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July 26, 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990, commonly referred to as the ADA.  This landmark piece of civil rights legislation prevents the discrimination of individuals based on disability.  The act offers protections against discrimination regarding employment, public accommodations, commercial facilities, telecommunications, and public entities at all levels,  including public transportation.

The Act has also had major implications for public transit, including the design and construction of train stations and bus transfer centers, bus stops, wheelchair lifts and paratransit services.  And importantly, the Act affected many of our riders, those with disabilities and not.  A ramp leading to one of the front entrances (not the back!) of a newer building or a curb cut in the sidewalk are examples of accessibility available to all members of the community.  This week on Nextstop we will highlight ways in which the ADA and related services work at Metro and are woven into our operations and services.  We will also show employees and riders who work with ADA services, Metro’s Call-A-Ride paratransit van service, the travel training program, as well as engineering and construction projects related to accessibility.

Congratulations to those who fought for the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and those who continue to work for greater accessibility and inclusion for individuals with disabilities.  How has the ADA affected your life?  Do you remember life before the ADA?  What do we still need to improve?

Laura Neuman-Howe, the amazing woman who has been tending to the flowers and native plants along the Delmar MetroLink Station for four years, was easy to spot this morning.  She was standing on the westbound platform wearing a safety vest with gloves, shears, bug spray and sunblock in hand, ready to reclaim the flower beds from weeds and small trees.

It was a big task. Thankfully, Bec Shane, a Washington University graduate student, came to help.

Laura shows Bec some of the more pervasive weeds in the bed along the walkway to the Park-n-Ride lot. The bed is home to native grasses, hardy hibiscus, liriope and even sage.

Removing overgrowth revealed lilies along the westbound platform.

Progress! The bed will still need time and care, but are now free of many of the most relentless weeds and trees.

Thank you to Laura for all of her dedication, and Bec for coming out in the terrible heat to look after the Delmar Station flower beds. Laura is looking for someone to take her place in working to keep the beds maintained in the future. If you are interested, please email laura@earthsharemo.org.

St. Clair County MetroLink Bike Trail System Plan

Metro and our partners at the St. Clair County Transit District are working to extend the bike trail network serving St. Clair County, Illinois, providing additional multi-modal options. Thanks to funding from St. Clair County Transit District and federal funds, a new leg of the bike trail will be constructed to extend the trail that currently goes from SWIC to the Belleville MetroLink Station. The new segment will extend to Swansea, and there is a proposed future extension that would take the bike trail all the way to Memorial Hospital Station. At the same time, the Village of Swansea is adding its own northern extension route that will connect up at the MetroLink station.

This project will not only create a grade-separated bike trail that parallels MetroLink, but will also fix some slope stability and drainage problems to protect the MetroLink alignment from creek scouring and erosion. It will also provide a safe egress for train evacuation if there were ever an emergency on MetroLink. And finally, having the trail in place will make it easier for Metro’s maintenance vehicles to reach the tracks if there is a need for maintenance.

The Notice to Proceed on this project was issued in June 2010, and it will be completed within one year.

The fabric that makes up a community is not always woven from big, bold projects. Sometimes it is shaped by the passionate and consistent actions of one person or even just a few, doing their part to make St. Louis a beautiful and vibrant city. Laura Neuman-Howe of EarthShare Missouri is one of those people. In 2006, she approached Metro about planting and maintaining some flower beds at the Delmar MetroLink Station that a team of volunteers from University City had built in 1993 as part of the Art in Transit station-enhancement program. When the leader of the group left town in 2000, the beds fell to neglect with weeds and brush until Laura contacted Metro to offer her knowledge and her time to maintain the beds. She is looking for people to help her out Friday, July 23, 2010 7-9am at the Delmar Station.

The flower beds are viewed by hundreds, if not thousands, of people, including tourists who go to the nearby Pageant or the Loop or who park at the station to take MetroLink downtown. It’s because of volunteers like Laura that we have such pockets of color and beautiful plant life throughout the region in community gardens and shared landscapes. Details like this help make St. Louis a more beautiful place to live.

