CommonFire224 wrote:So is the city's policy is just to knee- jerk react to what a local media story says "is a bad thing" to cater to their boomer audience instead of explaining why these are needed and the benefits of bump outs? Why should any citizen in this city expecting any long-term infrastructure improvements. IF ( when) the city will just rip it it because out of towners complain?
Absolutely ridiculous and extremely indicative of this administration's view on urbanist infrastructure. Absolutely insane that they do this in the historical context of traffic violence downtown.
If they do this quickly, I will throw a fit. All the years they have to go through for approvals and budgets to do a street project to improve streets for multimodal transportation, but one traffic jam after a major concert, and they are ready to rip up the street?!
What horrible reactive governing.
This city is so frustrating sometimes
Traffic is part of a major concert! It just is! My goodness it’s sometimes good to see a little traffic in StL, means something is happening! We aren’t a town of 5,000 people, we are a metro of 2.8 million and host big time events. Imagine if because of some traffic in midtown manhattan, they start tearing down and ripping up all their pedestrian infrastructure?
Well you better start the fit because they’re ripped out already around Hilton and walnut tomorrow after cards leave town. But if it helps, I’m working on a mobile solution
Somehow this might be worse than the Green Line fiasco because this was actual brand new infrastructure already built that has been proven to calm traffic and save lives. On top of that, more traffic (as there always will be with large events) just makes public transit an even better option. But no, here goes the city bending over backwards for the suburban/car interest.
Imagine how great our transit system and city broadly could be if they put the same effort they out into pleasing the suburban/car interest into the urban interest.
Unreal. We go to hearings, meetings, planning sessions, overwhelmingly demand traffic calming measures, and then they waste our tax money twice. Screw Cara Spencer, the BOA and whichever DT groups approved this.
It's not like this will help traffic move any faster. There are still bottlenecks to get on the highway. It will still be a complete standstill during large events.
Just a slap in the face to the people who actually live here and walk these streets. All so that Karen from O'Fallon can go see a concert easier once every two years
I emailed the aldermen for an explanation. Not only is this anti-urbanist, it's frustrating to take so long to get this sort of thing done to see them removed overnight at the behest of concertgoers.
I didn't realize until now that Aldridge was concerned about traffic calming. Seems he's not supportive of Market or Tucker getting slimmer. Uh oh.
Pedestrian safety or efficient traffic flow? Curb bump-outs, lane removal under spotlight “I just don’t think it’s probably best to make Market one lane,” said Aldridge. Downtown Alderman Rasheen Aldridge says he sees both sides and wants to keep people safe, but worries slimming down Market and Tucker will cause problems. “Maybe we need to make sure what happens on Market or Tucker, actually makes sense,” said Aldridge. Especially on days with multiple downtown events. “These are the main lanes that get people from point A to B, these are the lanes connected to highways,” said Aldridge. Supporters of condensing the streets argue that St. Louis was built for a much larger population and it makes sense to tighten the roads, but Aldridge doesn’t agree with that logic. “We’re almost sending a message that we won’t grow so let’s make these streets smaller,” said Aldridge.
Should vote him out then. If you can’t realize downtown needs infrastructure to improve safety and activity, then can’t be an alderman in a major city, especially downtown
Got a response from Jami Cox Antwi - apparently she had no idea it was happening. Could've been a tailored response but she (or her comms person) did not seem happy.
Since COVID, I doubt anyone has spent more time walking in and around downtown than I have. I’m well over 20,000 miles on foot at this point. I saw the reckless driving at its worst in 2021 and 2022, and I’ve also seen the improvements since then, especially the positive change on Broadway.
What that experience has made clear to me is that we cannot design downtown solely for quick highway access, fast in-and-out traffic, or special events. Downtown is a neighborhood. It has over 11,000 residents and still more than 60,000 workers. Streets have to work for the people who live, work, and walk there every day.
That is why I think the bump-outs up and down Broadway, along with the ones coming to 4th Street, are a positive step in the right direction. Those are important improvements, and they are staying in place. The recent controversy is really about three specific bump-outs: the one at Market and 2 on Broadway at the corner of Hilton at the Ballpark. Those have become problematic because of the driveway to a very busy hotel immediately after the turn from Market onto Broadway.
