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If you’ve ever had an opinion about transit in St. Louis – what kind of vehicles are used, where those vehicles should go, whether there should be restrooms at transfer facilities, whether you like the idea of commuter rail trains or accordion-style buses – tonight is the night to come out and give it. Tonight Metro and the Moving Transit Forward team is holding the first of its transit planning Public Workshops:

Tuesday, October 13 from 5-7 p.m. at the World Trade Center in Clayton, 121 S. Meramec Avenue Room 1012, Clayton, MO. (Arrive via Clayton Transit Center.)

The event is scheduled for two hours, but the workshops are set up so that people can come and go as they are able. There won’t be any big speeches or a single Q&A session. Instead, you will be conducted through six workstations by members of the Planning Department and other Metro Staff and Moving Transit Forward team members. The workstations will help acquaint you with the purpose of the planning, the technologies and enhancements that are available, and the costs of implementing and operating any service enhancements – Transit 101. At the end, you will be a newly-minted regional transit planner.

At the final workstation, you will sit down with a map and some colored pencils and draw out your preferred transit system, and work your way through a financial exercise to help you prioritize where you would spend money on transit. At every station there will be people available to answer any questions you have and take any feedback you would like to give. Metro will collect the maps and financial worksheets at the end of your session. If the entire exercise only takes you ten minutes, you can come and go in ten minutes. If you want to stay for the entire two hours, ask a lot of questions, and see what other people are wishing for transit in St. Louis, you are free to do that as well.

Why is Metro collecting the maps and financial worksheet? Because the planning team will use this data to gauge the transit preferences of the St. Louis region.

What does it mean for me to become a regional transit planner? Your voice will be heard in the planning process, and you will be helping to shape the economic development of the region for the next three decades. Your voice is critical to this process and, depending on turnout at the workshops, you may have a chance to have a very large impact on transit.

How can I follow up on developments in the plan? You will be able to sign up to receive email updates as the plan progresses (sign up online by registering at MovingTransitForward.org), including announcements of the next two rounds of public input. You can also follow this blog, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow the Transit Plan on Twitter (@STLTransitPlan), and visit the long-range planning website at www.MovingTransitForward.org.

Mayor Slay’s website’s poll this week is all about Metro. Head over there and take the poll, but it’s one where you have a certain set of answers to choose from and no space to make extra comments.

Go take the poll, but then come back here (we’ll wait!) and leave us comments that expand on your answers. Tell us how you think Metro is doing, what we could improve and – if funding were available – what you’d like most to see, based on the answers provided in the Mayor’s poll.

We always want to hear from you!

Our Moving Transit Forward team has added another location and time to the public roundtable forums that will be happening from October 13 (next Tuesday!) until October 27, and I think a lot of blog readers will find this one easy to get to.

Tuesday, October 20 at 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
City of St. Louis City Hall, 1200 Market Street
(Transit arrival via Civic Center MetroLink Station or #99 Downtown Circulator)

Obviously we hope you will come, visit every station and then participate in a discussion; but if you don’t have the entire two hours you are welcome to come and go as you please at any of the meetings.

Also, the Moving Transit Forward website will be online this evening at movingtransitforward.org.( If you go there now, you will see our development frame, but we are spending the day making final tweaks and transferring the content from our development site to the live site.) Bookmark it now and check it out tomorrow (or Monday) for details about the planning process, team, and vision.

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?

Local St. Louis blogs are talking about public transit:

Steve Patterson at Urban Review STL checks out the new downtown bus route, the #99 Downtown Circulator, and expounds on the convenience of using Google Maps to plan your transit trip.

Alex Ihnen at St. Louis Urban Workshop tackles the conundrum facing Portland’s TriMet after local high school districts offer students free transit passes.  Ridership is up, and the buses are crowded.  But increased ridership is good, right?  Ihnen takes on the positive challenge of overcrowding in transit.

Aaron Reen at The Urbanophile urges readers to sign up to receive the Reconnecting America newsletter to get the latest news on transit and transit-oriented community development.  Point taken!  I’m signing up!

Reading more about transit in our local blogs?  Let us know at blog@nextstopstl.org.

Correction: Alex Ihnen’s name was misspelled in the original post.  Sorry Alex!

Congratulations are in order to our Business Enterprises group who run the Gateway Arch Riverboats. They made the RFT’s “Best of St. Louis” as the best view of downtown (and we at the blog second that!).

In July 2009, Metro installed the public art piece Hive by sculptor Janet Lofquist at the Delmar Transit Plaza on the corner of Des Peres and Delmar Avenue.  Public art is one aspect of the federally-mandated transit enhancement projects that Metro completes each year, and is an important component of the vitality of public transit.   Public art in transit helps improve the appearance, use and safety of our system, and to date more than 150 art projects have been installed and/or performed through our Arts in Transit program.

