Red Velvet and Resilience: A Celebration of Freedom, Strength, and Community
Sometimes, a bike ride isn’t about the miles — it’s about the message.
For several years, Trailnet and 4theVille have partnered to celebrate Juneteenth with a community bike ride honoring Black artists and history in St. Louis. It’s a time of deep joy and celebration we look forward to each year.
In the wake of devastating tornado damage in North St. Louis, things understandably looked a bit different this year.
4theVille and Trailnet decided to pivot our Juneteenth Community Ride into something new: a bike-powered volunteer effort rooted in joy, nourishment, and neighborly care. 4theVille has been working tirelessly on the ground with tornado relief, and it became clear that the most meaningful way to honor Juneteenth this year was to show up for one another.
So that’s exactly what we did.
On Saturday morning, folks arrived at our meeting point in The Ville with cargo bikes, baskets, trailers, and big hearts, ready to deliver hundreds of fresh red velvet donuts to residents in the surrounding neighborhoods. Despite a bit of rain, volunteers came with smiles and energy, determined to brighten someone’s morning.
Red velvet is a cherished Juneteenth tradition, and these donuts were more than just a treat. Each one carried a message of hope and solidarity, along with an informational booklet from 4theVille letting neighbors know they haven’t been forgotten.
The atmosphere at our starting hub was warm and welcoming. Local musicians provided a wonderful soundtrack, coffee and conversation flowed, and teams of riders set off in waves to bring a bit of sweetness to streets still recovering from the storm. It was spontaneous, joyful, and deeply moving.
This is what bikes can do. They carry more than people — they carry kindness. They build bridges. They turn ordinary moments into shared ones. And they remind us that healing and celebration aren’t mutually exclusive.
We would not have been able to do this without the visionary leadership of 4theVille, and for that, we are deeply grateful. Our heartfelt thanks also go out to River City Outdoors, the ride sponsor, who were incredibly supportive when the decision to pivot was made. And thanks as well to the Regional Arts Commission for their support of all the local artists who joined the celebration. It wouldn’t have been the same without them!
To everyone who volunteered, who pivoted with us, who rode with purpose: we see you, and we’re so grateful. You helped make Juneteenth not just a day of remembrance, but one of real action and connection.
Thank you for showing the power of compassion in motion.
Ward 8 Aldermanic Survey: Where the Candidates Stand
On July 1, 2025, the City of St. Louis will hold a Special Election to fill the vacant aldermanic seat in Ward 8. We want voters to be informed about where the candidates stand on critical transportation issues.
Earlier this year, Trailnet partnered with the St. Louis Coalition for the Protection of Cyclists and Pedestrians, the St. Louis Urbanists, Transform 314, and Paraquad to develop an Alderperson Survey for the April elections. We shared the same set of core questions with the Ward 8 candidates.
All five candidates responded. Their answers appear exactly as submitted — unedited and in their own words.
Click on each candidate’s name below to read their responses.
Trailnet believes all St. Louis residents should have a voice in shaping the City budget. As part of that conversation, we’re sharing key transportation infrastructure priorities that we believe will make our streets and sidewalks safer, more equitable, and more accessible for everyone.
In our 2024 Crash Report, we identified the deadliest year on record for pedestrians in St. Louis City. Although reported crashes involving people walking and biking declined from 2023, pedestrian deaths surged — up 187% in the City. We deserve better. Budget decisions play a vital role in funding the safe infrastructure needed to prevent serious injury or tragic loss of life.
Every year the Board of Alderman begins with a Board Bill for the next fiscal year budget, which begins July 1. The process to approve the Fiscal Year 2026 budget was first read on May 2, 2025 and then referred to the Budget and Public Employees Committee.
To improve mobility for all St. Louisans, Trailnet recommends the following revenue neutral budget priorities:
Create a Planning Division within the Streets Department
In November 2024, St. Louis City voters approved the creation of a City Department of Transportation (CDOT). On July 1, 2029, the current Streets Department will officially transition into the new CDOT — streamlining transportation infrastructure decision-making and improving long-range planning.
In the interim, Trailnet strongly recommends establishing a Planning Division within the Streets Department, through both legislation and the budget process. This division would be critical for continuously studying and planning the maintenance and repair of our transportation infrastructure.
Importantly, a Planning Division would bring much-needed efficiency to the Streets Department during the transition to a full City DOT. With $46 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funding already allocated for street and sidewalk safety improvements, a dedicated team is needed to coordinate and sustain this investment. Existing positions within city government could be reassigned to staff the division, minimizing the need for new hires.
