.

I don’t think we’ll see sub-$3 prices again but we will see fluctuations in the $3-$4 range.  We are all adaptive and I wonder if once people adjust to $4/gal if something less than that will seem like a bargain and return to old wasteful habits?  I hope not.

The drop in gas use is having an impact on the federal highway fund.  From MSNBC:

But the drop was not unforeseen. In February, the Bush administration forecast a $3.2 billion shortfall in the trust fund for fiscal year 2009.

On Monday, transportation officials revised that number to $3.1 billion, despite logging a $1.5 billion decline in receipts.

“We’ve been spending more slowly than we contemplated when we put the budget together,” explained Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters.

Peters said in a statement Monday that the drop in driving miles demonstrates that the federal gas tax is no longer sufficient to finance the nation’s transportation infrastructure.

She plans on Tuesday to propose policies that will include a “more focused federal role” and a movement away from the gas tax.

“We must embrace more sustainable funding sources for highways and bridges through more sustainable and effective ways such as congestion pricing and private activity bonds,” Peters said.

Since the inception of the federal gas tax and the highway trust fund we’ve almost consistently increased our total gas usage.  We must decide what infrastructure is important to us and how we are going to pay for it.  I personally like tolls.  Perhaps highway 40 should have been rebuilt as a toll road?

Tow Firm Story is a Literal Dead End

The relationship between St Louis Metropolitan Towing and the St Louis Metropolitan Police has been closely investigated by the St Louis Post-Dispatch. They’ve done an excellent job. The Police Chief Joe Mokwa has already retired amid fallout over the scandal and how his daughter and offers got the free use of impounded vehicles. Last week I shared my own St Louis Metropolitan Towing story.

Articles in the P-D mention the guard stands and razor wire but I thought some visuals were in order for the massive towing operation.

Leaving the relatively small location on 10th, after you’ve paid your ransom, you head Southbound on 10th Street because it is a one-way road used to get high volumes of cars from the interstate into downtown St Louis. At the corner of the tow facility you have a stop at O’fallon St with a view of the back of the beautiful St Joseph’s Catholic church.

Heading West on O’fallon you don’t get very far:

Just past Tucker at 13th O’fallon St is closed to through traffic & pedestrians. The once public street is now private property. This tow facility has managed to acquire quite a bit of public land through street closures. The result is drivers, bicyclists and pedestrians must go around the facility rather than taking a more direct route.

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Of course St Louis Metropolitan Towing is not the only private firm to benefit from the city’s bad policy of giving away streets and alleys.

KDNL and Hogan Trucking are two other firms in this small section of the city on downtown’s North edge that count former public streets among their private real estate holdings. The McDonald’s drive-through is the old alley. The McDonald’s consumes it’s entire city block so it is not like adjacent property owners need to use it.

All these street closures serve as barriers between parts of the city on opposite sides of these larger holdings. Decades ago the walk from downtown’s CBD to Crown Candy Kitchen in Old North St Louis would have had numerous possible routes and taken the pedestrian past many buildings. Now, after a half century of bad public policy that devalues land (especially public streets) the walk is limited in route and is very unpleasant. Some things don’t change — a good walk is still necessary after a visit to Crown Candy.

From above we can see the vast waste land that has resulted from destructive urban land policies. The abandoned Schnuck’s is in the upper right corner. St Louis Metropolitan Towing’s main building is just below the old Schnuck’s. Tucker runs North and South in the center of the above with St Louis Metropolitan Towing’s lot #2 in the left half of the image.

This area didn’t always look this way.

As you can see above in 1909 the area was full of structures.  OK, maybe most were in poor condition  — so you replace those structures.  You don’t just turn blocks of land into vast parking areas for towed vehicles while giving away the streets and service alleys.  Yes people left for the suburbs but we’ve also used bad public policy through various entities to destroy swaths of the city such as this one.

I believe this area was planned to be taken by the state for on & off ramps for the original design of the new Mississippi River Bridge before it was scaled back.  Funny that on/off ramps might have actually improved this once thriving area.

Preservation Board Says ‘No’ To Demolition Request in Old North

One of the duties of the city’s cultural resources office and the Preservation Board is to consider requests for demolition permits in much of the city. Some wards are excluded and are free to destroy our history. Other parts of the city are covered by local and national historic districts. Such districts don’t automatically save individual buildings from demolition anymore than individual listing does (see the fugly parking garage where the Century Building stood for decades). Still the Preservation Board has strict criteria used to determine if it should allow a building to be razed. Criteria includes the rehab potential of the structure among other things. It doesn’t mean the current owner has the means to do the rehab or that it fits into their plans but that it is feasible for someone to rehab the building.

