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. ↩︎
Moonlight Ramble Update
We were sad to hear that the rescheduled Moonlight Ramble was canceled due to safety concerns along the route, but we are glad that safety remained the top priority for the ride organizers.
Trailnet is the charity partner for the Moonlight Ramble, but does not organize or manage the ride or collect registration fees. A portion of the registration fees and proceeds from the event are donated to Trailnet to support our mission. As the charity partner, Trailnet helps promote the event, encouraging people to ride and volunteer.
Registered Ramblers should check their email for more information.
Trailnet is partnering with organizations across the region—including Metro Transit, Greater St. Louis Inc. and Washington University in St. Louis—to celebrate National Bike Month in 2023. Together we are putting on events, classes and giveaways throughout the month to highlight the many benefits of bicycling.
Join us on two wheels in May, as we come together with our neighbors in support of a region that is better for bicycling.
Read the full release below, and find all the information you need at trailnet.org/bike-month.
From our earliest collaborations, to the annual Juneteenth Community Ride, to transportation planning in 2022: What we’re working on in these historic neighborhoods, and why the work matters.
Since 2014, Trailnet has worked with community partners like 4TheVille and Northside Community Housing, Inc. within the Ville and Greater Ville neighborhoods to help plan for safer, slower, and greener residential streets.
Regular Trailnet riders will recognize the name 4TheVille—the community-based tourism and arts organization created by multi-generational Ville residents and volunteers to restore pride in the legacy of The Ville—as our perennial partner on the Juneteenth Community Ride. But our partnership has grown well beyond one ride.
EPA-Funded Traffic Calming
In 2019, Trailnet received a grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Collaborative Problem-Solving program. This funding was aimed at (1) making it easier for people in The Ville/Greater Ville to get around and (2) exploring opportunities for green infrastructure to address negative environmental and health impacts in the neighborhoods.
In September of 2021, Trailnet partnered with 4TheVille to host a pop-up park and traffic calming demonstration at MLK Drive and North Sarah Street. The event celebrated the Ville’s heritage, highlighted talented Black artists, and imagined the Ville’s potential.
The 2021 traffic calming pop-up event also allowed us to survey community residents on their current transportation patterns and priority areas for improvement:
The Cultural Boulevard
In 2022, we began consulting on 4TheVille’s Cultural Boulevard Project, which aims to transform a stretch of Dr. Martin Luther King Dr. into a walkable, bikeable hub of culture, history and economic development in North St. Louis.
“One of the things that impacts the residents of this community directly is unsafe streets… So we’re considering how this project can create safer streets in the community,” said 4TheVille Co-Founder Aaron Williams of the Cultural Boulevard Project.
Full Sidewalk Assessment
Also in May 2022, one Trailnet planner began an in-depth sidewalk assessment of The Ville & Greater Ville neighborhoods. Over the course of five months, she surveyed 61 miles of sidewalks! The completed map (right) is littered with colored marks, which represent sections of sidewalk that are inaccessible or in disrepair. This map is the first of its kind—a full sidewalk assessment for a single St. Louis neighborhood.
This Mobility Report was created to support a neighborhood transportation plan for The Ville Community (The Ville, Greater Ville, and Kingsway East neighborhoods). This report provides several strategies towards achieving the neighborhood’s vision to become an active transportation-friendly space where walking, bicycling, and transit provide safe, accessible, and healthy mobility options for everyone in the community.
This document features a combination of community-informed qualitative data about transportation trends and desires and quantitative environmental, transportation and road data. The document will be used to support policy change, future advocacy and planning efforts and to bolster future applications for funding improvements in the area.
A summary of these findings was presented at 4TheVille’s Neighborhood Redevelopment Town Hall on March 4, 2023. Read the full report here.
The Ville & Greater Ville neighborhoods comprise 1.4-square-miles of one of the most historically significant pockets of Black history, art and culture in the entire country. Yet, 100% of the census tracts in this once-thriving community have now been identified by the Department of Transportation’s Safe Streets and Roads for All discretionary program as environmentally, economically, and health disadvantaged.
These are also communities with disproportionately low rates of personal vehicle ownership and high rates of public transit use. Yet, years of disinvestment have left their sidewalks and streets inaccessible and unsafe for people outside of cars.
As Trailnet aims to direct our local advocacy efforts toward the areas of greatest need, we will continue to implore local leaders to invest in neighborhoods like The Ville & Greater Ville, with the hope that someday soon our streets will be safe and accessible for everyone, everywhere.
Trailnet was invited to be a part of the signing of the St. Louis Safer Streets Bill on March 1. Here’s what that means, why we’re excited, and what more needs to be done.
On Wednesday morning, March 1, 2023, City of St. Louis Mayor Tishaura O. Jones signed the St. Louis Safer Streets Bill (also referred to as Board Bill 120) into law.
This is a huge win. It marks the City’s largest-ever investment into street safety and infrastructure, and Trailnet was invited to be a part of the ceremony.
We couldn’t have done this without support from our members and community.
Together, we have fought for pedestrians, bicyclists and transit users over the last three decades. We laid the groundwork for change by shifting the conversation, focusing on systems, and gradually building public support. We sounded the alarm about traffic violence with the Crash Report. We built relationships with decision makers and met with elected officials.
The work isn’t over, though. Now, the funding must be carefully applied, on a comprehensive scale, to the problems it hopes to solve.
As Trailnet CEO Cindy Mense said in her remarks to the press, “While improving infrastructure is crucial, it will not, on its own, deter reckless drivers or put an end to the plague of traffic violence…. Trailnet and our partners stand ready to work with the administration in pursuing a vision of zero traffic injuries and fatalities on our streets.”
Together, we will continue to fight for Streets for All.