Watch below to find out more about Hive and why transit agencies like Metro invest in public art.

Last Friday, Metro’s Board of Commissioners announced that Bob Baer, who has been serving as interim CEO since early last year, will stay on at Metro as the permanent CEO. The St. Louis Business Journal has a nice article about the news (as well as a much better picture of Mr. Baer than what I posted below from the executive briefing the other day). We should have announced this great news on the blog on Friday, but we were busy scurrying around getting ready for the launch of our long-range plan! The blog team plans to sit down with Mr. Baer sometime very soon and talk to him about his goals for the agency and also what he has managed to accomplish in the past 22 months. Check back here for that very soon.

Speaking of which – did you know that you can subscribe to the blog so that it comes directly to your inbox every day? Click on the big orange RSS button at the bottom of the right-hand column, copy the NextStop RSS feed URL and in your Microsoft Outlook inbox, right click “RSS Feeds,” choose “Add New” and paste the URL. Voila! NextStopSTL in your inbox whenever we post a new article. We love the RSS – you’ll never miss another important bit of Metro news.

For many of us, the first step to using public transit is planning our trip. Maybe you’ve thought about using the trains and buses to get to some of your favorite destinations…out to dinner, back and forth to work, the ballgame, to a friend’s house.  But you weren’t sure which buses and trains to use, and certainly when you catch them. Metro has TripFinder software on our website, and now you can also use Google Maps to plan your ride.

Say I’m interested in meeting a friend for dinner at Blueberry Hill after work. What’s the best way to get there? First, I go to Google Maps and type in my destinations, and hit “Get Directions.”  I don’t need to know the address for Blueberry Hill – Google will fill that information in.

On the left hand side of the screen, below the destination fields, select the field “By public transit”, as shown below:

Hit enter, and Google will provide you with several options involving various combinations of taking a train, bus, and walking. (more…)

Bob Baer briefs the crowd

UPDATE: An additional forum date announced.

At yesterday’s executive briefing, Metro’s planning officials announced the dates and locations for the first round of public engagement meetings for the long-range planning process. We’re posting the schedule here, and you can expect an announcement of the long-range plan website prior to the first meeting on October 13. Please spread the word about these meetings and encourage your friends, neighbors, co-workers, elected officials, barristas, and family members to come to these forums – and bring their opinions.

You are welcome at any and all of these public meetings, of course, but they are being held at different locations throughout the region to ensure maximum public engagement.

• Tuesday, October 13 from 5-7 p.m. at the World Trade Center in Clayton, 121 S. Meramec Avenue Room 1012, Clayton, MO. (Arrive via Clayton Transit Center.)
• Wednesday, October 14 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Chesterfield City Hall Council Chambers, 690 Chesterfield Parkway West, Chesterfield, MO. (Arrive via #258 Clayton Chesterfield bus.)
• Thursday, October 15 from 6-8 p.m. at the Herbert Hoover Boys & Girls Club Sportsman’s Park Unit, 2910 North Grand Avenue, St. Louis, MO. (Arrive via #70 Grand bus.)
• Saturday, October 17 from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. at Southwestern Illinois College, Main Complex Room 1410, 2500 Carlyle Avenue, Belleville, IL. ** Campus map .pdf here. ** (Arrive via College MetroLink Station.)
• Monday, October 19 from 5-7 p.m. at St. Louis Community College, Florissant Valley, Student Center Multi-Purpose Room, 3400 Pershall Avenue, Ferguson, MO. ** Campus map here. ** (Arrive via #36 Spanish Lake.)
• Thursday, October 22 from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. at Washington University Medical Center, Eric P. Newman Center, 320 South Euclid Avenue, St. Louis, MO. (Arrive via Central West End MetroLink Station.)
• Monday, October 26 from 5-7 pm. at St. Louis Public Library, Carpenter Branch, 3309 South Grand Blvd., St. Louis, MO. (Arrive via #70 Grand.)
• Tuesday, October 27 from 5:30-7:30 p.m. at the Mehlville High School Library, 3200 Lemay Ferry Road, Mehlville, MO. (Arrive via #73 Carondelet.)

All of the links above (except the links to the two college campus maps) go to Google Maps; the first link shows just the location and the second link shows how to get there via transit. Just change the starting address (currently Metro HQ!) to where you’re starting from. I even put in the date and the time you’ll want to arrive by in order to get you onto the right bus and train so you can get there on time. (You can see that by clicking “Show Options”; Google gives you the option to use your departure or arrival time to plan your trip.)