City of St. Louis issues

Many of the recommendations in the previous section on St. Louis County also apply to the City of St. Louis. However, as a relatively old city, St. Louis has a fundamentally bicycle-friendly street grid, providing many alternate routes for bicycle travel. Arterials are in many cases operating at less than capacity, due to a population decrease and to the construction of limited-access highways.

Neighborhood bicycling and traffic calming

The attractiveness of bicycling for neighborhood trips in urban grids depends strongly on the means of traffic calming used to keep through traffic off the residential streets. Conflicting one-way signs are sometimes used, but they force bicyclists either to go out of their way or to violate the law by riding opposite traffic on one-way streets.

Some cities, in particular Seattle, have applied other means of traffic calming, such as small traffic circles at intersections in residential neighborhoods. I have little firsthand experience with these, but they do appear to have met their objectives in Seattle.

Geographic barriers

This St. Louis area is traversed by a number of geographic barriers, some natural and others man-made. Crossings of the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers are discussed on another page on this site. Smaller watercourses, notably the Des Peres River, have crossings only at major arterial streets. Railroad lines and limited-access highways and expressways also create barriers. For example, extending west from the center of St. Louis to Grand Avenue is a corridor where most north-south streets are interrupted by rail lines and Interstate Highway 64.

During my survey, I entered St. Louis from the south on Gravois Avenue, passing through a long, narrow underpass under a railroad line (between Morganford Avenue and Chippewa Street) which constitutes an effective barrier to bicycle travel.

Such barriers represent opportunities as well as challenges in a bicycle transportation plan. Bicycle-friendly cross-sections are especially important on arterials which cross barriers, since there are few alternate routes. Separate bicycle and pedestrian crossings deserve consideration where no arterial is nearby, or where an arterial would be very expensive to reconfigure, as is the case with Gravois Avenue. A bicycle-pedestrian crossing which makes bicycle and pedestrian trips shorter than motorized trips provides a strong incentive to walk or ride rather than drive.

Arterials

While neighborhood bicycling by children occurs mostly on residential streets, arterial streets allow faster travel and are often preferred by adult bicyclists who are confident riding on them.

The City of St. Louis faces an unusual situation with many of its arterial streets, as population has declined substantially in the decades since 1950.

Many wide arterial streets have very light traffic in relation to their width and number of lanes. Construction of limited-access highways has held down the volume of traffic on some arterial streets. The expanding MetroLink system can be expected also to help hold down the volume of traffic on arterials.

One clear example of a roadway which is currently overbuilt is a stretch of Goodfellow Boulevard near the Army Mobility Equipment Center (photo above) with six very wide lanes but hardly any traffic. The outside lane width of this stretch of roadway is very ample for bicycle/motor vehicle lane sharing.

On the other hand, the stretch of Riverview Drive in the photo below (looking southwest) shows another extreme, a wide right of way but with narrow roadways, narrow lanes, no shoulders and deteriorating pavement. Though traffic is light, the narrow outside lanes are not bicycle-friendly. After the next major reconstruction, this location could be bicycle-friendly if some of the extremely wide median or grass embankments were converted to roadway width.

St. Louis has some wide medians established by painting stripes on a single roadway (for example, another part of Riverview Drive north of its junction with Hall Avenue, discussed in another page on this site). Some painted-on medians and center turn lanes in St. Louis are unnecessary, or unnecessarily wide. For example, there is an unusually wide center turn lane on Hall Avenue where there are very few driveways to turn into. Separating traffic flows at the center of the street is desirable, but on the other hand, wide outside lanes also convey a safety advantage, and not only for bicyclists. In the St. Louis area, the emphasis is heavily on medians and center turn lanes at the expense of outside lane width. Surplus median width and unnecessary or overwide center turn lanes should be seen as an opportunity for improvement by inexpensive restriping.

Arterial treatments

The attractiveness of arterial streets for bicycling depends on their having sufficient outside lane/shoulder width for bicycle/motor vehicle lane sharing, and on intersections which do not impede bicyclists -- for example, traffic signal actuators should be bicycle-sensitive so the traffic lights turn green for bicyclists. I do not generally advocate bicycle lanes for urban arterials typical of older cities such as St. Louis. On-street parking, curbside deliveries and the numerous driveways and cross streets make it impossible to designate any single location as the correct place for bicyclists to ride. The correct position for bicyclists depends on several factors, including traffic conditions.

Under conditions where there is no parking and no cross traffic -- for example on bridges or on boulevards with few cross streets and driveways -- bike lanes are more practical. An undesignated shoulder area could, however, also be used by bicyclists.

There is presently one street in St. Louis, Holly Hills Avenue, which has bicycle lanes (photo above). Holly Hills Avenue has two narrow roadways separated by a median, and with parallel parking. Motorists had tended to use each of the roadways as two lanes, though they were only marginally wide enough to allow overtaking.

The bike lane on Holly Hills Avenue is not a perfect solution. It is within the range of the doors of parked cars (photo below), a problem that could have been avoided by striping for a single travel lane and parking lane as on Wydown Boulevard in Clayton.

All in all, however, I regard the restriping of Holly Hills Avenue as an improvement. Consistent with my earlier statements about underutilized roadways, Holly Hills Avenue has relatively low motor traffic volume, which a single lane in each direction can accommodate. The presence of bicycle lanes does discourage motorists from overtaking, and the bicycle lanes are wide enough to accommodate bicycle travel despite the parallel parking.

The bicycle lanes are discontinued short of the one major intersection, allowing bicyclists to merge to the correct position for their destination. In the following sequence of photographs, Larry Welty of the Missouri Department of Transportation demonstrates correct positioning for through travel at the intersection of Holly Hills Avenue and Morganford Boulevard.