But now Laura is moving and looking for a volunteer gardening team, ideally with a leader who both cares about perennial plants (many native) and knows a bit about them, to replace her efforts. Metro is willing to provide some labor for this task, even on Saturdays, but cannot provide the plant knowledge. The flower beds are currently occupied with a variety of pretty, hardy blooming perennials – liriope, lilies, hardy hibiscus, echinacea, and more. And A LOT of weeds. The bed along the sidewalk between the station and the parking lot and the bed along the westbound platform (along Hodimont Avenue) need the most attention.

From Laura:

If any of you have interest or ideas on building a volunteer team, your assistance would be greatly appreciated. In the immediate term, I am planning to work with Metro folks on Friday, July 23, from 7-9 a.m. to clean up some of the weeds. But in the long term, I need to hand this over to someone else or Metro may turn it into mowed-weekly grass. If anyone wants to join us, then great, please do!

Metro employee volunteers will be out Friday, July 23, along with anyone else who can help. Thank you to Laura Neuman-Howe and all volunteers that are working to make our community a more beautiful place.

Bus routes have personalities.  Seriously.  Ask a frequent bus transit rider what their favorite route is and chances are they will have an answer. Bus routes often take on the characteristics of the people and the neighborhoods they serve.  Sometimes the length of the route, the frequency of service, time of day and even the size of the bus affect the experience of riding one route versus another.  Sometimes it’s just a gut feeling, the scenery of the route, or the collection of riders you encounter on a regular basis. Maybe it’s a warm and memorable operator, or that your favorite coffee shop has a stop right out front.

Urban Eats Cafe at corner of Meramec and Virginia in the Dutchtown neighborhood of South St. Louis City, served by the #70 Grand and #73 Carondelet

On Aug. 30, Metro will start its second phase of bus service restoration. The details of the changes will begin online next week. Some routes will stay the same, some will change, and some will be brand new to Metro and to opassengers. Hopefully, some of these will become new favorites for our riders.

What is your favorite bus route? Why makes it unique to you? Please give us your answer and we’ll put together a collection of your favorite routes for a future post.

Familiar with the iconic London Underground T-shirts and female voice reminding transit riders to “Mind the Gap”? MTA Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) now has created its own spin on rail-safety slogans:

LIRR recently released a video featuring the Agency’s Medical Director, Dr. John Clarke, sporting his physician’s white coat and rapping about “the gap.” The video shows Dr. Clarke leading a group of fifth graders from Lindell School in Long Beach to Manhattan and onto the train to the muscial refrain of “Look down, step over and watch the gap.”

The video is a part of LIRR’s push to reduce the number of accidents on the platform and to improve customer courtesy. According to Metro Magazine, so far in 2010, the LIRR has experienced a 15-percent reduction in year-to-date (January 1-July 1) reported gap incidents (2010-33 gap incidents vs. 2009-39 gap incidents).

Maybe Metro has some talented people willing to step up and perform for better transit. What kind of video would you make for Metro St. Louis riders? What safety and courtesy concerns could be addressed?

East Riverfront Arcade, which will soon see some changes.

The work on the historic Eads Bridge rehabilitation project is expected to take about three years total. The best way to assure a quality rehabilitation, but still maintain service levels, is to perform the work on one track while still running both eastbound and westbound MetroLink trains on the other track. To do that, Metro will first construct a new interlocking just west of the East Riverfront MetroLink Station, actually out on the bridge structure.

An Interlocking being assembled; it then gets dropped whole into place

An interlocking is essentially a rail crossover – it allows a train to cross from one track to another. Of course, all of the requisite switches and signals are a part of that package, too.

When used in conjunction with the existing crossover adjacent to the Arch-Laclede’s Landing MetroLink Station in Missouri, Metro will be able to operate MetroLink trains on the current (12 minute) headway without delay to customers, for the duration of the Eads Bridge project. Once work on one side of the bridge is complete, the work will move to the other side.

East Riverfront Station - those inside pillars will be removed and the interlocking dropped into place there.

At some point during this project, Metro will actually have to cut into the road deck of the Eads Bridge, in order to drop the fully-assembled crossover into place. The road deck of the bridge will be closed during this process, and Metro will close up the hole and repair the bridge deck once the crossover is in place. The contractor on the project is STV Inc.

