Trailnet invites you to Beers With Engineers, an event built for planning, design, and development professionals, academics and advocates interested in improving mobility in the St. Louis metro region. Enjoy an evening of collaborative activities, networking, snacks, and—you guessed it—local beer. Local experts on human-centered roadway design will share the tools you need to continue making St. Louis streets safe for ALL.
Shaun Tooley, AICP, Transportation Planning Specialists at MODOT will review key tools from the new Blueprint for Arterials, published by MODOT and East West Gateway. Then, hear from Joanne Stackpole, PE, PTOE, Associate, Senior Transportation Engineer at CBB, who will present the City of St. Louis Traffic Calming Engineering Guidelines. After the presentation, you’ll have a chance to work together to practice putting those tools to work.
Trailnet’s Beers with Engineers is free thanks to the partners listed above, but registration is requested at https://www.ticketsignup.io/TicketEvent/TrailnetBeerswithEngineers24
2024 Beers with Engineers Details
WHAT: Trailnet’s Beers with Engineers
WHEN: October 22, 2024; 5 – 7:30 pm
WHERE: HOK, 10 S Broadway Ste 200, St. Louis, MO 63102
WHO: For planning, design, and development professionals, academics and advocates interested in improving mobility in the St. Louis metro region. Speakers include the Trailnet planning team; Shaun Tooley, AICP, Transportation Planning Specialists at MODOT; and Joanne Stackpole, PE, PTOE, Associate, Senior Transportation Engineer at CBB.
WHY: Learn the tools you need to continue making St. Louis streets safe for ALL
Trailnet is your local advocate for better biking, walking and public transportation.
MISSION: Trailnet’s mission is to lead in fostering healthy, active, and vibrant communities where walking, bicycling, and the use of public transit are a way of life.
Embark on a beloved Trailnet Community Ride tour led by Dana Gray, an art consultant. Explore the rich art history of St. Louis as you visit various sites and delve into their stories. Join us for an enlightening journey through the city’s vibrant artistic heritage!
Check back soon for ride starting location, route, and program.
The ride will depart at 10 a.m. Check-in begins at 9 a.m.
Approximate End Time: 12 pm
About Trailnet Community Rides
Trailnet Community Rides are guided, slow-paced, group bike rides that explore the history and culture of the St. Louis Community.
Community Rides generally last around 3 hours. There are no staffed rest stops on these rides, and we cannot guarantee access to restrooms or water. Please plan accordingly.
Community Rides registration is capped at 75 participants. A smaller group allows us to safely manage riders on open city streets, ensures our docents/guides can effectively deliver information, and guarantees that local stops (museums, churches, businesses, etc.…) won’t be overwhelmed when we roll up.
April is Distracted Driving Awareness Month, and it’s a perfect opportunity for you to be a part of a changing culture around driving safety.
Trailnet is inviting you to “Drive the Change” by pledging to put your phone down and buckle up every time you drive.
Stop by our kick-off event outside Pedego St. Louis (located on Grants Trail!) on Saturday, April 6 any time from 10 am to noon. Learn more about the campaign, sign the pledge, enjoy a treat and pick up a car magnet and yard sign to show your support.
You know that distracted driving is dangerous. Now, it’s also illegal thanks to the new Missouri Hands Free Law. By committing to driving distraction-free, you’re not just following the law — you’re actively contributing to a safer, more caring community.
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. ↩︎
Park(ing) Day is a global, public, participatory project where people across the world temporarily repurpose curbside parking spaces and convert them into public parks and social spaces to advocate for safer, greener, and more equitable streets for people.
To celebrate Park(ing) Day 2023 in St. Louis, Trailnet will be hosting a pop-up parklet + bike lane demonstration along Compton Ave from Shenandoah to Longfellow.
Come visit Trailnet’s Park(ing) Day pop-up + bike lane demonstration at 2292 Compton Ave. on Friday, September 15!
Imagine being able to move around our city without needing a car. What if you could bike, walk and take public transit to all the places you need to go?
Join us for a free, family-friendly celebration and show of support for a car-free or car-light lifestyle.
