urbanSTL

I saw the crosswalk paint jobs on The Hill last weekend. I thought they looked pretty great. 

flipz wrote: ↑

Sep 02, 2022

I thought this wasn't up to some sort of standard. Some neighborhood (grove?) did intricate designs with their crosswalks a few years ago and had to stop or revert them back iirc.

Yes the rainbow ones, and Tower Grove South's Fleur-de-lis. They brought that up in the article.

^That's not a pedestrian infrastructure win. 

I've come to the opinion that all human-driven cars must be phased out and banned as quickly as possible. 

It would change the world as we know it if you no longer had to fear crossing the street or just standing at the sidewalk's edge. 

I mean it. Imagine a world with a perfect zipper merge and near-zero accidents. Imagine a world where seat belts are optional again, where commutes are radically changed. Imagine a world where drunk driving is no longer a societal problem. 

You'd no longer have to have every passenger face forward. Carpooling and road trips would be changed forever, allowing for more communal experiences. 

Some people live in their vans, elaborately changing their insides to match their lifestyles. I don't know if this would increase van-home ownership or not, but I do think you'd have more people creating unique spaces inside their vehicles if the interior design was no longer restrained to our modern way of thinking.

The world would be better -- and safer.  

The current push for electric vehicles doesn't go far enough. 

Not sure if their much new to add on 20th street improvements, bike loop but Biz Journals posted an article.  Behind Paywall.

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... louis.html

The city of St. Louis has an $11 million project in the works designed to “bridge the gap” between north St. Louis and downtown by revamping one of the major roads linking the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus to the Major League soccer stadium.

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

^That's not a pedestrian infrastructure win. 

But it is a pretty good blueprint for a pedestrian infrastructure win. Imagine what we could have if we implemented that in our city? It wasn't so long ago St. Louis had a citywide no right on red. (It ended about 1990 I think it was.) It was even more recent than that the the city began allowing the state to redesign our streets to make them fall in line with the federal car-centric regs (slips lanes, wider lanes, and stop lights on arms over the street and that stuff) in exchange for offloading the maintenance costs. (The city maintained all the MO and US highways out of the city budget until the mid 90s, I believe it was. It was big news when the city gave up the final authority on road designs for that extra cash.) Maybe we really don't need the money. Just give up the state and federal cash and redesign our roads to work for people and maybe, just maybe, we'll come out ahead.

RockChalkSTL wrote:I've come to the opinion that all human-driven cars must be phased out and banned as quickly as possible. 

It would change the world as we know it if you no longer had to fear crossing the street or just standing at the sidewalk's edge. 

I mean it. Imagine a world with a perfect zipper merge and near-zero accidents. Imagine a world where seat belts are optional again, where commutes are radically changed. Imagine a world where drunk driving is no longer a societal problem. 

You'd no longer have to have every passenger face forward. Carpooling and road trips would be changed forever, allowing for more communal experiences. 

Some people live in their vans, elaborately changing their insides to match their lifestyles. I don't know if this would increase van-home ownership or not, but I do think you'd have more people creating unique spaces inside their vehicles if the interior design was no longer restrained to our modern way of thinking.

The world would be better -- and safer.  

The current push for electric vehicles doesn't go far enough. 

