Touches on a lot of issues, though missed the role land use choices play. The burden placed on the poor is terrible. Reminds me of a story I heard recently in the neighborhood of a woman in a income qualified apt whose car window was broken three times in a month, and she just couldn't afford the third replacement. She'd be way better off not needing a car at all, but a car has become a prosthetic.

RFT - In Car-Loving St. Louis, Pedestrians, Cyclists and Transit Riders Have Many Miles to Go

On his way home from running errands, Robert Schmidt doesn't appear to be in much of a hurry. The octogenarian pumps the pedals of the bicycle perhaps once per second, his trousered legs bending outward in a diamond shape around him. Four plastic grocery bags are strapped to his handlebars, two to a side, and the orange cap of a repurposed Gatorade bottle peeps out from his rear left pocket. Passing drivers, to their credit, afford him plenty of room on the neighborhood street.

http://www.riverfronttimes.com/stlouis/ ... lText=true

I wish the article would have touched on that many of these issues would be solved if the State funded public transit.

^ state funds won't solve the issue of taking 85 min each way for me to get to work from the city to chesterfield instead of 22 min door to door driving. I refuse to give up 2 hours a day or 504 in a year. That's 21 days wasted in a year. What may solve that issue is better land use policy. Also metro has no interest(privately) at all expending the current light rial system. They are more interested in better utilizinazion of buses and possible brt line or 2 but even those aren't actively worked on

^Huh? Why would you take transit from the City to Chesterfield? Is anyone suggesting that?

I think you would agree parts of St. Louis needs better transit (N/S Metrolink), better bike lanes, etc. I think most people on this forum would agree with that. A lot of that hinges on funding. Especially state funding like downtown said.

I don't get the connection of state funding to an 85 min commute to Chesterfield.

Just saying a lot of these issue can be solved with better land use planning. And there is none of it around here

Would anyone that voted no on Amendment 7 vote yes if any growth was dedicated to transit? Here is what I mean. The revenue projections for A7 were flat for entire 10 years but that isn't realistic, just a year after state sales tax was up 7% I think. If that a7 sales tax grew 3-5 % a year it would have been over $500m for transit over 10 years, stl probably getting a lions share. That plan might have seen a light of day if Nixon didn't put the issue on August ballot instead of Nov and everything got rushed. So the plan i came up with never got past the stl district engineer.

Close to $700m vs 4.8b and 0 to $70m a year is nothing to sneeze at. That's enough to bond for a major projects. + our region was getting 35% of the $4.8 b for much needed road & bridge work, we can live in denial world and pretend that there isn't major road & bridge work that needs to be done here. Heck if we tripled our transit use, 85% would still be driving. And tripling our transit use would put us top 5 in nation for transit use

Anyway. Stl region probably puts in about 40% in state taxes and gets back about 35% when it comes to transportation. And I'm ok with that. We all want fruit, veggies and meat for dinner but nobody thinks that it's grown in rural Missouri and to get to schnucks or whole foods we need a good infrastructure in rural MO

The anecdotal evidence in that article confirms the findings in the recent Atlantic CityLab article discussed elsewhere on this forum: the key to transit use, and ultimately a carless existence, is employment proximity to transit.

If you're work is accessible to transit (i.e. HOK lighting guy, Angry Beaver guy, UMSL author) it's much easier to shrink down the rest of your life to a transit friendly scale.

dbInSouthCity wrote:state funds won't solve the issue of taking 85 min each way for me to get to work from the city to chesterfield instead of 22 min door to door driving.

^They could if it means more light rail service, more frequent buses, more express buses, or BRT service.

MoDOT shouldn't even be in the business with a lot of there lettered routes. It wasn't before the 60s when the legislature forced it on MoDOT. 12,000 miles it maintains currently of 33,000. It didn't build. No idea why MoDOT maintain Gravois in the city, mlk, Broadway, olive. City gets $12,000,000 a year from MoDOT from gas tax/car sales tax

dbInSouthCity wrote:^ state funds won't solve the issue of taking 85 min each way for me to get to work from the city to chesterfield instead of 22 min door to door driving. I refuse to give up 2 hours a day or 504 in a year. That's 21 days wasted in a year. What may solve that issue is better land use policy. Also metro has no interest(privately) at all expending the current light rial system. They are more interested in better utilizinazion of buses and possible brt line or 2 but even those aren't actively worked on

No it won't fix that but it will lay the groundwork for a more dense city.

KC piloting an on-demand app shuttle service. The bus catches you rather than you catch the bus.

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/ar ... 45286.html

Vox - How to go car-free — or car-light — in Middle America

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2357 ... hout-a-car

quincunx wrote: ↑

Jul 06, 2023

RFT - What I've Learned Being ‘Car-Light’ in St. Louis for 6 Months


https://www.riverfronttimes.com/news/wh ... s-40401951

I wonder how much our non-car infrastructure would improve if more alders went this route