Elimination of the 50/50 Sidewalk Program
St. Louis’s 50/50 Sidewalk Program is designed to split the cost of sidewalk repairs between property owners and the City — each paying 50%. While well-intentioned, the program still leaves many residents unable to afford necessary repairs.
In practice, the 50% cost share is still too high for many households, especially in lower-income neighborhoods where sidewalks are used most frequently for daily mobility. Without affordable repairs, sidewalks remain impassable, creating hazardous conditions. Even for those who can cover their share, long delays between the request and actual repairs can mean the funds are no longer available when needed.
To improve mobility for all St. Louis residents, sidewalk repair and replacement funds should be consolidated under the Streets Department. Centralizing these funds would make it easier to coordinate repairs and prioritize the most urgent needs. With a Planning Division in place, sidewalk projects could be evaluated in alignment with the City of St. Louis Transportation & Mobility Plan — ensuring investments are strategic, equitable, and effective.
These changes are more than just administrative — they’re essential for making St. Louis safer and more accessible for everyone who walks, bikes, rolls, or drives. The 2024 Crash Report makes it clear: our streets need urgent improvements. The FY2026 budget is an opportunity to prioritize that need and invest in a safer future for all.
Where Do Your Leaders Stand? Our Aldermanic Survey Results
Following the success of the Transportation and Infrastructure Mayoral Forum, Trailnet again partnered with the St. Louis Coalition for the Protection of Cyclists and Pedestrians, the St. Louis Urbanists, Transform 314, and Paraquad to create an Alderperson Survey. With St. Louis City elections approaching on April 8, 2025, we want voters to be informed about where aldermanic candidates stand on transportation issues.
This survey was sent to all 11 candidates; we received responses from four. Their answers have not been modified in any way, and are presented exactly as they were received. Click on names below to see the alderperson’s responses.
We at Trailnet are excited to welcome fall, and with it, voting season. With a proposition for transportation improvements on the ballot for the City of St. Louis, we believe voter education is vital. We recently shared a bit of information about Prop T, which would alter the city charter, making the Streets Department into the City Department of Transportation (City DOT). Let’s explore how Prop T came to be and what it means for St. Louis residents.
Trailnet has long advocated for a City DOT. Charles Bryson, Trailnet’s Policy Catalyst, has been instrumental in the initiative towards a City DOT. Charles first formally testified for a City DOT at the Charter Commission on November 16th, 2023, thus bringing attention to St. Louis’ demonstrated need for a more efficient process of transportation decision-making. Over the course of 16 meetings with the Charter Commission, Charles continued to discuss the importance of considering ALL users of St. Louis’ transportation infrastructure. On June 28th, 2024, the bill was proposed by Alderman Michael Browning of Ward 9 to the Board of Aldermen, where Charles continued to testify. Now, residents of St. Louis City will be deciding on Prop T, which requires 60% approval to pass. When passed, sufficient time will be given for all parties to prepare for the change, with the Streets Department being transformed into the City DOT on July 1st, 2029.
St. Louis City deserves infrastructure planning and engineering that is safe, functional, and enjoyable for all users, no matter their method of mobility. Changes must be made to protect residents, with Prop T acting as a vital aspect of long range planning to guarantee a future in St. Louis that prioritizes sidewalk and street safety. With the passing of Prop T, the City DOT would have the authority and improved capacity to make improvements that simply are not possible without a City DOT. Let’s focus on the road ahead as we prepare for November and beyond, where St. Louis streets are a safer place for all.
If you have any questions, please reach out to Trailnet’s Policy Catalyst Charles Bryson at charles@trailnet.org.
Prop T: STL City Department of Transportation
As election day approaches, we are keeping equitable, active transportation in mind. City of St. Louis voters will decide on Prop T on November 5th. Prop T creates a Charter change to establish a City Department of Transportation (City DOT)—a proposal that Trailnet has long advocated to have placed on the ballot. We are thrilled to discuss the opportunity that voters now face.
At present, by City of St. Louis Charter, the majority of decisions involving streets in the City of St. Louis are made in collaboration between the Streets Department, Board of Public Service, City Planning, Alderpeople and consulting firms. With the passage of Prop T, the charter would change the Streets Department to become the City Department of Transportation, keeping its current vital services such as Refuse Collection, Traffic Lighting and Street Maintenance, while further expanding the department’s abilities.
The City DOT could undertake long-range transportation planning and traffic engineering, which is not feasible under the 1914 Charter, which outlined the duties for the Streets Department. Additionally, the City DOT would be mandated to consider all sidewalk and street users. Trailnet believes both changes are critical to make our streets safer for ALL. This November, with a 60% majority vote, we can work together to create infrastructure with reduced danger, greater equity, and a strengthened sense of connected community.