Some members naturally lean toward saving buildings while others almost have a perverse pleasure in voting in favor of demolition. The majority sticks to the criteria spelled out in the applicable ordinance in each case.

Last night’s meeting included a controversial demolition request for a rather typical vernacular structure on Hadley St in Old North St Louis. Much of Old North is in the Murphy-Blair National Register Historic District. The very future of the district was potentially at stake according to Cultural Resources director Kathleen Shea and Michael Allen from Landmark’s Association and the excellent Ecology of Absence blog. At the district’s inception in the early 80’s it included some 600 “contributing” structures. By some estimates as much as a third of those have been razed in the years since. The Missouri state historic preservation office has the ability to review districts and de-certify them if they’ve lost enough of what made it a district in the first place. Much of the individual rehabs and the current $35 million dollar project around the former 14th Street Pedestrian Mall were possible thanks to state historic preservation tax credits. If the district were to be de-certified it would be hard to make the numbers work to renovate more buildings in the neighborhood.

At issue last night was a building on the SW corner of Hadley St and Montgomery St., numbered 2619-21 Hadley St (map). While I tend to side with property owners in cases of eminent domain when it comes to demolition the common good of the whole neighborhood must be considered. As is the case in many parts of North St Louis, if you raze enough structures you cease to have a neighborhood.

This is the second time The Haven of Grace, a shelter for pregnant homeless women, has requested permission to raze this structure. In February 2007 they asked the board to consider demolition of this and another building on the same block (agenda item). At that time the Cultural Resources staff recommended the board approve the demolition of one structure but not this one. I was there that night a year and a half ago when The Haven of Grace agreed to save this building if they could demolish the other. Doing so would clear the way for the non-profit to construct three new 4-family buildings. The board then approved the demolition of one structure but not this one.

So last night this building was on the agenda again. This time Haven of Grace was primarily represented by their board President, Harold R Burroughs. Burroughs is an attorney with the firm Brian Cave. Knowing the next step, if the Preservation Board followed the staff recommendation and denied the demo request, would be court he spent a lot of time making his case. Kate Shea spent time making her case too. When the court looks at these cases they simply review the record of evidence presented to the Board to see if they followed the applicable ordinance(s).

Burroughs indicated they could not build their third building on the vacant land as planned because their contractor wouldn’t work next to the existing structure. A non-structural back wall has collapsed since the February 2007 meeting. Another of the criteria used is the redevelopment plan for the site. This time the plan is landscaping, not as compelling as a replacement building. After a good two hours the Preservation Board voted 4-1 to uphold the staff denial of the demolition permit. It was the right decision based on the evidence presented and the criteria they must follow.

Congestion on Downtown…Sidewalks

There have been so many pedestrians downtown lately it is often impossible for me to fly down sidewalks in my wheelchair at high speed. I just want to get to the grocery store but a family is walking in front of me peering in store windows. Every direction more people in my way.

I couldn’t be happier.

This is my first summer as a downtown resident but I did spend a lot of time downtown in the couple of years prior to the move. It certainly feels like pedestrian traffic has picked up. Lots of dog walking. More strollers. Joggers. The cafe tables seem more full.

The diversity of the people is good too, all ages & races. Straight & gay. Renters & owners. Downtown residents, workers & visitors. For the first time in a long time I feel like I live in a real city.

When I first moved to St Louis in August of 1990 (18 years ago!) I lived in a high rise on Lindell. I’d walk to Straub’s for groceries and take evening walks up and down Euclid.  The Central West End has enjoyed a comfortable urban existence for many years but is nice to see other parts of the regain lost pedestrian traffic.

Hopefully downtown, in time, will resume its former role as the employment and retail center of the region. With so many jobs and retail stores spread out this may be an impossible wish. The goal should be to make incremental gains each year.

A strong downtown will increase the desirability of neighborhoods in the rest of the city as well as older inner ring suburbs.  Downtown living is not for everyone but downtown working & shopping reaches a broader audience.  The big question is if we have the right people in positions to make this happen?  To a degree it will happen on its own.  Public Policy, however, can get in the way of market forces.  One small example is the near ban on street food sold through vendor carts.

For the moment I’m going to enjoy all those pedestrians getting in my way.