American Truck / Korean Truck

Hanging around after UMSL's "What is a City?" conference, I found myself talking with a Sierra Club member that was opposed to the proposed I-70 truck corridor in Missouri.  For those unfamiliar, the truck corridor would put a four lane priority interstate for cross-country trucks in the median of I-70 and push the current interstate out wider and designate it for cars.  Trucks could move faster, and cars could be less scared (except when trucks are slamming into the sides of them).  The initial proposal is between the suburbs of Kansas City and the suburbs of St. Louis.  The future would stretch over four states.
 
 

Now, this is obviously a terrible idea in terms of return on investment.  Billions would be spent widening the roads and eating up land.  Billions more would be spent on maintaining all that eventually crumbling concrete.  Many would die as the trucks merge left unable to see little cars in their blind spots.  The environmental impact would be huge, and the entire thing would be far better justified as a high speed rail freight line.  Why send a truck across three states for a lot of money and fuel on expensive infrastructure, when you could send it faster for cheap on designated rail?  Nobody dies, and rain water permeates into the ground. 

 The point that this Sierra Club member made to me was about truck size.  She said that the trucking lobby was constantly trying to expand the size and weight limits for their fleets, which would mean even bigger trucks on the road smashing, killing, and polluting.  Why not, Caterpiller makes such machines.  If there was a large truck-only interstate for long range trips, it would justify larger trucks, but those trucks would have to use regular roads as well.

Cross-country Distribution = big trucks for big trips
Local Distribution = small trucks for small streets

That point struck home with me.

In Korea trucks look like this.

The Bongo Truck is a staple of Korean logistics.  Absolutely everything gets moved around the city and country in these tiny trucks.  Larger trucks are not to be seen.  Seoul is as big as New York, and South Korea is a first world country the size of Indiana.

I just moved to the US from Korea, and I bike everywhere now.  It is troubling to see how large the trucks are along Morgan Ford.

If you've ever biked with a full-sized semi next to you, you'd be uncomfortable with large trucks as well.

 St. Louis can be a cargo hub without huge trucks on neighborhoods streets.  Kingshighway is one thing, but smaller streets should be for smaller trucks. 

Missouri Botanical Garden / Deoksu Palace

Deoksu Palace (덕수궁) holds an important place in Korean history.  It was one of the two main palaces used by King Ko-Jong in the last days of the Joseon Dynasty.  In his attempt to play foreign powers against each other prior to the Japanese invasion, Deoksu Palace became important for its proximity to the nearby Russian embassy.  The Russians offered some protection to the king before his country was taken away from him.

Now, more than a century later, Deoksu Palace is a park and an art museum across the street from Seoul City Hall.  The entrance looks like this.

To many people in the city, the wall around the palace is more important than the palace itself.

The wall forms a very famous tree and brick lined street called Deoksugung-gil.

It's beautiful and busy in all sorts of weather.

The seating options are varied and generally nice.

I always liked the Baduk (Go) benches.

I'm also a huge fan of that family of smashed people that got installed on the side of path.  They create a sense of vertigo as you approach them.  I always stopped to squint and stare at them.

Deoksugung-gil is in Seoul, but it has a lesson for cities around the world:  Walls can be nice!


In St. Louis, I've moved into the Southwest Garden neighborhood and live very close to Alfred Avenue.  I walk north along it to catch the 14 bus.  I bike south along it to get to Tower Grove Park and South Grand. 

Alfred and Shaw

At the corner of Alfred and Shaw, you can see the cast iron fence around the Botanical Gardens parking lot (not the garden itself) and a sidewalk that abruptly ends.

Alfred and Castleman

Going down Alfred just a short distance, we can see the sidewalk has disappeared and given way to a dirt path.  It isn't a crushed limestone jogging path, but a dusty dirt path worn into what might have been grass in the past.  Next to this dust path is a cheap cyclone fence topped with barb wire.  Yes, barb wire.


Alfred and Russell

 The dust and barb wire continue south to a private access gate at Russell.

Alfred and Flora

 Approaching Flora and Flad, the grass it a bit healthier and the barb wire continues unabated save for a short wooden privacy fence that seems to have been tossed up on a whim.

