Wash U's Shuttles / Drury Bike Loans

Springfield Bike Sharing

Drury University recently announced that their free bike loan program was an immense success.  Missouri State University announced at the same time that they'd be implementing a bike rental program on their campus soon. 

If the two universities were in isolated separate towns, this news would be great.

 
They are, however, right next to each other, which makes this news evidence of a communication problem. 

What if the two directors of the two bike programs sat down and had coffee together, decided to pool resources for one bike program (perhaps like ZotWheels at UC-Irvine), and allow students at both universities access...  Who would benefit most?   The answer is Springfield.

It'd be like two silos becoming one. 

But what if they made an open agreement with opt-in terms for anybody interested in joining.  Who might join?

Two other colleges are in easy biking distance!

With four institutions of higher ed acting as the pillars of support for a bike program, local businesses might as well step in and let regular citizens participate.  Perhaps that's the direction these two programs may one day go.  Obviously a strong biking culture at any of these four campuses will influence the others.  Furthermore, if all four colleges agree on something, the town will go along with it.

Wash U Shuttles

Silos and turf battles create duplicated effort.  Think, for instance, of a private shuttle with a route similar to a public bus.  In St. Louis, this might be SLU's shuttle and Metro's 70 Grand.  Students ride one bus, regular people ride the other.  Neither service has great frequency or capacity.  SLU's shuttle doesn't just go up and down grand.  It goes in a loop over streets also served by Metro's 8, 80, and 32.  If SLU stopped running a shuttle, diverted the money to Metro, and gave every student a free bus pass, all four lines could gain funding and passengers.  Grand could be made into a proper BRT line.  New bus lines might be added, and SLU would be better because of it.

This is what Wash U did.  Wash U uses MetroBuses instead of shuttles.  Students get the benefit of the entire public transit system.  Citizens get better buses around Forest Park, Clayton, and the Central West End. 

The opt-in idea is established.  The CVC started a downtown trolley operated by Metro.  CVC's tourists get better access to the attractions in Forest Park, Wash U students get a downtown circulator, and citizens get a better city.

Summary,
Silos = Poor Service and Wasteful Duplication
Open Platforms = Synergy, Scalability, and Viability

St. Louis Bike Sharing

Bike sharing systems make sense as scalable systems.  They work well only when the stations are clustered together.  To be successful they demand a density of use. 

If Wash U started a small bike sharing program with a station at the Danforth Campus and one at its South Campus, then Concordia and Fontbonne adding stations between would add flexibility and varied use to the system, which would in turn demand more stations nearby in Forest Park. 

If a station is added at Wash U's Medical Campus, then people would be zipping back and forth across the park all day.  Forest Park Forever, the SLAM, the Zoo, and the History Museum all putting up stations would add to the density of transit options.  Forest Park Community College might join in with the Science Center.

A station at the History Museum might inspire one at Forest Park MetroLink station, which means Metro would be involved, and therefore everyone.  It could telescope out to Belleville, UMSL, SLU, and Webster could opt-in, and eventually SIUE would dump the small private system they have now.

Bike sharing is a form of transit.  Like shuttles, public transit is more effective than private.  If Wash U created a bike sharing system for only Wash U students, then it'd never expand to a critical mass.  Allowing for others to opt-into the system creates unlimited potential and synergy which is better than any individual effort alone.

WeCar

Wash U's car sharing program, WeCar, suffers from the same failure to scale.  It operates on a "one car to one parking space" model which makes it rigid and unappealing for people that live outside of Clayton or Downtown and need to go to places other than the grocery store.  It can only expand as fast as new cars are added to the system, which is slow because of the small user base.

If WeCar operated on a "any car to any parking space" model and ditched the silly booking and gas refilling system, it'd be immediately appealing. 

Imagine an electric WeCar system that operated thus:  I see a WeCar parked in front of an induction charging station, I walk up, put in my pin and slide my card, it opens, I drive off with it, I do my thing, I see an open charging station somewhere else, I park it, and I get out.  An hour later I need to get somewhere, so I look at my iPhone that tells me there's a WeCar parked two blocks away, and I walk to it and repeat the process.

Every business in town would be scrambling to install a parking spot by their front door.  They'd pay WeCar to do it, and the city would be the better for it.

Operation Brightside's Demonstration Garden / Telok Ayer Park

I took this picture in Singapore in 2008 and uploaded it to wikipedia. 