The problem isn't so much that human drivers are terrible as it is that cars and roads are too large. The video Quincunx posted explains pretty clearly how to make crossings better. You know what's really funny about it? (And he failed to say this, even though he clearly should have.) All those changes, all of them, make it safer for drivers too. And less stressful. While I haven't been to the Netherlands, I've been to portions of the UK, Switzerland, and even Japan that have some of the changes he talks about. And I've driven in the UK and all over the US. Salt Lake City is an absolutely miserable place to drive. I would rather drive in New York City any time of day, any day of the week than Salt Lake. I would rather drive in Peterborough or Cambridge or Edinburgh than even that. Slower traffic takes stress off a driver. Simpler intersections are less stressful. It's easier to turn onto an unsignalized road with heavy traffic driving the opposite way from what you're used to when that traffic is doing twenty miles an hour than it is to turn onto one with moderate or even light traffic when cross traffic is doing sixty. (When you're exiting a parking lot, for instance.) Smarter cars aren't a bad idea. But what we really, really need is better roads, lower speeds, and better public transportation and pedestrian infrastructure. I don't have to imagine a world where drunk driving isn't a problem. I've visited that world and we can live in it right now for a very modest investment. The part that really frosts my bottom? Better roads are cheaper to maintain. Pedestrians don't wear out roads. Bicycles don't. Cars, and worse yet trucks do. Higher speeds do. Slow down cars and have fewer of them on roads and spend the money you save on maintenance on public transportation. Pedestrians win. The environment wins. Drivers win. Cyclists win. Kids win. The elderly win. People having a bit too much late at night win. The people walking home when they are win. It's a lot of winning. Just give up on the car centric roads already. I don't care if the cars are electric and semi to completely self guided. Even then . . . rebuild the roads for people. All this stuff will STILL make it safer to walk. (And more pleasant to drive.)

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

^That's not a pedestrian infrastructure win. 

But it is a pretty good blueprint for a pedestrian infrastructure win. Imagine what we could have if we implemented that in our city? It wasn't so long ago St. Louis had a citywide no right on red. (It ended about 1990 I think it was.) It was even more recent than that the the city began allowing the state to redesign our streets to make them fall in line with the federal car-centric regs (slips lanes, wider lanes, and stop lights on arms over the street and that stuff) in exchange for offloading the maintenance costs. (The city maintained all the MO and US highways out of the city budget until the mid 90s, I believe it was. It was big news when the city gave up the final authority on road designs for that extra cash.) Maybe we really don't need the money. Just give up the state and federal cash and redesign our roads to work for people and maybe, just maybe, we'll come out ahead.

This is an interesting contextualization, that it's in fact gotten much more dangerous to be a pedestrian in the City over the last 30 years. 

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

 It wasn't so long ago St. Louis had a citywide no right on red. (It ended about 1990 I think it was.)

If true, then based on the history presented in the video, it took less time for the Netherlands to abandon the car centric policy and become a model of pedestrian safety than St. Louis did between allowing right turns on red and today

A couple posts up but I tend to agree to both, larger wider streets is not good for pedestrians & bicyclist and drivers are worse, less caring, preoccoppied/distracted.   

St. Louis like a lot of older cities with big streetcar systems once upon a time have both a safety issue, large wide streets that become speedways and therefore a danger to everyone even if your in a car, and an opportunity, a big wide right of way to do everything from large sidewalks,  bikelanes, to treelined medians.  The issue is money of course.   But would be nice to see some of the city surplus go back into basic pedestrian/bike infrastructure as well as more trees.   
 

dredger wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

A couple posts up but I tend to agree to both, larger wider streets is not good for pedestrians & bicyclist and drivers are worse, less caring, preoccoppied/distracted.   

St. Louis like a lot of older cities with big streetcar systems once upon a time have both a safety issue, large wide streets that become speedways and therefore a danger to everyone even if your in a car, and an opportunity, a big wide right of way to do everything from large sidewalks,  bikelanes, to treelined medians.  The issue is money of course.   But would be nice to see some of the city surplus go back into basic pedestrian/bike infrastructure as well as more trees.   
 

I think there's a lot the city could do cheaply to make streets safer. Obviously it's better when infrastructure comes with all the bells and whistles but they could restripe streets to narrow them and use Schoemehl pots as makeshift curb bulbouts, etc. right now. 

I know Scott Ogilvie is proud of building a few cycle tracks over a five year period but they could do so much more right now. 

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

dredger wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

A couple posts up but I tend to agree to both, larger wider streets is not good for pedestrians & bicyclist and drivers are worse, less caring, preoccoppied/distracted.   

St. Louis like a lot of older cities with big streetcar systems once upon a time have both a safety issue, large wide streets that become speedways and therefore a danger to everyone even if your in a car, and an opportunity, a big wide right of way to do everything from large sidewalks,  bikelanes, to treelined medians.  The issue is money of course.   But would be nice to see some of the city surplus go back into basic pedestrian/bike infrastructure as well as more trees.   
 

