The influx of traffic coming from a soon to be built I-64 interchange at Tower Grove will present an additional danger to pedestrians and bicyclists attempting to cross the highway. That’s what many citizens expressed at a recent public meeting to plan for a new MetroLink station at Boyle (presenters too).
North of the highway, CORTEX has big plans. Over the next 20 years, the district will add over 4 million square feet of building space and more than 11,000 jobs. The growing CORTEX district will mean many many more people will want to cross I-64.
The additional traffic the new interchange will dump onto the area’s streets means MoDOT should do whatever is necessary to mitigate dangers and make enhancements to encourage use by pedestrians and bicyclists. Of particular concern was Tower Grove where it intersects with the off-ramp at a roundabout especially since Tower Grove is a designated Bike St. Louis route.
With all that in mind, I would like to propose the following idea: should the eastbound I-64 off-ramp to Tower Grove be relocated east of Boyle? I’ve sketched out my idea below.
Your idea still leaves the ramps to/from WB 40/64 as designed. These ramps appear to cause the greatest conflict with peds. Since there will be no stop control on Boyle. Exiting drivers will look left to turn right after stopping (or doing a STL rolling stop), since there is no traffic light. Drivers getting on the highway will have too free-flow of a right turn from Boyle.
The stop bars visible in the full sized PDF of the interchange plans seem to highly suggest there will be a traffic signal at Boyle and the westbound ramps. Regardless, I have less concern with higher amount of traffic on Boyle than I do on Tower Grove.
Maybe stop bars, but I still don’t see any crosswalks to actually cross Boyle at the ramps. That would imply a stop sign, not a signal. Surely, the timing of a signal would allow for peds to cross a two-lane street. And if a stop sign, we’re back to the rolling-stop problem of an intersection. Legally, any intersection has implied crosswalks. But that they wouldn’t be striped at a four-way stop, once again, shows MODOT’s true priorities.
Rarely are there crosswalks to cross streets at highway interchanges, so that doesn’t surprise me. In most cases, what reason would you have to cross the street at a highway interchange when you can just cross at the intersection before or after the highway? And there are stop bars on Boyle, and they’re offset from the left turn stop bar which to me HIGHLY suggests traffic signal. But we could always just ask MoDOT to be sure.
I do agree it would be nice to have a crosswalk somewhere between Clayton and the highway, particularly with the amount of development proposed for the area.
That would mean that MODOT would be purchasing all of the land that the owner has for parking…
I like the roundabout scheme much better than ramps that chew up so much land.
As a driver, I like the roundabout scheme better too. As a pedestrian, the roundabout and it’s one way exit to Papin will be a small challenge to cross. Note that, if you look really closely, the sidewalk on the east side of Tower Grove does not cross Papin.
Ideally, the ramp I drew could take advantage of the land occupied by the onramp and not take too much if any land from the adjacent business. But I’m also not suggesting this would actually be better than MoDOT’s current plans, more like me just thinking out loud.