» Alternative Transportation

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.)

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…)

Recession schmession!  The Wall Street Journal is already weighing in on its picks for the The Next Hot Youth-Magnet Cities.  Once the recession cools off, where are kids going to live?  What amenities, jobs and lifestyle choices are 20-somethings going to be looking for?  Washington, D.C. and Seattle claim the top spots for the trend towards government and tech-related jobs combined with strong cultural and active living attractions.  Also making the list are New York City, Portland, Austin, TX, San Jose, CA, Denver, Durham, NC, Dallas, Chicago and Boston.  And what do the majority of these cities have in common?  Strong mass transit systems.  In fact, shots of local transit is featured in for two of the cities (Portland and Denver) and featured in Portland’s description.  Today’s young professional tend to value active urban living that includes common spaces, public transit, access to outdoor activities and cultural centers, even in the face of high unemployment.

It has been my personal experience that young people tend to gravitate towards active lifestyles that include walking, biking and taking public transit, even in more auto-centric cities like St. Louis.  Do you agree with this assessment?  Do you think it will last?  What can St. Louis do to attract more young professionals in the coming decade?

Photo: FTA

A New York Times article published a couple weeks ago has gotten people chatting about Bus Rapid Transit, or BRT. BRT consists of souped-up bus lines with some combination of larger buses (holding 60 people rather than 40), dedicated bus lanes, full stations with prepurchased tickets, and shorter waiting times. The bus lines are streamlined–fewer stops but more frequent service–occupying a happy medium between light rail or subways and conventional bus lines. BRT provides a cost effective way to increase service capacity and speed up travel time without substantially increasing cost of operation. And by building ridership and increasing the convenience of transit, BRT can pave the way for later improvements, like the extension of light rail lines.

While the article celebrates Bogota, Colombia’s BRT system and specifically highlights BRT’s potential in cities of the developing world, cities in the United States are also getting in on the action.  In the past, Metro has proposed BRT as an option for future service improvements. Remember last fall’s “St. Louis Region at a Crossroads”? Back then, Metro proposed BRT development if more funding became available.

There are two ways BRT could work in St. Louis, should we be in a position to expand service beyond what it was before this March. One way is to take a busy local route and convert it to BRT. The #70 Grand route, which is quite crowded, would be a great candidate for this. With a little investment in infrastructure, this busy route could run more frequently and stop less often, perhaps every four blocks or so. This scenario would shorten travel time while maintaining walkability, with no stop being more than two blocks away from existing stops. Plus it would be really useful; that route has a lot of good things: hospitals, a major university, restaurants and shops, theaters and museums, my favorite burrito place…the list goes on. It could be a great north-south corridor connector with connections to other bus routes and to MetroLink.

The second BRT option would function a lot like the express route service (some of which we’re restoring in two scant weeks!), except that it would run much more frequently and all day long. This would involve running buses on the interstate to connect BRT stations at Park and Ride lots to places not currently reached by light rail.

Although I just started my internship at Metro in June, I must admit that I’ve been a huge transit nerd for a long time. Metro’s BRT talk last fall was wicked exciting to me, so when I found myself in Boston this spring, I dragged my mom along to try out their Silver Line. My verdict: it put the “fun” in “functional.” There was a nice place to sit, an LED sign told me exactly when the next bus was coming, and got me back to Boylston station to connect with the subway in a speedy fashion. Bus rapid transit is definitely something I hope to see more of.

What do you think? Can BRT work for St. Louis? Would you ride it?

I was perusing some of the St. Louis-focused blogs today and saw several links to St. Louis real estate blogger Dawn Griffin, so I decided to click over and check her out. She’s provided a great service with this post, “Homes Under $200,000 Near MetroLink Stations.” She provides the listing for seven homes walkable to MetroLink, and the highest priced is $199k. While that’s sadly out of my current price range (of zero!), it’s nice to dream – and good to know that people are thinking about proximity to transit when making their purchasing decisions.

In fact, I think that’s probably a growing trend. There’s another site called Walk Score that covers 40 cities and gives a score based on walkability from a selected address. I tested the site by checking out the score for my old house in Portland, Oregon and it had a walkability score of 88 – amazingly high. (Though, since I lived there without a car, I would argue that the score really should be 100!)

The popularity and growth of sites like Walk Score indicates, to me, that more and more people are factoring transit into their big life decisions. So tell me – in your next move, will you factor in access to transit or other transportation-related concerns, when making your decision?

There’s bike-friendly, and then there’s bike-lovin.’ Copenhagen falls into the “lovin’” category.