In each of our monthly newsletters, Trailnet features a member of our community who is working toward Trailnet’s vision of Streets for All. In September 2024, we featured the folks behind @carfreestl.
To celebrate their pioneering work as local urbanists, artists and organizers, we asked a few questions of Christian and Natalia—the brilliant minds behind Car Free STL!
Who are you?
Christian: My name’s Christian Frommelt and I use they/them or he/him pronouns. I’m a freelance dancer, musician, and writer currently living in Dutchtown. Historic preservation work is what drove me to activism in streets and mobility because as a young adult I was appalled to learn how many neighborhoods and cultural sites we demolished for highways and parking lots.
Natalia: My name is Natalia and I use she/her pronouns. I am a Graphic Designer, Illustrator and jazz dancer from Southern California. I moved to St Louis a little over a year ago and quickly fell into activism around public transit and pedestrian-conscious infrastructure. As someone who has lived with a disability my entire life, never owning a car or having a license, this work holds personal significance for me.
What is Car Free STL?
Christian: @carfreestl started as an Instagram venting outlet for me during the pandemic, but it didn’t take off until I met Natalia in 2022 and she started creating the visual designs that Car Free STL is known for. It’s still mostly a side project, but earlier this year we discovered the positionality of Car Free STL in this ecosystem: we’re in the business of shifting and complicating narratives around car-centricity, interrogating its harms and excesses, and illuminating future streets where safety and pleasure are built in. The normalcy bias around cars is the result of Motordom redefining the very nature of our streets and public space, something they still spend $12 billion per year on ads to control. Carfreestl is our attempt to say, this system isn’t working at all for at least a third of Americans, and under that veneer of freedom, luxury, and convenience, is a series of ugly truths we need to confront.
What is the Week Without Driving?
Week Without Driving is a great opportunity to disrupt the status quo, and to invite people into the process of demanding safe and equitable streets on a grassroots level. Perhaps you are someone who needs to drive because you live far away from your workplace. This is an opportunity to try to take public transit, knowing in advance it will be a challenge, perhaps having to wake up an hour earlier or walking for 15 minutes down a hostile road––now you are in the shoes of people who do that daily. But perhaps there is delight too: how did you spend that time on the bus, and who did you meet along the way? For WWD to really count we need people to go beyond that week alone to create lasting ripple effects––new relationships with sidewalks, roads, transit agencies––for systemic change.
We are particularly excited for the October 4th Bike Bus to City Hall for WWD, which is a STL Coalition to Protect Cyclists and Pedestrians collab. We’ve had various alderpeople and city officials ride before, and we’re hoping to increase that number on this ride!
What else should the people know about?
Our shameless plug is that we have some exciting plans for a print project that we hope will educate and activate the public around these issues as we head into a hefty engagement phase for the city’s Transportation and Mobility Plan. The best way to support our labor and overhead costs (and get some sweet merch in the process) is to join us on Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/CarFreeSTL
Trailnet is the Official Charity Partner of the 60th Annual Moonlight Ramble
Board Bill 105, Establishing the Automated Camera Enforcement Act:
Initiates the use of automated enforcement cameras, a research-based strategy that is effective in preventing speeding and running red lights.
Mayor Jones approved the bill on 4/17.
Board Bill 106: Establishing the Neighborhood Traffic Safety Improvement Fund and authorizing the appropriation of those funds:
Allocates a portion of the funding from automated enforcement fines to safety improvements in high crash areas.
The bill passed the board 15-0 on 4/15 and awaits the Mayor’s approval.
At the City Charter Commission: Initial approval to put the formation of a City Department of Transportation on the November 2024 ballot, which would be a major step towards improving coordination and efficiency in managing the City’s transportation network.
A decade in the making, this North-South corridor in South St. Louis is undergoing transformations that could change the way St. Louis streets are designed and improved in the interests of vulnerable road users.
2013 – 2014: Project Background
In 2013, Trailnet and our partners in the City of St. Louis received an EPA grant to educate and engage the St. Louis Community about traffic calming.
Traffic Calming – Traffic calming consists of physical design and other measures put in place on existing roads to reduce vehicle speeds and improve safety for pedestrians and cyclists. 1
From 2013 – 2014, Trailnet helped to educate more than 1,200 residents in Dutchtown, Forest Park Southeast, and North City through mapping, community meetings and neighborhood outreach.
The communities we worked with became excited about increasing pedestrian and cyclist safety by transforming neighborhood streets into what were then referred to as neighborhood greenways and bicycle boulevards, now known locally as Calm Streets.
