An Early Look at Site Stats

A couple of days ago my programmer got the Google Analytics code installed on this site which will enable me to obtain excellent statistics on not just the number of page views but how many “absolute unique visitors” I have.

As an example, over these first 2+ days the site has had 1,404 visits generating 2,221 page views.  Of the 1,404 visits, 952 were unique visitors so the remaining visits were return visitors.

Firefox is the top browser of choice overall and among Windows users.  For those of you using IE.  Stop.  It is a horrible browser.  This site and others looks & functions better from Firefox, Safari, Chrome or any other browser.

Sixty-percent of the traffic came direct with twenty-two percent from search engines and the balance as referrals from other sites.  I’ve been noticing from my old stats tracking system that nearly every day someone searches for my site by typing in ‘urban review stl.’  I guess I fail to understand why you’d do a search engine search when you know the name?

Speaking of search engines, 80% of the search traffic is from Google, 15% from Yahoo and the remaining 5% divided up among others like AOL and MSN.

Again, this is only after a couple of days.  After a few weeks, months and years I’ll have a much better set of data on the readership.  After the March primary election I’ll do a new post on this topic.

Candidate Questionnaires Next Week

Just to correct my earlier post on our upcoming municipal elections (March primary & April general).  I have not yet mailed out letters to all the candidates.

I’m still revising the online questionnaire the candidates will hopefully fill out.  This task will be completed this weekend and letters will go out to candidates next week with instructions on how to complete the questionnaire. The deadline will be mid-February.

Most likely I will only send these out to those in contested races.  I’ve got a pretty good list of topics already but if you have suggestions for more suggest them in a comment below.

World’s Narrowest Bike Lane Located in St. Louis

St. Louis may have the “honor” of having the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane.  How narrow you ask?  I didn’t take out a tape measure but the pictures reveal the sad reality of what constitutes a bike lane in St. Louis.

But before I show you the specific lane in question we need to step back and look at the big picture.  From BikeStLouis.org:

The Great Rivers Greenway District celebrated the opening of 57 miles of additional on-street Bike St. Louis routes through St. Louis County and St. Louis City on May 8, 2008 with ribbon cutting ceremonies in the Cities of Maplewood, Clayton and St. Louis. With the expansion, the Bike St. Louis system now totals 77 miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared traffic lanes.

The Bike St. Louis website has a nice map showing these 57 miles:

The map also has a nice graphic legend to help you understand which miles are shared lanes and which have dedicated bike lanes:

Recently a few blocks of this “system” caught my attention.  Specifically five blocks of dedicated bike lane along Chouteau Ave. from Tucker to Truman Parkway (17th):

It looks great of paper.  But what about on the pavement?  As the headline proclaims, I think we have the world’s narrowest dedicated bike lane:

Bike lanes in St. Louis are simply a feel-good & cheap way to get rid of excess roadway.  It is not a functional or useful system as you might see in a city like Amsterdam.  This is our tax dollars hard at work!

So how wide should a dedicated bike lane be?

Minimum width of bike lanes, with curb and gutter: “(For a) bike lane along the outer portion of an urban curbed street where parking is prohibited, the recommended width of a bike lane is 1.5 m (5 feet) from the face of a curb or guardrail to the bike lane stripe. This 1.5-m (5-foot) width should be sufficient in cases where a 0.3-0.6 m (1-2 foot) wide concrete gutter pan exists….” Page 23 (Source)

Why they even bothered calling this dedicated bike lanes is beyond me.  It is embarrassing!  Of course shared lanes are little more than normal lanes with additional markers (on pavement or posted signs).  So we have 57 miles now.  How useful are they?

Singler Gets 25th Ward Endorsement

At the end of a painfully long meeting, Angie Singler received the Democratic ward endorsement in the 25th for the March 3rd Democratic primary.  This race has four candidates.  Incumbent Dorothy Kirner is not running for re-election.

Singler received the most votes with Shane Cohn coming in 2nd, Travis Reems 3rd and Debbie Kotraba in 4th. Kotraba wasn’t even present at the meeting.

My congrats to Angie for her many months of hard work already put into this race.

Comprehensive Planning for Washington, MO

The project in my “Comprehensive Planning” elective at Saint Louis University will be to do a comprehensive plan for the City of Washington, Missouri.  Our class will be divided into two teams with each doing their own plan.  We will all visit Washington late next month.

My last time in Washington, MO was June 2006.  I took out of town friends to Augusta, MO to visit the wine country and we returned to St. Louis via Washington, MO.  Entering Washington from the North, crossing over the Missouri river, is my favorite way to enter the city. We ended up in the riverfront park enjoying a bottle of Missouri vino.

Like most older cities, big & small, commerce has moved out of downtown to the auto-centric edge.  It is fascinating to me how a town of less than 15,000 can have so much residential & commercial sprawl.

Their Zoning Code looks typical, everything separated out.  Their historic downtown is in the “C-3 Central Commercial District.”  They have a long section detailing how much parking is required for a lengthy list of uses.  Like most codes they have height restrictions although I don’t think they are in any danger of getting buildings in excess of one or two floors.  They have another commercial district which indicates it is designed to allow residential & commercial to co-exist.

Web Resources:

• Google map of Washington, MO
• City of Washington, MO
• Wikipedia on Washington, MO

I’m excited by this project as I see it being something I might be doing after graduation.  Cities of all sizes need to continue to evaluate their land and development policies to ensure they stay current with changing demographics and community desires.

What comes to mind is how, from a legal/zoning perspective, would we modify the code to ensure future development in the sprawl zone would be more walkable and connected.  Washington, MO, an old river town, now functions as a far suburb in the St. Louis region.  I have not reviewed the last census data in any detail but they certainly do not have the industry they once had.  Years ago workers would often walk to their jobs.  Those days are long gone.

Al in all an interesting assignment.  If you have any thoughts on the process please feel free to share below.