In the first photograph (above), the end of the bike lane stripes is visible. Note that the bike lane is clear of the parked vehicle to the right. Bicyclists can ride in the lane and still avoid a vehicle's opening door.

In the second photograph, Larry Welty is waiting for the red light at the intersection. A pickup truck is approaching the intersection to prepare a right turn.

In the third photograph, the pickup truck has begun a legal right turn on red, and other vehicles (at the left side of the picture) are approaching in the through lane to wait on the left of the bicyclist.

The point of this sequence of photographs is that the discontinuing of the bike lane stripe avoids encouraging either motorists or bicyclists to position themselves incorrectly at the intersection. However, a similar traffic calming effect has been achieved on Wydown Boulevard in Clayton, St. Louis County by painting a guide stripe without designating the area to its right as a bike lane. Not designating a bike lane avoids encouraging improper maneuvers at all locations, and not only at intersections.

Bicycle parking

Secure bicycle parking is essential for bicycle transportation to succeed. The ribbon rack (photo, below) was photographed in a South Side neighborhood shopping area (on Gravois Boulevard near the St. Louis Bread Co.) during the inspection tour. The "ribbon rack" is one of the better, modern designs which are much preferable to the "dishdrainer" racks that are still common in metropolitan St. Louis. The newer racks are more secure, since they allow the bicycle's frame to be locked.

An incentive program for installation of bicycle racks in shopping areas and other places where transient parking is needed can do much to encourage the use of bicycles for transportation. The racks should be located in well-traveled areas where bicycle thieves do not benefit from concealment.

For commuters, the parking problem is more challenging, because bicycles need to be secure all day long, day after day. Bicyclists often prefer to take their bicycles into the workplace, but the managers of many office buildings prohibit this. A sensible solution is for bicycle racks to be provided in parking garages within sight of the attendant. Since 10 bicycles can be parked in the same floor area as one car, a modest parking fee can make this arrangement pay.

Parking at rapid transit stations is also advantageous when the bicycle is used as a feeder mode. This issue is taken up in the section of the report on multimodal travel.

Adherence to design guidelines

During my visit, I was made aware of three proposed bicycle facilities which do not conform to national design guidelines.

One proposal was for a two-way bicycle lane on one side of Goodfellow Boulevard. I have been told that this proposed facility was incorporated into a Transportation Improvement Plan. I find this astonishing, since such facilities have been proven extremely hazardous, and the AASHTO guidelines for bicycle facility design specifically recommend against them. Goodfellow Boulevard is a fine example of a St. Louis arterial which has excess capacity. However, any reconfiguring to make use of this capacity for bicyclists should conform to national design guidelines, so bicyclists travel with the normal flow of traffic rather than against it.

Similar comments apply to one proposal for a connection between the Riverfront Trail and the Old Chain of Rocks bridge, discussed on another page of this report.

I also understand that a bicycle path parallel to Locust Street in downtown St. Louis has been proposed. Such a path is in fact a sidewalk and should not be designated for bicycle travel. Placing bicyclists in conflict with the normal traffic flow at intersections guarantees that a facility would create serious delays and hazards for bicyclists. Most would avoid using it. The bicyclist population in the downtown office district of a large city consists almost exclusively of experienced adult commuters, bicycle messengers and utility riders, who will not tolerate the delays imposed by paths which have a tricky intersection at the end of every block.

Police bicycle patrol

St. Louis, like several surrounding municipalities, has a police bicycle patrol. According to Sgt. Mike Anderson, city bicycle mounted police trainer who spoke at the seminar on August 13, the bicycle patrol has been particularly effective in reducing commercial bicycle couriers' violation of traffic laws in the downtown business district. Police on patrol were observed during the inspection tour (photo, left above). The officers were riding on the sidewalk, as is sometimes necessary on patrol. They were riding slowly, as is necessary for safety.

There is a tension between police officers' law enforcement task and their role modeling. The balance may be different from one community to another. Martin Pion informs me, for example, that the Ferguson police chief instructs his bicycle patrol officers to obey the law.

Recommendations:

• Support and expand the bicycle patrol of the St. Louis Police Department. The bicycle patrol is an evident success, as are bicycle patrols nationwide. A bicycle patrol is not only an effective law-enforcement tool, it is a way to bring an understanding of bicycling into city government.

• Remove geographic barriers. The means to be used depend on the location, and can include re-use of abandoned railroad bridges, construction of new bicycle-pedestrian bridges and underpasses, construction of shortcut trails, and bicycle-friendly construction or reconstruction of existing streets and bridges. Specific suggestions have been made in the text above.

• Examine and revise traffic-calming measures. Conflicting one-way streets and other measures which impede neighborhood bicycling should be replaced with other measures which impede through motor travel while not impeding bicycle travel.

• Take advantage of excess capacity on arterial streets. The excess capacity of many St. Louis arterials presents an unusual opportunity to increase the attractiveness of these streets for bicyclists by reducing the number of lanes and increasing the outside lane width.

• Restripe to convert excessive median or center turn lane width to outside lane width. Moving lane lines somewhat closer to the center of the street to balance the shy distances at the center and at the sides is desirable for all drivers but especially important for bicyclists. See additional comments in the page on St. Louis County.

• Examine and improve intersections. Traffic signal timing and actuation, as well as lane width between islands are issues of general importance to bicyclists. Others issues will come to light if a feedback system is developed.

• Develop a program to mandate or encourage installation of bicycle parking. Specific recommendations are made in the text, above.

• Seek and heed advice from the St. Louis Regional Bicycle & Pedestrian Advisory Committee. The committee exists, and its members are knowledgeable. Proposals which conflict with the state of the practice have progressed as far as the Transportation Improvement Plan, indicating that the committee is not sufficiently integrated into the planning and design process.