Did you know that Metro is carrying on a Bus Stop Enhancement program? Last year, 65 bus stops – mainly in St. Louis County – were upgraded to ADA compliance, thanks to a Freedom Grant  that Metro received from the FTA for this very purpose. This year, 115 additional stops have been flagged for upgrades.

Bus stops in St. Louis area that have already received ADA upgrades

Working list of bus stops to receive ADA-compliance upgrades in 2010

A little background: The Americans With Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990 to provide protection against discrimination for individuals with disabilities. Part of that mission includes ensuring that public facilities, like courthouses and bus stops, are accessible to all. It’s particularly important for transit to be accessible, because people who are dependent on transit due to disability absolutely must be able to access our facilities! Our old bus stops were “grandfathered in” but any new stops we build have to be ADA-compliant. What to do about those old stops, though? We want to upgrade these stops to make our system as accessible as possible, even though the law says we don’t have to. That’s where the Freedom Grant comes in – it supplies the funds necessary to bring the old stops into compliance and provide much-needed mobility to our transit-dependent customers. I recently sat down with Dave Sander in Metro’s Engineering Department and with Lance Peterson and Linda Baker in Metro’s Planning Department to discuss Metro’s Bus Stop Enhancement program. Here’s what I learned:

• Metro planners surveyed each one of our 9,100+ (at the time) bus stops to determine which were ADA-compliant and which were not.
• Metro planners developed criteria to help prioritize which stops needed help first; factors included: Number of customers using the stop, whether the stop was a transfer point (a place where you can get off one bus and catch another), whether ADA-compliance was technically possible at a stop, who the stop serves, the condition of adjacent sidewalks, and more.
• Metro partnered with Paraquad for input and reviewed customer complaints, along with the above criteria, to decide which stops would be addressed first.

Bad sidewalk at St. Louis Ave. & Newstead

“Enhancements” are different depending on the location of each stop, but include:

- creating the concrete “landing pad” for boarding the bus
- adding a concrete pad for a bench
- correcting the slope of adjacent sidewalks
- adding missing accessible curb ramps,

and even in some cases fixing sidewalks that were, as the planners put it, in “deplorable” condition – even if those sidewalks don’t technically belong to Metro. In some cases, fixing the sidewalks was the only way to get the slope down to ADA compliance. The planners then share that information with St. Louis County, the City, and the municipal streets departments to alert them when sidewalk conditions are bad. At the same time, Metro is using the information gained from this project to evaluate each bus route, stop by stop, to eliminate unnecessary stops and improve operating speeds and efficiency. And the planners are adding a unique stop number to each stop, so if customers have a question about schedules or routes, they can give their stop number to Customer Service when they call. The contractor is getting permits and, weather permitting, construction can start any time.

Do you have any bus stops to nominate for this program? If you do, let us know here at the blog and we’ll check with Planning to see whether your stop is on the list.

Thanks to the Post-Dispatch, Metro holds a live online chat every other Wednesday at noon, hosted on the Post-Dispatch website. You have to have a login set up on the STLtoday website, but you can submit your questions any time before or during the chat once you’re logged in.

We also keep a transcript of past live chats on Metro’s Newsroom page (click the “Chat Transcripts” tab at the top).

Drop by the Post-Dispatch and submit your questions, even if you can’t be available for the live chat at noon; we’ll link the transcript here when it’s available. This is your chance to ask questions about anything and everything Metro-related: The long-range planning process, the results from the first round of public workshops and what’s in store for the second round of public input; how long the $12m appropriation from the State of Missouri will last; questions about the Vandeventer Bridge project; essentially, anything and everything you’d like to know.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the Metro Live Chat transcript, thanks so much for your questions!

In the excitement and chaos of planning big Thanksgiving dinners and plotting our Black Friday shopping routes, we at NextStop just want to pause a moment and say, Thank you. Thank you for making NextStop a part of your daily or weekly routine. Thanks for reading, for linking, and for thinking about what’s going on here.

Thanks for all the emails we receive, and suggestions for posts, questions, and criticisms.

Thank you, all of the commenters who come here and make this an interesting place to read and write. I’d like to especially thank RTBones, Jazzy Jeff, TPlesko, Claire-ian the Librarian, and JimmyZ for your dedication to providing thoughtful, critical feedback, and support on all sorts of urban and transit issues.

Thank you, Alex Ihnen, for guest posting. Thank you, Steve Patterson and Jim Barnthouse, for doing ride-alongs. Thank you, Dotage St. Louis, UrbanReviewSTL, Citizens for Modern Transit, St. Louis Urban Workshop, Curious Feet, and all of our friends on the internet who link, tweet, talk, and support us.

Thank you, Miss Metrolink and your prom-planning friends, for keeping life interesting and fun.

Thank you, interns Matt and Melissa, for helping start the ball rolling. Thank you, Dianne and Angela in our Communications Department, for getting us started and keeping us on track.

Thank you, Paul in IT, for all of your technical support and your guidance and knowledge.

Let’s be real: It’s been a tough year everywhere, economically. People lost their jobs. Transit agencies all over the country, including ours, are struggling with cuts to service, fare increases, staff reductions, and a population that needs transit more than ever. We think that by carrying on these discussions and trading these ideas, and by participating in the planning and dreaming, we’re all helping improve transit for the region. Thanks for being part of it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, from Courtney, Jennifer, and Todd.

Transportation for America has released a report called “Dangerous by Design” that looks at pedestrian deaths vs. spending on pedestrian amenities and ranks cities across the U.S. Following the report’s release, T4A met with U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, who promises that “the DOT Safety Council is going to look at this report and work with advocacy groups to ensure our streets are as safe as possible.”

Before we see how St. Louis fared, what does T4A think is causing problems?