.Most of us have been there.  We’re sitting on MetroLink and the fare inspector is making her way down the aisle.  Quick, where did we put our Metro pass?  We ruffle through our backpack, empty our pockets, and apologize profusely until we produce the pass or ticket triumphantly from its deep hiding place.  That moment, common to many Metro riders, was the inspiration for the new art sculpture installed at the St. Charles Rock Road MetroLink Station, Honey, Where’s My Metro Pass?, by local artists Nick Lang and Thad Duhigg.  Lang and Duhigg, both of the Department of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University and Edwardsville, worked with student apprentices from St. Louis ArtWorks to create the concept for the piece. Today, the artists, students and staff from ArtWorks, Metro employees and supporters gathered at the Rock Road Station to dedicate the sculpture, which is fabricated in bronze, steel and aluminum.

From left to right: Arts in Transit Director David Allen, artist Nick Lang, St. Louis ArtWorks apprentice Aaron Hamilton, artist Thad Duhigg, and Metro Board Commissioner Kevin Cahill

ArtWorks student apprentice Aaron Hamilton, who is completing his fourth year as a summer apprentice, joined in the celebration. During a 2007 summer art class led by Lang and teaching artist Allen Kmetz at ArtWorks, the students provided concepts, designs and models that helped inspire the sculpture.  The students began studying MetroLink passengers to look for common objects that could be used to represent their commuting experience.  The apprentices then created artistic models to illustrate them.  Honey, Where’s My Metro Pass? includes a set of keys and keychain, coin change, a stick of lip balm and a crumpled receipt.  As part of the St. Louis ArtWorks program the apprentices earn minimum wage while working five days a week on art projects that will be sold or shown publicly.  This sculpture, a collaboration between local artists, youth, and the arts community, will now be available for all transit riders in St. Louis.

Aaron Hamilton, one of the apprentices in a 2007 St. Louis ArtWorks class that provided concepts, designs and models that helped inspire the sculpture.

The sculpture is part of Metro’s Arts in Transit program that seeks to enhance communities and the transit experience through public art that appears throughout the design and environment of the transit system.  What’s your favorite piece of public art on the Metro system?

Artist Nick Lang's daughter enjoying her father's work.

Remember how we announced that a pedestrian walkway to the Arch grounds was being built in the Arch Garage?

The before picture.

It’s here!

The after picture!

The walkway connects a ramp from Washington Avenue to stair/elevator to Arch grounds.

During the five minutes I took pictures of the new walkway, over 45 people used it to get to and from the Arch grounds.  This new connection helps people move more easily from the Landing or the Arch-Laclede’s Landing MetroLink Station to the Arch and the surrounding park and riverfront,especially if someone has limited mobility or is pushing a stroller.  Final stages of the walkway includes additional lighting, and we are looking at bike parking options.

If you are out exploring the Arch grounds this weekend and summer, don’t forget to check out the options at the Core of Discovery, the corridor of attractions along our riverfront heritage.

Have a great weekend St. Louis, and safe travels.

A big congratulations to Marcus Thomas, our Dump the Pump contest winner! Thomas is a long-time Metro rider who walks to the Emerson Park MetroLink Station from his East St. Louis home, rides to the Delmar Station, and then takes the #91 Olive to his job at Winco Windows. “My girlfriend and I take Metro everyday. She gets off at the Union Station Station and takes the shuttle to Ameren; I stay on until Delmar. It’s just really convenient for us. I drive a Dodge Ram 150, so with the price of gas, I just park it during the week.”

Thomas was also excited about the biking prizes in the package, including helmets from Great Rivers Greenway and ride tickets from Trailnet, since he and his 10-year-old daughter Olivia like to explore the area’s bike trails. He said they are big fans of the MCT trails in Madison County, and was looking forward to checking out more of the Great Rivers Greenway and Trailnet events and rides included in the Dump the Pump information.

Other winners included:
2nd Prize: Tina Totty
3rd Prize: Bill Olson, Steve Whitfield, Danella Sullivan

Thank you to everyone who entered, and we hope you continue to Dump the Pump everyday.