Alfred and Magnolia

Finally at the end of Alfred, the sidewalk suddenly returns and the barb wires curves of to the left.  At this point, a person on a bicycle wanting to cut across the park is left with no option but to hastily cross the street, hop offer their bike, and lift it over the curb to the tiny sidewalk that may or may not be designated for pedestrians or bicycles.  Regardless, the curb is not ADA compliant.

The Botanical Garden is supposed to be world class.  It is supported by tax dollars and has a public mission.  Why does it present such an ugly face to its own Garden District?   I am a member, and I can enter for free at the front gate.  Why can I not use the various side gates?  Why not have a Japanese entrance to the Japanese Garden?  Wouldn't that be fun? 

There is a sidewalk along Magnolia, but the barb wire is there as well.  The Gardens and the park were both concieved by the same man from the same estate.  They shouldn't be separated by barb wire.

Yes, along Tower Grove Avenue, there's a nice historic wall with regular breaks in it that could be used as entrances (but aren't).  That wall being there does not excuse the presence of the barb wire fence around the west and south edges.  Why be beautiful on one side and not the other?   Why does the wall end and the offensive barrier begin?

I suggest the new director take a walk around the perimeter of his garden on a regular basis.  I'm sure he wouldn't be that pleased with what he sees.

Crosswalks / Zebra Crossings

What is this guy standing on?

The road?  Yes, but more specifically the crosswalk, the zebra crossing, the series of white lines that should give all vehicles pause.  (actually he's standing next to it)

What is it for? 

People walk across it.  Don't park your car on it.  Don't ride your bike across it (dismount and push).  It's for pedestrians. 

Zebra crossings are iconic.  Everyone knows immediately what they are.  Even heavily modified, it is obvious what they are.

This is a zebra crossing in Lisbon made with the names of pedestrians killed while crossing the street.

I would argue that the zebra crossing is the most common subspecies of the standard crosswalk.  This for example is a crosswalk, but not a zebra crossing.


Indy Cultural Trail

 St. Louis has a few alternate crosswalks of the patterned variety.  The temporary improvements to Memorial Drive in front of Luther Ely Smith Square are a good example.  Red lines distinguish the pedestrian realm from the rest of the road.

Richmond Heights has also tried out this idea with its New Urbanist project around the Crate & Barrel next to the MetroLink. 

The rest of St. Louis however is dominated by a strange and cheap alternate kind of crosswalk.

taken from the STL Rising blog

The standard St. Louis crosswalk consists of just two parallel white lines.  At least most of the time.  Sometimes there's just one while line, which is a bit confusing.  Usually there's a car parked on it waiting for the light to change.


South Grand might change one day, but will the crosswalks?



Arsenal and Morgan Ford is a particularly confusing intersection for anyone hoping to cross the street on foot.

 Even a heavily trafficed intersection, like Delmar and Skinker, is not particularly well marked.

When I returned to the US last month, I was surprised to see that the standard zebra crossing I had been crossing daily for the past few years abroad was missing altogether from my hometown.  I'm from St. Louis but somehow managed to forget that it lacks distinctive crosswalks.  In fact, I have discovered the crosswalks that do exist are a nightmare to use.

Steve Patterson at Urban Review STL put some pictures on his blog a while back that people should pay attention to.  Steve is part of the committee in charge of the Gateway Mall, but even he can't get rid of the plastic toilets blocking the sidewalk in CityGarden or address the major flaws with the design of the new corners,

a very rare kind of stl crosswalk

Since Steve's original post on it, I've returned to St. Louis to see for myself that virtually every ADA compliant sidewalk in the city looks a little like this,

taken from the Urban Review STL blog

 
Everywhere I go, I see new curbs that barely line up with the crosswalks they're intended for, and virtually all of them hold water.

I tell myself that St. Louis is a poor city with very little money for public works.  There's little public money for paying decent designers, and there's little money for painting proper crosswalks.  Yet, it absolutely must be fixed. 

On South Lindbergh, I saw a man in a powered wheel chair trying to navigate a driveway that broke the sidewalk.  He jumped his chair off the curb for lack of a better option, and it wasn't pretty.  He then proceeded to power his chair into a lane of traffic due to his inability to get back on the next curb. 

I've seen streets like this elsewhere.  Siam Reap, Surabaya, Ho Chi Min City, Manila... and other places that St. Louis would probably not like to be compared with.  Although... they had zebra crossings not unmarked pavement, so maybe it isn't a fair comparison for the 3rd world either.