This joyful bike parade will demonstrate the demand for multi-modal transportation options while showcasing the infrastructure and amenities we have in place currently. Stay after the ride for a resource fair where you can learn about how to get around St. Louis without a car and how you can stay involved in the movement for Streets for All!
In the heart of National Bike Month, Trailnet is hosting our second FREE public screening of The Street Project—an inspiring documentary about the global, citizen-led fight to make our streets safer.
This event will take place at the SLPL Central Library Downtown from 6-8 pm on Wednesday, May 10.
We will air the full 52-minute documentary followed by a panel on the state of our streets in the St. Louis region. More details to come. Pre-register today: https://runsignup.com/TicketEvent/TheStreetProject
Trailnet and the Missouri Chapter of the American Planning Association will be hosting a webinar on tactical urbanism on Thursday, March 2nd at 10am. The webinar will provide information about cross-sector collaboration and how it can have an impact on the built environment. Trailnet will also be sharing their success from the Plan4Health project. Learn more at Planners4Health. Register here.
Louisiana Avenue is a busy residential street that runs along several south city parks and connects to a variety of local businesses and neighborhood schools. It is also a pilot site for the City of St. Louis’ Calm Streets Concept, an initiative funded by the Environmental Protection Agency to create a network of Calm Streets in the city. Calm Streets are residential streets where the use of traffic calming features, such as curb extensions and speed humps, are used to reduce vehicle speeds and make the street safer for people walking, biking and driving.
The block of Louisiana between Osage and Gasconade Streets was the site of a Calm Streets pop-up demonstration on Thursday, November 17. Staff members from the St. Louis City Street Department and Trailnet staff and volunteers installed temporary crosswalks, a roundabout, and other items designed to slow traffic speeds. The traffic calming features remained in place throughout the day while driving behaviors were observed and feedback was collected from community members.
Many respondents were enthusiastic about the traffic calming measures and how they would contribute to safety for everyone using the street. One resident acknowledged that we “definitely need something to slow traffic.” Two community members were supportive because “there are lots of kids on this street.” One resident stated that “if you have to put a speed hump every six feet, I’m all for it!”
We look forward to continuing our work with the community, with elected officials and with other project partners to realize the vision of a network of calmer safer residential streets. To read more about Trailnet’s Calm Streets Project, click here.
A Win for Controlling Traffic Speed in Neighborhoods
We’re excited to tell you about a major advocacy win as the St. Louis Board of Aldermen recently passed a traffic calming policy. We’re proud to have played a significant role in propelling this policy forward by training local leaders and members of the community on best-practice street design. Now those inspired folks are taking action!
For years, stop signs have been virtually the only tool used for slowing or calming traffic on neighborhood streets in St. Louis. In many areas of the City, it seems there’s a stop sign on every corner, and many people – bicyclists and motorists alike – grumble about that. With the passage of Board bill 88 by the Board of Aldermen on July 8, far more preferable traffic calming tools will be added to the City’s toolbox. The policy will ensure a process for addressing: 1) excessive speeding through neighborhood streets; 2) cut-through vehicular traffic; and 3) overall safety concerns for those who walk and bike. Mayor Slay should soon sign the bill into law.
From left to right: Alderman Shane Cohn, Community Liaison Wendy Campbell, City of St. Louis Traffic Commissioner Deanna Venker, community partner Matthew Green of Park Central Development, and Alderman Scott Ogilvie get ready for bike tour of Portland, Oregon calm streets.
We encouraged our local leaders to pursue such a policy by showcasing the benefits of calmer streets. In August 2015, we took City of St. Louis staff, elected officials, and partners to Portland, Oregon on a study trip. The trip was part of Trailnet’s Calm Streets project and was highly successful in giving City staff and elected officials a sense of what is possible in engineered traffic calming solutions on neighborhood streets. We also took key City of St. Louis staff and advocates to see examples of best practice street design in Kansas City. The trip built relationships among the group and inspired traffic calming demonstrations. The demonstrations showed residents, officials, and city staff how streets can be redesigned to reduce speeding and increase safety.
We recognize and thank City staff, Deanna Venker and John Kohler, for their significant contributions to Board Bill 88 and the development of the traffic calming policy and process. Thanks also to the Board of Aldermen for an overwhelming vote in support of Board Bill 88.
