We are all street users. We all have stories worth sharing. The St. Louis Street Stories survey is our way of collecting our neighbors’ on-going experiences of their streets.
We encourage you to come back to this form anytime you have an experience worth sharing—whether you were a victim of traffic violence, felt unsafe while walking/biking or felt especially comfortable in a place that has been built better.
The stories below have been and will continue to be used to advocate for better planning and policies in pursuit of safer streets for all users across the St. Louis region.
CITY
“As a pedestrian or biker, it is clear to see most of the City was not designed with you in mind. Non-vehicular infrastructure is piecemeal at best and prohibited at worst.”
— Anonymous Resident
“Drivers being way too close to the bike lane or speeding at insane speeds is terrifying. EVERY bike lane in the city deserves to be protected. Every last one.”
— Brenton, Soulard
“I stopped bike commuting for six months after two high profile cyclist deaths on Grand Ave. I was truly afraid. I had to sacrifice my ideals (sustainability, healthy lifestyle) because the risk of injury or death frightened me. That is unfair. Thank goodness I actually have the privilege and means to switch back to car commuting.”
— James, Southwest Garden
“Huge, overbuilt roads like Gravois make drivers feel entitled to drive dangerously. The burden should be on traffic engineers to justify why an intersection doesn’t need improved safety, and not for safety advocates to prove safe routes are needed by showing how much blood has been shed at a particular site. For every crash, there are dozens of close calls and hundreds of area residents who have almost unanimously judge the existing infrastructure to be too unsafe to navigate outside a car. It impoverishes our communities to treat safe, comfortable transportation infrastructure as a luxury or engineering impossibility. The city budget needs to reflect that police only sweep up the mess after traffic violence; the way to prevent it is by investing in safe infrastructure.”
— Erin, Benton Park West
“Can someone please explain why virtually not a single sidewalk is illuminated by street lights, but virtually everything for cars is illuminated?.. I do not feel comfortable walking at night simply because there is frequently no light unless I walk in the middle of the street with car traffic. I see all the light poles that do a really good job giving the cars light and I sometimes think (maybe naively) that if the lights were just turned 90 degrees then perhaps the sidewalks would be little less dark at night.”
— Scott, St. Louis City
COUNTY
“I live just off Olive and am legally blind. Crossing Olive is no longer safe, too many people run the light and as much as we have complained and even had the police watch the intersection we are always told there is not a problem. Olive is a racetrack. Sometimes it is actually safer to walk in the road than risk falling, especially since I have had two knee replacements and a shoulder replacement.”
— Anonymous Resident
“My 4th grader walks and bikes to North Glendale Elementary… He reports that cars frequently fly through the crosswalk at Albert and Kirkham and speed near the school, not stopping for students.”
—Jennifer, Glendale
The speeding, running stop signs and total disregard for driving conditions is terrible.
Too many lives have been lost in North County and highway 70 lately.
— Jackie, Velda City