I think there's a lot the city could do cheaply to make streets safer. Obviously it's better when infrastructure comes with all the bells and whistles but they could restripe streets to narrow them and use Schoemehl pots as makeshift curb bulbouts, etc. right now. 

I know Scott Ogilvie is proud of building a few cycle tracks over a five year period but they could do so much more right now. 

Unfortunately the issue is that the political and cultural will to make changes needs to be there, the actual design and construction isn't that difficult with many examples from around the world as guidance.

TheWayoftheArch_V2.0 wrote: ↑

Sep 13, 2022

Strongly disagree.  Drivers today are terrible, reckless and lawless, with little civility or mindfulness of anyone else. 

I read an interesting anecdote once in a popular text on engineering. The author described a favorite place to sit and eat his lunch overlooking a flight of stairs. Every day, people would trip at exactly the same spot, because that one step happened to be different. The takeaway here was that if one person trips it's an accident. It's inattention or something exceptional. But when everyone trips there's a design problem. If one person was speeding and driving recklessly I'd agree with you. If it were just a few people. But it's so common it's pretty clear it's a design problem. And it's slowly gotten worse as our designs have evolved to make streets "safer." It's a design problem. And the best solution to poorly designed streets isn't special cars. It's good streets. Smart cars are a wonderful idea. I'm in favor. But we still need better streets. They'll help pedestrians whether we have better cars or not. Drivers today are human. The design of human beings hasn't substantially changed in hundreds of thousands of years. But the design of streets has changed dramatically.

^It's not a design problem and not specific to STL or its major thoroughfares.   It's everywhere.  Manhattan, San Fran and everywhere in between, we have emerged from the pandemic as homicidal society with vehicles as the weapons.  Whether I talk to my in laws in VA, my sisters in CHI and CLT, or customers around the country, it's a modern plague.  I experience it in my travels.  Were we a perfect, polite, law abiding society pre-pandemic?  Certainly not.  But anyone - jogger, cyclist, driver - knows things are worse now. 

Not everything can be explained away.  We still have to expect some level of personal responsibility.  Whether to fellow man or the law, up to the individual (and our police should they decide to enforce any traffic violations).

^^Just because it isn't unique to St. Louis doesn't mean it isn't a design problem. It's everywhere because the US DOT standards have historically been awful. Motor vehicle fatalities were on the rise before the pandemic. The plague just accelerated an ongoing trend by allowing a few people to drive even faster and giving everyone a dose of fatalism. Do we need enforcement? Yes. Preferably automatic enforcement. Would better designed automobiles be good? Cars that took pedestrians and bicyclists into account and prevented drivers from killing them? (Or each other.) Absolutely. But enforcement alone isn't the answer, and we can't wait for a magic tech solution to get us out of this. Fixing our roads is comparatively simple, cheap, and available now. All this other stuff is important too. But fixing the infrastructure itself, making the roads themselves the thing that enforces speed limits and encourages safe and attentive driving, that we need RIGHT NOW! Period. No excuses.

It's not that people can be trained, it's that certain sorts of roads make certain sorts of behavior very nearly impossible. There's a limit to how fast even Mario Andretti could drive on a narrow, winding road with limited sight lines. There's a limit to how fast any but the most self-abusive are willing to drive on a heavily textured road. Good road design isn't a complete solution to everything, but it can absolutely improve the situation right now. Road diets work. Chicanes work. Speed humps work. Roundabouts work. All of this stuff is incredibly well established. We have data from tens of millions of drivers in dozens of countries available. It's not magic.

I've had a Subaru since 2013 that detects bicycles and pedestrians and applies the brakes at the last second if you don't.  The technology is proven.  An 80-year-old gentleman was killed walking in the crosswalk to Kirkwood park a couple of years ago.  The driver said she didn't see him and wasn't charged.  But I suspect she could have avoided a lifetime of grief for herself if she'd only bought the auto-brake option.  It is standard on some cars now.  If not, get it on your next car.

^Darn shame Stephens isn't running for something.