Cincinnati’s relationship with it’s riverfront on the Ohio River is remarkably similar, if not identical, to St. Louis’s relationship with it’s riverfront on the Mississippi River. Namely, each city’s downtown is separated from its riverfront by an interstate highway.

Interstate 71 is the highway barrier in Cincinnati. To the east, I-75 and a swath of railroads form a giant wall blocking the growth of downtown in that direction. A bending Ohio River, I-71, and a line of bluffs frame the east side of downtown.

Interstate 70 is the highway barrier in St. Louis. To the south, I-64 and a swath of railroads form a giant wall blocking the growth of downtown in that direction. The superblock composed of the convention center and Edward Jones Dome frames the north side of downtown.

Between I-64 and Washington Ave, a span of about 3,500 feet, there are presently only 5 streets that cross I-70 from downtown St. Louis to the Arch grounds and the riverfront. However, if the current plan from City+Arch+River for the renewal of the Arch grounds gets built, the number of connections between the park and downtown will be reduced by 1 to only 4 streets.

Between I-75 and the Taylor-Southgate Bridge/Broadway, a span of about 3,700 feet, there are 8 connections that cross I-71 between downtown Cincinnati and the neighborhoods, stadia and riverfront to its south. These connections are a vast improvement over the conditions that existed prior to the complete reconstruction of I-71/Fort Washington Way in 2000. Since then, Cincinnati has embarked on the development of a mixed-use project on land between Paul Brown Stadium and Great American Ballpark.

Cincinnati has and continues to take full advantage of the connections it has across its land dividing highway. St. Louis, meanwhile, seems hell bent on removing the few connections it has left with its riverfront.

When the National Park Service published the document containing all the public scoping comments for the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial environmental assessment, they did so in a rather interesting way: The NPS split comments apart and organized them by category.

On one hand, this method of cataloging comments added an extra method of analyzing all the comments submitted. It was especially enlightening to see the multitude of comments classified as “out of scope”, a rather curious category for a process that was seeking comments on the scope of the project.

On the other hand, it was annoying to not be able to read the comments as a whole as originally written.

For that reason, I set about putting the comment pieces back together as best I could. You can download the reorganized document by following the link below.

» Comments for the JNEM Environmental Assessment Recompiled

There’s been a lot of news and events announced in the last week. Here’s a quick rundown.

• CityArchRiver is hosting an event on January 25 to update the community on efforts to modernize and reinvigorate the Arch grounds. Detailed plans for the park over I-70, Museum of Westward Expansion entrance, and new access for the I-70 corridor will be unveiled. (CityArchRiver 2015)
• MoDOT will hold a public meeting on January 30 to discuss a project to widen I-270 between I-44 and Dougherty Ferry as first reported here in 2010. Construction is expected to start this spring and last approximately 2 years. (MoDOT)
• A band of residents along McKnight Road created a committee called Ladue Residents for Sidewalks demanding that sidewalks be added to their city streets. (Ladue-Frontenac Patch via MoBikeFed)
• St. Louis aldermen introduced a bill to require bike parking for developments costing over $1 million. The bill would also reduce car parking requirements in exchange for additional bike parking. (Post-Dispatch)
• Clayton becomes the eighth city in the St. Louis metropolitan area to adopt a Complete Streets policy. (MoBikeFed)
• Missouri officials are trying to figure out whether they can turn I-70 into a toll road without voter approval. (Kansas City Star via Citizens for Modern Transit)
• Amtrak filed a petition with the Surface Transportation Board claiming that Canadian National is the single worst railroad in the United States when it comes to following the law on prioritizing Amtrak trains. Canadian National owns trackage between Joliet and Chicago used by Amtrak Lincoln Service trains traveling between St. Louis and Chicago, a segment that is specifically cited as a major source of delays in Amtrak’s complaint. (Reason & Rail)
• Kansas City hopes to start a bike sharing system this summer. Will St. Louis ever get one of it’s own? (BikeShareKC)

If I had the power to renumber the region’s interstate highways…

Even when the outcome is a foregone conclusion, every major project transporation seeking federal funding needs to perform an environmental impact report. As part of the EIR process, multiple alternatives are studied to address the purpose and need statement; most alternatives are practical, others… not so much. The Forest Park Ave busway is of the latter variety.