Calm Streets – A Calm Street is a residential street transformed to reduce speeding and provide safety for everyone traveling there. Using traffic calming features such as speed humps and curb extensions, Calm Streets create an environment where people drive the speed limit and therefore preserve the safety of people walking and biking. They also incorporate green infrastructure to mitigate stormwater issues and address environmental concerns like the urban heat island effect.
2015: A Formative Trip to Portland
In 2015, Trailnet secured a second round of EPA grant funding, which was used to fly a group of project partners, city officials and residents to Portland, Oregon, where they took inspiration from the Portland Bureau of Transportation’s Neighborhood Greenways Program.
Full of ideas and bolstered by concrete evidence of the plausibility and effectiveness of neighborhood-, and city-wide traffic calming projects, the team returned to St. Louis to choose a location for a pilot project.
At the time, Trailnet was working with Froebel Elementary School in the Dutchtown Neighborhood on creating safe routes to school for their students. Through that project, Trailnet had already established residents’ desires for safer streets in their neighborhoods and begun to build political willingness to act in the Dutchtown Community—which has the highest concentration of school-aged children in the City of St. Louis.
With that groundwork already done in the Dutchtown community, Louisiana Avenue was chosen as the pilot site for the City of St. Louis’ Calm Streets Concept. The rationale: Louisiana was an ideal North-South connection, parallel to the City’s highest crash corridor (Grand Blvd.) and adjacent to many parks, schools, small businesses and residential streets. Thus began the process of planning, designing and constructing what would become the Louisiana Avenue Calm Street.
2016 – 2023: Pop-ups, Planning and Construction
In November 2016, Trailnet hosted a traffic calming demonstration (check out the video and flyer!) on Louisiana Avenue next to Marquette Park to demonstrate what a Calm Street could look like on the corridor. During the demonstration, people driving slowed down by over 10 miles per hour. Ten miles per hour is the difference between someone struck by a car having a 5% chance of dying (with the concept installed) or having a 45% chance of dying (prior street layout).
Residents who witnessed the demonstration expressed their overwhelming support for the project, saying “we definitely need something to slow traffic” and “if you have to put a speed hump every six feet, I’m all for it!”
In 2017, the City of St. Louis submitted an application for federal funding, and the Louisiana Avenue Calm Street Project was chosen as the number one funding priority that year by the East-West Gateway Council of Governments.
Over the next five years, the City of St. Louis, its project partners and contractors jumped many hurdles on the way to creating a more streamlined process for building future Calm Streets in the City. The plan went for design in 2018, with construction beginning in 2021.
In spring 2023, construction was finished on Phase 1 of the Louisiana Calm Street Project. The first phase features 1.1-miles of assorted traffic calming measures (speed humps, mini traffic circles, high visibility crosswalks, bump-outs, rain gardens, etc.), from Gravois to Meramec.
Looking Ahead:
Phase 2 will extend the current Louisiana Avenue Calm Street South to Carondelet Park. Phase 2 is currently in design.
A third and final phase will extend North to Tower Grove Park and complete the North-South connection between two of our City’s largest and most-visited parks.
The goals of the Louisiana Avenue Calm Street Project are many:
To reduce speeds and increase safety for all road users,
To foster a sense of safety in the neighborhoods, schools and parks adjacent to the corridor,
To provide an alternative North-South connection in South City parallel to one of our most dangerous streets,
To encourage healthy, active living,
To test various, modern best practices for transportation engineering and traffic calming,
To develop a streamlined process for calming a network of streets across the City of St. Louis…
The finished vision for Louisiana is a safe > 3-mile corridor that connects thousands of people to the places that they live, work and play.
Phase 1 is completed, but this project still needs public support to be fully realized!
If you live in the neighborhoods that have been or will be touched by the Louisiana Avenue Calm Street, express your support to the City for safer streets. If you have feedback based on your experience of the corridor, reach out to your alderperson.
This pilot project will ultimately be a success if it paves the way for effective improvements to our built environment that save and better the lives of our neighbors! As one project partner from the City said at a recent presentation: “Maybe every street should be a Calm Street.”
“For example, vertical deflections (speed humps, speed tables, and raised intersections), horizontal shifts, and roadway narrowing are intended to reduce speed and enhance the street environment for non-motorists. Closures that obstruct traffic movements in one or more directions, such as median barriers, are intended to reduce cut-through traffic. Traffic calming measures can be implemented at an intersection, street, neighborhood, or area-wide level,” according to the US Dept. of Transportation. ↩︎