Over the last several decades, most of the business of daily life has shifted from Main Streets to state highways that have grown wider and wider over time…the pressure to move as many cars through these areas as quickly as possible has led transportation departments to squeeze in as many lanes as they can, while designing out sidewalks, crosswalks and crossing signals, on-street parking, and even street trees in order to remove impediments to speeding traffic.

As a result, more than half of fatal vehicle crashes occurred on these wide, high capacity and high-speed thoroughfares. Though dangerous, these arterials are all but unavoidable because they are the trunk lines carrying most local traffic and supporting nearly all the commercial activity essential to daily life.

(emphasis mine). Pedestrian safety is a transit issue as well – for many people the transit experience can become uncomfortable, inconvenient, and even dangerous if the pedestrian access in their area is not sufficient and safe. Details after the jump.

So how does St. Louis fare? Based on 72 pedestrian fatalities between 2007-2008, and a 1.7% percentage of workers walking to work, St. Louis is number 21 (just behind Kansas City) for pedestrian danger. Take a look at T4A’s Missouri Fact Sheet for more details (opens a .pdf file!).

The federal government is already working to improve pedestrian safety near transit stops: I found a proposed FTA rule change on Regulations.gov that would essentially enlarge the area around transit stations that would qualify for federal funding for bike- and pedestrian-related improvements (the “catchment” area). You can check it out on Regulations.gov and submit a comment either for or against the proposed change.

What’s your walking experience around the St. Louis region?

Portland Transport blogger Bob Richardson won the Dump the Pump video contest. Richardson put together three different video entries, and his “Romance” spot beat out all other comers. (My personal favorite was “Tea Party,” but I thought they were all great.) Check out the winning video:

(Click here if you can’t see the video player.)

You can also check out a video of Metro St. Louis riders telling our interns why they dumped the pump.

Congratulations to Bob Richardson & friends, and to the Portland Transport blog, for their creativity and the win! (and thanks to Hard Drive for the  info.)

The last week was a very busy week in transit! Here at NextStop, we had a lively discussion about bike commuting and possible solutions to crowding bikes onto crowded trains, learned about two important safety measures Metro takes to protect our passengers – lightning arrestors and light rail door technology – and discussed Metro’s briefing of the St. Louis County Council.

Meanwhile, here’s some news and thoughts from elsewhere that you might have missed:

• LA Metro has started a new transit blog, The Source. Check it out.
• The Post-Dispatch has published an article about the plans for revising St. Louis Centre in a way that will benefit the surrounding neighborhood.
• The Urbanophile reported on 2009 RailVolution conference.
• The proposed Cincinnati streetcar has cleared one hurdle.
• The Oregonian ponders retractable speed bumps that reward law-abiding drivers.

The Moving Transit Forward team has added another public workshop, hosted by Madison County Transit on Tuesday, November 17 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at the Edwardsville Station, Main and Hillsboro Streets in Edwardsville, Illinois. If you haven’t had a chance to make it to one of the public workshops, this is your last opportunity.

If attendance at public events isn’t your thing, we’ve put all of the workshop materials on the Moving Transit Forward long-range planning website for you to review and then send us your feedback. And remember, there will be another round of public input next month when Metro’s planners begin to put together the long-range plan based on this first round of feedback.

The Post-Dispatch’s Along For the Ride blog has a nice piece this morning about the Metro executive briefing of the St. Louis County Council yesterday. Although the information won’t be new to our blog readers, the post highlights how long it takes to build a light rail extension – from planning to opening day – and the steps in between.

One thing you may not know, however, is that Metro has to compete for federal funding whenever the region wants to make a large capital investment (like a light rail expansion). There are many other transit agencies out there with expansion plans. The federal government has preferences about what gets built – longer extensions rather than short connectors, for instance, or – these days – bus rapid transit corridors rather than light rail. In order to secure federal funding, Metro has to prove to the federal government that the project is a good idea. The feds also require a “local match” of some percentage of the funding; and proof that the investment can be operated once the federal capital dollars are gone. This second set of requirements, as the Post-Dispatch points out, is where the St. Louis region has historically struggled:

Friem said Metro faced challenges raising the money for pay for expanded service. Among them are the inability to raise local money to match federal funds and little state support of transit in Missouri, he said.

This year’s March service cuts were a direct result of lacking operating funding. All of the capital investment in the world – buying buses, building tracks – won’t improve the transit system if there isn’t funding to pay people to drive the buses, fix the tracks, change the tires, run the pay system that pays the drivers, etc. Metro executives are working with regional, state, and federal officials and other stakeholder groups to try to find a solution to this issue. As Mr. Baer says:

Baer said Metro had needs “that would never go away” and that it needs “a secure revenue stream” to deal with them. Having invested $1.8 billion in Metro, the public should not walk away from the system, he said.

In response to a MetroLinks post last week regarding bike vending machines, commenter JimmyZ asked:

Instead of “Bike-share Vending Machines”, how ’bout just some simple bike lockers at suburban metrolink stations, available for daily or monthly rentals?

I thought that was a good question, so I spent some time thinking about it, and here’s my answer: Why not both? (more…)

Here are some interesting tidbits from around the internet to help you kick off your Halloween weekend.

• Metro President & CEO Bob Baer sat down with the Post-Dispatch’s “Along for the Ride” crew and discussed his recent decision to stay on permanently at Metro, as well as the agency’s fiscal future.
• Is it out with the hybrid, and in with the…nothing?
• The East-West Gateway Council of Governments has started a blog, Renewing the Region.
• Bike-share Vending Machines – a good idea/ Would it work here? Would you use them from time to time?
• MoDOT tv: Watch “The Life Cycle of a Highway“
• Enjoy some photos from last week’s Metrolink prom, here and here.

MetroLink Prom Queen, courtesy of Miss MetroLink