The drawings above and below come from a 1984 draft environmental impact study for what would become the St. Louis MetroLink system. The busway alternative ran from the airport to downtown via I-170 and Forest Park Pkwy with stations spread out along the way. While plans for the busway west of Kingshighway seem practical, published plans for the busway along Forest Park Ave are surprisingly bizarre.

At both Kingshighway and Grand, the busway would take over the normal travel lanes. Through lanes for vehicles would be built underneath the entrance and exit ramps to Kingshighway and Grand. Meanwhile, busway stations would be built in the narrow gap between the car lanes and bus lanes.

In addition to utilizing the Forest Park Ave underpasses at Kingshighway and Grand, overpasses were to be built at Taylor and Vandeventer to maintain high operational speeds for buses and would have essentially turned Forest Park Ave into an expressway.

The intersection of Forest Park and Euclid is one of the busiest pedestrian crossings of any major intersection in St. Louis outside of downtown. With the high density of residential and commercial to the north and the hospital and MetroLink station to the south, there is a constant stream of pedestrians crossing Forest Park Ave.

But at seven lanes wide, Forest Park Ave is not the easiest street to cross. Fortunately, a few locations offer respite for pedestrians crossing the street: overpasses for Kingshighway and Grand Ave offer very wide medians while pedestrian refuge islands are available at Taylor and Euclid… except on the west side of Euclid.

For several years, now, portions of the sidewalk on the west side of Euclid north of Forest Park Ave have been closed for new construction projects: first it was the Park East Tower, then it was the Nine North condominium and garage project, now it is a new building for BJC. These construction projects have kept the number of pedestrians crossing Forest Park on the west side of Euclid to a minimum. But with the sidewalk and the new BJC building poised to open in the coming weeks and months, the number of pedestrians crossing Forest Park without the added safety of a pedestrian refuge will soon increase dramatically.

Given the volume of pedestrians crossing Forest Park at Euclid, it would be great to see the City of St. Louis or BJC mirror the east side of the intersection and add a pedestrian refuge on the west side of the intersection. A little added safety could go a long way.

As for pedestrians wishing to cross Kingshighway…

With the end of the holiday season, it’s time to review the best of 2011.

Perhaps the most exciting part of 2011 for me occurred just before the year even began when Alex Ihnen invited me to write for nextSTL.com giving me. I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to write for a much larger audience than I have here on my own blog and I’m excited to see the ways the community is growing outside of the blog and forum.

Near the end of the year, I teamed up with a few others to help start the Transit Riders Union of St. Louis. While things have started off slowly, we hope to become more active in the months to come. If you’d like to help in any way, please feel free to contact us.

Now enough blabbering. Onward with the top 7 posts of 2011:

1. Chicago-St. Louis High-Speed Rail Project Continues to Move Forward
While republican governors in Ohio, Florida, and Wisconsin killed off their high-speed rail projects, Illinois has continued to forge ahead.

2. Wash U Students Have No Place to Wait
At the intersection of Skinker and Forest Park, students walking between the Skinker-DeBaliviere neighborhood and the Danforth Campus often wait in the street due to a lack of sidewalk space.

3. Less Congestion, More Sprawl, a Lot More Time in the Car in St. Louis
One of the great ironies underlying the annual Urban Mobility report is that as traffic congestion in St. Louis decreases, the average commute time increases.

4. Realigning MetroLink to Better Serve St. Louis
Wherein I imagine where MetroLink should have run when originally built to better serve the city’s spine, the central corridor. Look for more ideas like this in the months to come.

5. Metro Responds
Following my post highlighting the surprising lack of local bus lines serving downtown St. Louis, Metro responded with an explanation of why things are the way they are. Hopefully future plans for BRT can help improve the situation.

6. What May Have Been: Stadium MetroLink Station and
7. What May Have Been: Delmar Loop MetroLink Station
A small series looking at early MetroLink station plans. More to come later this month.

Honorable Mention
Missing: Local Bus Service in Downtown St. Louis
The post that led to #5 above.

Dishonorable Mention (Tie)
“As a Matter of Policy, We Don’t Build Dedicated Bike Lanes.”
The St. Louis Regional Bike Plan is a thing of beauty and all the agencies and organizations involved with its planning should be commended with the exception of one stick in the mud, St. Louis County. “Salute” ** ***!