What has happened there is that drivers now go around the bump-out and into one of the two left southbound lanes on Broadway in order to turn right into the hotel driveway. That creates stacking, backups, and pedestrian safety issues during very busy days at the hotel. Cars traveling in the right lane on Broadway suddenly have to stop or swerve left because traffic is piling up from people checking into or out of the hotel.
So I think there has been a bit of an overreaction about what this change actually means. From my perspective, having spent a lot of time on foot there when it is busy, removing those three specific bump-outs probably makes that intersection safer for pedestrians because it reduces the swerving and the choke point. At the same time, I still think that on less busy days we should look at some kind of mobile solution that can be put in place when needed and removed when it is not. I think the City could have done a better job designing this in the first place, it left an abandoned bus stop and there is plenty of room there to shave back the bump out a bit and use the bus stop area to make a turn lane into the hotel driveway
You are not making anything safer here lmao. The root problem is not the curbs, it's the fact cars are a horrible form of transportation and further accommodating them will never ever fix that.
An actual solution would be to build a second drop off lane on Walnut, where there's plenty of space and no need for 2 lanes of traffic on that street.
The core problem in this specific case is that the drop off lane is way too close to the corner with too little space in the actual lane. Idling cars blocking a bus stop, cross walk, and potentially intersection is not acceptable at all and making the pedestrian experience less safe does absolutely nothing to fix any of the actual problems at hand, and will just make people feel less comfortable crossing.
Yeah, and there's an entire other lane to travel into and it's one way, and drivers should have eyes. Not hard. Also, pedestrians have the right of way so people should be looking out for them regardless.
Added to that, it's one picture of probably check-in time that probably goes away after an amount of time.
Could it be designed better to make it easy for the hotel to check in guests? Certainly. Traffic calming isn't for the hotel though its for the entire community. I don't buy a 'mobile solution' will do much better. Sounds less permeable. Who will roll it out? Who makes sure it's rolled out? When's a 'convenient' time? Whose palms got greased on this?
It doesn’t go away after a minute. It stays there for hours on a Friday or Saturday afternoon as weekend check ins start. Pre bump outs it stuck to the far lane down market to 7th and there was still 2 lanes of through traffic as it turned into Broadway
It doesn’t go away after a minute. It stays there for hours on a Friday or Saturday afternoon as weekend check ins start. Pre bump outs it stuck to the far lane down market to 7th and there was still 2 lanes of through traffic as it turned into Broadway
Then I'm confused then how its any worse now, or how it was any better before. In a real city with hotel check-in demand there is going to be backup without a lot.
Again, as a driver, its on you to navigate. Are you saying we should build (or in this case reopen) a dedicated slip lane just for a hotel? Sounds like a hotel issue.
It doesn’t go away after a minute. It stays there for hours on a Friday or Saturday afternoon as weekend check ins start. Pre bump outs it stuck to the far lane down market to 7th and there was still 2 lanes of through traffic as it turned into Broadway
Then I'm confused then how its any worse now, or how it was any better before. In a real city with hotel check-in demand there is going to be backup without a lot.
Again, as a driver, it’s on you to navigate. Are you saying we should build (or in this case reopen) a dedicated slip lane just for a hotel? Sounds like a hotel issue.
It’s worse because there is one less southbound lane and one less lane across Broadway from market. Cars going to the hotel now stack on 1 of 2 southbound lanes. See photo above
Hotel would have no issue paying for a dedicated lane for driveway access and it can be done since there is a non functional bus stop there that can be removed to make it happen
Was hoping that wasn’t going to get picked up social media. That’s going to get hundreds of thousands if not millions of impressions and is yet another terrible look for downtown.
The announcers are not wrong though. There is never anybody in Kiener Plaza. It gives the impression of a dead downtown because you would expect a plaza in that location to be full of life
Isn’t Keiner Plaza under renovation I wouldn’t expect many people to be around while there’s construction going on there besides that video is very dated & not current cause the trees aren’t even fully budded yet. So they’re basically using a old video to make a comment about downtown… Yeah we don’t have the most lively downtown but if they are going to make assumptions use a current video & not a video from last year or so.
Reading some of the comments they say there’s nothing down there no reason to go unless there’s an event etc….I get the feeling people either don’t want to go downtown or downtown is lacking in many amenities. I’ll go with the latter there’s just nothing really drawing people downtown outside of the usual events. If there was more shopping options like target tj max ross etc….