Digital bike-counter display? Totally. Doubles as air pump? Awesome. But check this out:

The city will give a Biomega bike to cyclist number 500,000, and since there are about 12,000 cyclists that pass by on a week day (about 25k both ways), it shouldn’t take too long for that number to be reached. (emphasis mine)

12,000 cyclists per day, going in one direction on one city street? Totally awesome!

There’s a lot of anger out there against cyclists. In my years of bike commuting, I’ve been swerved at, “bumped” off the road, screamed at by people trying to startle me, had a fast-food soda cup (half-full) thrown at me out the window of a minivan, and honked at for no reason (other than to scare me). There’s no question that motorist harassment makes it scary to bike commute and seriously diminishes from the joy that comes from getting out on a bike.

Columbia, Missouri’s City Council has reacted by passing an ordinance that officially makes biker harassment a crime. (Via TH.)  According to The Missourian,

The ordinance, which is modeled after similar ordinances in South Carolina and Colorado, makes it a misdemeanor to do the following: throw an object at or in the direction of a cyclist, threatening a cyclist to frighten or disturb the cyclist, sounding a horn with the intention to frighten or disturb a cyclist, knowingly placing a cyclist in the path of physical injury, or knowingly engaging in conduct that creates a risk of death or serious physical injury for a cyclist.

Residents who spoke at the meeting said they have experienced all of the above, and those who remained after the deliberation stood and cheered when the ordinance was passed.

“If you’ve ever been in a subcompact car and had a semi get on your back bumper and blow the horn, that’s what it was like,” ordinance supporter Steve Epstein said of being tailed by frustrated motorists.

(emphasis mine). I think we can all agree that the items detailed by the ordinance are all bad things that drivers should not do to cyclists. That’s pretty uncontroversial. My question is, Does this ordinance help, by providing recourse to the bikers? Does it cover something the law already addresses? Does it fan the flames in Columbia’s dispute between bikers and drivers?

Feel free to weigh in on these questions or share your bike vs. car stories in the comments (whether your perspective is from behind the wheel, or from behind the handlebars).

Rick at StlRising posed a question today about the WeCar Prius that he can see from his downtown office window.

Does anybody know about the program? How do you get in on it? Could I ditch my car, ride Metro downtown, and then have the We Car available for trips during the day out of the office?

WeCar is an interesting program. Lots of cities have flex-car programs; St. Louis’s is run by home-town Enterprise.  The essential idea is that you apply to become a member and, once a member, you can reserve the WeCar for specific periods of time and use as needed.

Flexcars are great for people who are trying to be car-independent but want a little more flexibility and/or range than public transit can offer, even when there’s no friend to hitch a ride with. What I hear most is that people who are car-free by choice and who rely on transit find the added flexibility gives them the extra freedom they need in situations that might otherwise tip them towards going ahead and getting a junky, “just in case” car – and wasting all that money on insurance and maintenance for a car that is mostly parked. I think it’s also a great idea for businesses who don’t want to maintain pool cars but need employee transportation from time to time.  (More on those ideas at TreeHugger.) Details on St. Louis’s program after the jump. (more…)

(Photo: Micov via Wikimedia)

Every day American drivers spend about a billion dollars to fill up gas tanks. Prices have risen 51 days in a row. More bad news for car drivers – the Energy Information Administration of the Department of Energy has released a report predicting a sharp decline in world oil output in the near future. This is a radical change from the previous administration. Our government is finally admitting that peak oil is not so far away. Just a couple years ago, the EIA predicted that oil output in 2030 would be 107.2 million barrels a day – now it’s saying it’ll be more like 93.1 million. Liquid fuel consumption in the US is currently 18.9 million barrels a day. The EIA believes liquid fuel production won’t be able to keep up with future rising demand.

So what does all this mean for mass transit? We already know public transportation saves gas. The leverage effect of trains and buses reduces gasoline consumption by 4.2 billion barrels a year. We don’t have to keep using liquid fuels though. Buses can be powered with electricity or fuel cells. 10 European cities already have fuel cell bus fleets. Electrified trains can be powered with renewable energy, reducing the need for increasingly costly fossil fuels. The Interstate Traveler Company has a plan to build a hydrogen / solar powered train system in Michigan from Lansing to Detroit. Mass transit, paired with innovative renewable technologies, can help save money and the environment.

These technologies take money and years to implement. But you can do something this week to reduce gasoline consumption, save money, and help the environment. Today is Dump the Pump Day, a national event to promote public transit. I helped record a video on how other Metro riders plan to Dump the Pump which we will be posting shortly.  For more information on how you can Dump the Pump,check out Metro’s website.