Kirkwood May Demolish Two Building for Additional Parking
Car Dealership, Parking Lot To Anchor Transit-Oriented Development At Sunnen MetroLink Station
At least St. Louis County can start adding bike lanes with a simple change of opinion. Opinions won’t help Kirkwood or Maplewood: Kirkwood destroying historic downtown buildings to put up a parking lot, Maplewood destroying transit adjacent apartments to build a car dealership. With Sunnen already the worst performing MetroLink station in the system, perhaps Metro should just close the station altogether. Uhhg!

Did you know that Memorial Dr, long ago known as Third St, was once just a two lane road? It’s hard to imagine when looking at Memorial Dr in it’s current state—3 lanes in each direction with a 4 soon to be 5 lane moat interstate depressed in the median. And did you also know that before Memorial Dr divided downtown St. Louis from its riverfront that it was ever so briefly a six-lane expressway/boulevard?

The Third Street Expressway was completed in late 1955 and connected the Ozark Expressway on the south to the Mark Twain Expressway on the north. Though not easily visible in the picture above, the expressway had six intersections with the downtown grid from Walnut St to Locust St, 2 more than exist today.

Less than 10 years later, the brand new road passing between downtown and the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial was dug up and a trench put in it’s place where I-70 (soon I-44) now runs.

So MoDOT recently came forward with some ideas on how it might pay for the $1.5-4 billion project to rebuild and widen I-70 between Kansas City and St. Louis. The two options they proposed included 1) a 15¢ increase in the state gas tax over ten years, 2) tolling I-70, or both.

For purposes of this post, let’s focus on just the gas tax option. While I wrote about the declining value of the state gas tax a little over a month ago, MoDOT’s proposal will allow us to go into a little more detail.

Missouri’s state gas tax currently stands at 17¢ a gallon and has not changed since 1996. Let’s assume that the proposed gas tax increase first takes effect in 2013. Over the next 9 years, the state gas tax will almost double to 32¢. Assuming the status quo for other states, the new rate would place Missouri 16th, between Oregon and West Virginia.

However, as shown below, the picture looks much different when adjusting the value of the gas tax for inflation.

In 1996, the state gas tax was worth 40% more than what its worth today. And despite MoDOT’s proposal to nearly double the gas tax, the 10 year timeframe means that inflation will keep the gas tax from ever reaching the value it had in 1996.

Inflation, however, is but one of the major value depressors of the state gas tax. The other major depressor is the looming increase in CAFE standards. Per legislation signed by President Obama last July, the average fuel economy for cars and light-duty trucks is set to double from 27.5 mpg in 2008 to 54.5 mpg in 2025.

The effect is that in the near future, drivers will be purchasing significantly less gas and, consequently, paying significantly less in fuel taxes under existing law. The chart below shows the significance of rising CAFE standards on the value of the state gas tax.

Inflation and rising CAFE standards mean that there is a finite amount of money MoDOT can hope to raise from a one-time increase in the gas tax above and beyond the revenue it currently earns. In 2011, revenue from the state gas tax was $502 million. Accounting for inflation, a 15¢ increase in the gas tax would net MoDOT an additional $1.85 billion (2011) in total additional revenue. With help from the federal government, MoDOT could parlay that into $9.25 billion.

When accounting for increasing CAFE standards, however, a 15¢ gas tax increase will net just $840 million (2011) in total additional revenue. MoDOT can parlay this money into almost $4.2 billion with help of the federal government.

Consequently, a 15¢ gas tax by itself is only just enough to fund MoDOT’s dream of I-70 truck only lanes from Kansas City to St. Louis. But, without additional sources of funding such as tolling revenue (or another major gas tax increase), MoDOT will be unable to invest in any other major projects for a long time to come.

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• Cars in Operation and Vehicle Travel by Age, 1970 and 2001 – “Transportation Energy Book: Edition 30″. Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 2011.

Great Rivers Greenway continues to work hard at its mission to build out the St. Louis region’s trail and greenway network. One of GRG’s projects is a trail connecting Carondelet Park to the existing trail along the River des Peres.

Starting from the River des Peres, the proposed trail will run north parallel to and west of I-55 and behind the Loughborough Commons parking lot. The trail will pass underneath Loughborough Ave and then zig close to Loughborough and Grand drives before crossing the road and ending near Holly Hills Ave.