Capital/Capita Tower is nice.  It has a fitness center and pool half way up, some incredible views accessible to the public, and a restaurant on top.  There's a subway station under it, a nice public square in front, and a complicated intersection around it.

Every parcel of land interacting with this intersection manages to embrace it or calm its wildness to some degree.  The section outlined in green on the map is Telok Ayer Park (next to Capita Tower), and it's especially interesting because it is one of those rare public parks with what Jane Jacobs called "intricacy."  It's complex and serves many purposes.  It demands to be explored and enjoyed.

Let's start with where I was standing when I took that picture.

Right where that sunny spot is, that's where one can look up and see the well-framed building.  The botanical atmoshere is pleasant and the paths to the sides encourage people to walk around and enjoy the hidden benches. 

On the corner facing the intersection, there's a small island which is friendly to pedestrians, shaded, and accessible by bus.

The corner of the park proper has a staircase to the subway station, and the sidewalk mentioned above.

Along Telok Ayer Street, there's a covered walkway which is nice in a country that's hot and rainy year-round.  There are also more short-cut paths through the park leading to those hidden benches mentioned above. 

Though it is a heavily used urban space full of people, Telok Ayer Park still has the power to hit a person in the face with nature and stop them in their tracks.  I found myself walking through it every few weeks, and never failed to stop and gawk.

So what does this have to do with St. Louis?  

Singapore bills itself as a "City in a Garden," and I now live in the Garden District near a comparably complicated intersection.

The buildings at Kingshighway and Vandeventer do not interact much with the intersection.  The library is turned away from it towards a parking lot.  The car lot and the gas station do a lot to add to the nightmarishness of the place.  Like the rest of the city, the crosswalks are implied but not marked.  If that weren't enough, there's a big vacant plot that's supposed to be an Operation Brightside garden that would also be turned inward.

As much as I want to be excited about Operation Brightside's plan, I actually think it'd mess up that intersection even more.  As it is, there is no sidewalk, and I cut across the field quite a lot.  The Operation Blightside plan would provide a narrow sidewalk around a fenced off garden accessible only from the parking lot.  A blank face of inaccessibility would be presented to the street.

We're giving up on the intersection as a space for people, and we're perpetuating the worst possible idea of what a garden should be.  Do we want a neighborhood in a garden or private gardens in a disconnected neighborhood?

I don't blame Operation Brightside for their unfriendly ambitions.  Look at the examples they have to follow.

The Earthways Center's new home is in a building oriented to two parking lots with a cold shoulder presented to the abandoned street named after MoBot's founder.

Mobot's fenced off library on Vandeventer is barely a step up from the empty parking lot(s) across the street.

Nothing says Botanical like cul-de-sacs!

The barbwire and mud sidewalk combination on Alfred is comforting as well.

...

Operation Brightside is trying to get a $250,000 grant from Pepsi to build their demonstration garden.  Please do vote for them, and sign up for a membership with MoBot while you're at it.  They are our neighborhood assets and we should support them no matter how misguided they are.

While supporting, remember to complain a lot.  They need to be reformed and urbanized.

Engelholm Creek / 3rd World Urban Waterways

This is the Engelholm Creek Watershed.  It flows from UMSL's South Campus into a big underground pipe at Skinker and Olive.

On UMSL's South Campus and in St. Vincent Park, the water is relatively clean with significant evidence of healthy wildlife, including deer prints in the creek bed.  Just slightly south, it gets really dirty really fast.  The descriptive term I've heard most is, "3rd World." 

As this is a comparison blog, I'd like to use a few random pictures from my travels to convey what is meant by 3rd world and see how appropriate it is.  Let's start in Malang, Indonesia.

By most estimates, Malang would be considered decidedly 3rd World, and the trash in the urban stream would kind of support that.  But check out the tires in St. Louis at Ogden and Wagner.

The railroad in Malang doesn't look too bad either, waterwise.

compared to the MetroLink at Etzel anyway...

In Cambodia on the Tonle Sap, I saw some very scary water, and some pretty badly eroded banks too,

Elsewhere on Etzel, other eroded banks are visible.

Here are some random shots from Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philipines,


Ho Chi Min City



Ho Chi Min City



Chiang Mai where I saw a guy cleaning cement covered tools by the bank

The Pasig River in Manila

 Here are some random shots taken of the Engelholm Creek and its watershed,
<> 

Guess where these hydrocarbons and heavy metals go when it rains



This asphalt recycling facility pins the creek against the MetroLink tracks and piles stuff like this in the flood plain




This is not a rain garden

It's very simple dear friends.  Engelholm Creek is supposed to flow into Forest Park.  It's too dirty, so we pipe it under the park and fill the park with filtered tap water instead.

