St. Louis is dominated by cars, as they’re the main mode of transportation for most residents in the region.
2022 data from the American Community Survey shows nearly 70% of workers in the city drive to work alone in their vehicle. That figure is almost 10 percentage points higher for the entire metropolitan area.
But this doesn’t mean driving is the preferred way people want to move through St. Louis, said Matt Wyczalkowski, a longtime bicycle commuter in the city.
“There’s a real interest and a real need to have alternative modes of transportation where you can get across town without necessarily getting into a car,” he said. “People need to feel safe. I think that is a major barrier.”
Taylor March, executive director for Missourians for Responsible Transportation, agrees. He’s made biking or using public transit his primary mode of transportation for the past 15 years and explained that people approach him asking for recommendations on the best routes to take.
Loading...
“Sometimes, I’ll draw them a map, and sometimes, unfortunately, I’ll have to say, ‘Well, right now there’s just not a safe way,’” he said. “It doesn’t feel great.”
Traffic violence is rising in the St. Louis region, and March wrestles with these issues when taking his 4-year-old to school by bike, which he does often.
“I feel like I’m sometimes endangering my child in the everyday, in order [for them] to have the future that I want them to have,” he said. “I want transportation choices [for them] and it just feels like the environment that we’re in today, we don’t have those, at least not in a safe capacity.”
City leaders are aware of these desires and are pushing forward plans to offer more robust alternatives to driving, including redesigning streets to be safer and expanding mobility options.
“All of those things work together to make sure that we can provide a safe environment for people no matter how they choose to get around, whether that’s bike, transit, car, even pedestrian,” St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said.
A collection of projects takes aim at major roadways like Grand, Kingshighway, Goodfellow and Union boulevards, using $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to resurface and redesign those corridors to make them safer and more conducive for pedestrians, transit and cycling.
Jones acknowledged this funding alone won’t fix every issue St. Louis roads face.
“There’s never enough money to do everything that we want to do when it comes to our streets,” she said.
Both Wyczalkowski and March said these plans offer solid improvements for roads that don’t always feel safe as a pedestrian or cyclist.
“It’s not that it’s everywhere that’s unsafe, it’s just that there are hotspots that are particularly tricky,” Wyczalkowski said. “And that itself might keep somebody from riding.”
A commitment to continued maintenance of new bicycling and pedestrian improvements is one improvement he suggests for these plans.
“We get gravel on the bike lanes and things get knocked down,” Wyczalkowski said. “Once the infrastructure is in, it's also about maintaining them.”
March added that many neighborhood streets are fairly safe, but crossing major roads is where things can get tricky. But it’s not just about making streets like Grand or Kingshighway safer for only bicycles.
“Both of those corridors really need to work for the bus and people walking first,” March said. “And then if we can add in bikes, great, if we can add in cars, good.”
Public transit is another important component, with the city and region pushing for the new MetroLink GreenLine along Jefferson Avenue. Part of that process includes changes to the city’s zoning code near the proposed stations to promote more developments geared for transit stops.
“It will increase density or the possibility of density around those areas,” said Ward 3 Alderman Shane Cohn, who introduced a bill to amend the city’s zoning code along the GreenLine route. “It’s all working in conjunction to make us a stronger candidate for [federal funding] for the eventual GreenLine route.”
The Board of Aldermen is close to passing Cohn’s bill after it was perfected earlier this month. It lays out provisions to allow some building types to have an extra floor, and it would reduce required lot sizes and required minimum parking, two provisions that Cohn said he wants to see citywide.
He said he expects to file a board bill on the matter later this legislative session.
“Those are things that we need to evaluate as a city and urban core, as to whether or not we want to maintain things that are specifically designed for suburban-style development,” he said.
These kinds of changes are important to making an eventual new line successful, said Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies commercial real estate.
“The form that land and buildings take influences the viability of different ways of getting around between land and buildings,” she said. “The best way to get a lot of ridership in a transit system is to have supportive land use immediately at the station locations.”
But Loh added it’s not enough to have good land use in a single location along a transit line; there need to be multiple locations that connect together.
“It's also important that the transit service be frequent, reliable, convenient and safe,” she said. “And if you can't hit those other variables, people will not use it.”
Frequency and reliability are key criticisms that St. Louis residents have of the current transit network. And in the Show-Me State, city residents will have to experience improvements on those fronts before they’re willing to ditch their cars for other modes of transportation.
