For many, public transit really does mean freedom. What kind of freedom? The freedom to work, the freedom to be social, the freedom to educate yourself, the freedom to live your life. For Stuart and Dianne Falk, who both have multiple sclerosis, Metro Call-A-Ride allows them to attend theater rehearsals with the DisAbility Project, go to the gym, attend religious services, and other activities throughout town. When their Call-A-Ride service was lost last March during service cuts, the Falks appeared on CNN and St. Louis Post-Dispatch to tell how the cuts would affect their lives. The Falks admitted to feeling “trapped” in their nursing facility in Ballwin without Call-A-Ride access.
It’s always important to remember that public transit is more than buses and trains. Watch:
The Uppity Theater Company is the sponsor of the DisAbility Project Theater Group. You can schedule for them to come out and speak to your organization, business or school on a variety of topics from asthma to ADA accessibility to finding love. The group seeks to raise public awareness about disability and empower and honor the disabled through the stage. Schedule a performance for your organization!
(Click here if you are unable to see the embedded video.)
It’s Toronto, Canada, not St. Louis, so the numbers wouldn’t be the same. I’m definitely aware of that. But the realities are similar. Losing public transit would be disastrous for any metropolitan region, including ours.
Or $6 or $8 or $10…what would it mean to you? Most of us would probably prefer to ignore those thoughts, but Christopher Steiner gave it some thought, enough thought for a book described in yesterday’s article in the Chicago Sun Times. The author of the article described $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better as “surprisingly optimistic”, and Steiner’s examples are, indeed, rose-colored. He envisions a world with better public transit, reduced obesity, and revitalized urban cores, but also surburban ghettos, prohibitively expensive travel, and the end of “big box” shopping.
How do you see a future of ever-increasing gas prices? Is the glass half full, half empty or is that even the question? Perhaps the question, instead, is what will we do with the remaining contents of the glass?
While searching through the Post-Dispatch’s Building Blocks blog, I ran across an old but interesting post about job sprawl, a term I’d never heard until today. According to Tim, a study from the Brookings Institute looked at job density and ranked cities in order of highest to lowest. St. Louis, as you might imagine, is pretty close to the bottom of the list, i.e. has less job concentration and more job sprawl.
We could rehash all of the old arguments about sprawl here, but what I actually found interesting about the article is how it highlights another reason why planning public transit in St. Louis is a real challenge. Metro’s official mission is “Regional economic development through excellence in transportation,” which is one reason that Metro is very conscious of serving job centers. That’s hard enough in any city, but what happens if, as they say, the center does not hold? As job centers deteriorate and companies locate willy-nilly across the region, it becomes more and more difficult to identify (and thereby structure transit around) job “centers.” You can see, by looking at the job sprawl phenomenon, that planning for transit needs to be just one part of a regional plan that should address not just roads and buses and trains, but also serves to coordinate development of job and industry centers.
One final note: I, too, will be interested in seeing the follow-up study on whether the jobs are sprawling because the people are.
A satellite image of a typical Tyson’s corner road. (Image: Microsoft Virtual Earth via Downtown Creator)
One of the toughest challenges facing public transit agencies is designing a system that works well in lower-density areas outside of traditional urban centers. Suburban and ex-urban sprawl pose a serious problem for alternative modes of transportation–for bikers, walkers, and transit riders–in cities all across the country, including our own dear St. Louis.
Time magazine published an interesting article last week about Tyson’s Corner, Virginia, one of the nation’s most notorious and massive examples of sprawl, located in the D.C. area. Right now, this ‘exurb’ consists mostly of shopping malls, big box stores, and office complexes, and has very little housing. The article details a new development plan inspired by the proposed addition of a light rail line through the area, with four stops proposed for Tyson Corner. The development, all sponsored by private developers rather than a local government, calls for the addition of thousands of living units and the institution of a street grid in an area that now is connected primarily by parking lot. It’s Transit-Oriented Development on a massive scale, with the impetus for the project coming mainly from the addition of the light rail stops and from a desire to reduce traffic.
It’s an interesting idea and, as far as I am aware, unprecedented in its scale. What do you think? Will this work or even happen? Could transit-oriented development of this type transform St. Louis in the future? I’m interested to hear your thoughts.
My friends and I waiting at a bus stop. (Photo courtesy of Lindsey King)
Big news: gas prices are up again, nearly a dollar from the low in December. But I have a confession to make–this news doesn’t bother me one bit. I don’t have a car, so gas prices just aren’t on my radar screen anymore. (This is not to say that I don’t realize that high gas prices pose a serious problem for many people…just that I have managed to insulate myself from worrying about them.)
“But how can you live without a car in St. Louis? That’s impossible!” Nay! It is quite possible. For the entire three years that I have lived here, I have been car-less and fancy-free. Doubters take note. (more…)
Written byCourtneyComments Off Last Updated::June 4, 2009
Congestion Trends, 2007-2008 (Wall Street Journal)
As the economy slumps, there are fewer and fewer cars on the road as people drive less to reach jobs, goods and services. It in turn means, of course, a reduction in congestion in major cities. While such a decrease may seem like a dream for automobile commuters, its a quandry for transit agencies dependent on fuel tax, road and bridge tolls and sales tax to fund transportation projects. Just as the demand for public transit is at a 50-year high, agencies are scrambling to find money as auto-dependent revenues decline. Here’s the paradox: less cars on the road, the less money for public transit.
The article highlights how other industries suffer as well: taxis, rental car service, drive-thru restaurants – all whom provide sales tax revenue. Transportation agencies will have to struggle in the next few years to provide funding solutions as more Americans alter their transportation habits.