Engelholm Creek is just one part of the larger River Des Peres Watershed, which to our great shame is still a public toilet.  Is it 3rd World...? 

It's full of tires!

Under the Page bridge over Engelholm Creek

South County Connector / Cheonggye Highway

There was once a highway through the middle of Seoul, and it was called Cheonggye after the stream that once flowed there.

It was a huge highway that connected different parts of the central core.  It was needed.  It was used.  It was... actually a huge wall cutting Jongno in half.  It was dirty, loud, and promoted the wrong kind of transportation.

So why is this man laughing?

As mayor of Seoul, he ripped out the highway and replaced it with a simulacra of the stream that traditionally flowed there.  It was an international success.  It made him president of South Korea.  It gave him the nickname, "Cheonggyecheon Lee Myung-Bak."  It made his career.

Now that stream is one of the most important strolling and gathering places in the city.

The success with Cheonggyecheon triggered an unstoppable program of daylighting streams throughout the country, a reinvestment in the Han River, better bike paths, more community spaces, and better air quality.



Once upon a time, there was a river in St. Louis called the River Des Peres.  It was used as a toilet.  The region dumped all its sewage into it and grew to hate its smell.  They buried it and added a concrete drainage ditch on top of it.  It flooded every so often.  It dumped raw sewage into the Mississippi. 

Yet, nature cracked the old concrete, something like a natural stream slowly began to emerge, citizens began to care about the watershed, a bike trail was added to the side of it, and a new future seemed possible.

It is still a far cry from Seoul's Yangjaecheon,

but it could be argued that the River Des Peres has been on its way back to a natural state... ever so slowly.

Now this,

I-170 never made it south of I-64, but people have been planning to finish it for years.  They will make Hanley into a highway and then hop it right onto the River Des Peres.  It will be called the South County Connector and be Cheonggecheon in reverse.  We will further destroy an already badly damaged waterway, and we'll put a highway on top of it.

Seoul and South Korea are moving forward.

St. Louis is conspiring to undermine itself.  While the urbanists of other cities push progressive projects, urbanists in St. Louis must spend their time fighting destructive projects.  One moment we're shutting down a casino downtown to build a new one in a wetlands conservation area, the next we're trying to cover up a river with a highway. 

Get to the public meeting tonight and speak your mind.
"The meeting runs from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Affton White-Rodgers Community Center on 9801 MacKenzie Road."

St. Louis Cardinal / Northern Cardinal

Are there any cardinals here?
 

Sports stadiums are empty most of the year


No it's winter and the St. Louis Cardinals are resting before their big migration to Florida.

Are there any cardinals here?
  

Cardinals Care Field attached to Adams School in FPSE


No, school ball fields sit empty even more often than the professional fields.

But how about that fence around the field? 

Ah right, that other cardinal, the one that belongs to the whole US, not just St. Louis.   He's beautiful.  Why isn't he the official St. Louis mascot instead of this clown?

Perhaps our priorities are mixed up.  Why did we pay for this vacant lot with its attached vacant building?

Why didn't we instead invest is providing cover in low trees and bushes for that other Cardinal?

Wouldn't that have been more enjoyable year round?  Why don't we put out water for our friend?

Let's face it, the average St. Louis Cardinal stays with the team only a few years, and only appears in the summers.  The average Northern Cardinal stays year round and lives up to 16 years. 


Frozen Wasteland



Vibrant Color outside the window

 A St. Louis Cardinal requires millions of dollars a year to keep happy.  A northern cardinal requires any of about a hundred different food providing plants, a bit of water, and good cover in which to raise her young.

The northern cardinal doesn't belong to St. Louis, because it has better habitat elsewhere, but it takes only a minimal amount of effort to make the city a lush paradise for our little red friends.  The term is birdscaping, and it seems like such an obvious thing to do at the many baseball fields we have around town.  Obviously the fields themselves are only good for robins and starlings, but the edges have plenty of room for hollys, sunflowers, and whatever else our friends desire.

Come on Cardinals fans, look at your backyard and see it from a bird's perspective.  Come on Mayor Slay, why would any cardinals want to hang out downtown?  Where's the food?  We haven't planted any.

Grass, pavement, bricks, and trees do not make a complete ecosystem.