Foot Power: Biking and walking in St. Louis

With interest in environmental issues on the rise, not to mention gas prices, more and more St. Louisans are looking for alternate ways to get around. Two easy and economical alternatives to sitting in traffic are cycling and walking.

Cycling

While not at the level of a major cycling city like Portland or Chicago, St. Louis has become an easier place to travel on two wheels in recent years.

The Great Rivers Greenway District recently opened 57 additional miles of bike lanes in the Metro area in Maplewood, Clayton and St. Louis City under the aegis of its Bike St. Louis project, bringing the total of miles of dedicated bike lanes and shared traffic lanes in the St. Louis system to 77. It’s the first expansion of the system since 2005 when the first 20 miles of continuous bike routes were put into play. In June, the group also unveiled the McKinley Bridge Bikeway and Trestle at Branch Street, which supports pedestrian and bike traffic.

“We’re getting there. We’re probably not quite in the middle of the pack yet,” said Todd Antoine, deputy director of planning for Great Rivers Greenway District, though he added “I think it’s impressive in a matter of four years or so to go from essentially three or four miles (of lanes) up to more than 70 miles.”

Antoine said the group is currently working on extending Grant’s Trail in Kirkwood to Kirkwood Park via an on-street system. In the next few years, when funds become available, the current routes will be extended further into St. Louis County and other parts of St. Louis City.

“We’re trying to make connections as much as possible for bike commuting,” he said. “We’re trying to connect as much as we can to neighborhood centers, employment centers, and things that people want to go to.”

Don Griffith, president and co-founder of of Big Crank Cycling, a local cycling advocacy organization, said St. Louis’ bike lanes and bike routes are an impressive but under-publicized resource.

“We have a treasure here for getting around,” he said, adding that the area’s small neighborhoods make commuting easy, even if they aren’t part of an official route.

Until recently Griffith commuted 16 miles daily from South City to Creve Coeur. He was able to cut through areas like Tower Grove Park and Forest Park to avoid traffic, and the trip usually took less than 40 minutes.

“I could have easily been stuck in traffic that long,” Griffith said. “It’s a lot easier than people think,” he said of commuting by bike. The two biggest obstacles to bike commuting he said are the lack of shower or cleanup facilities and the weather.
In addition, it seems that more people are starting to take advantage of the new cycling infrastructure. Mike Weiss, owner of Big Shark Bicycle Company in St. Louis, said his shop has seen a real surge in commuter bike sales of late, a trend he said is also spreading across the country.

Although a limited number of bike racks were installed on routes during the first two phases, Antoine sees a need to improve this in the future. Ideally, he would also like to have public spaces for parking and for riders to clean up and change clothes, possibly near Metro stations.

Griffith agreed that bike racks in the area are a major need.

“In Chicago, bike racks are as frequent as parking meters on some streets,” he said.
Weiss said St. Louis is “somewhere in the middle” when it comes to bike lanes. He said it’ll be necessary for some large east-west and north-south arteries like Manchester Road or Skinker to feature bike lanes to take the effort to the next level.

“We don’t have the infrastructure yet,” Weiss said, but added that the area has lots of ongoing bicycle advocacy efforts and a “good, healthy cycling community.”

Ann Mack, executive director of Trailnet, said the region needs to adopt what Trailnet calls “Complete Streets” policies, where a street isn’t complete until it’s designed for pedestrians; cyclists; mass transit users; and single-use cars, in that order.

“It starts at the very basic road design,” said Mack, who commutes 20-24 miles a day via bike herself. “When we design roads as if we’re just moving cars at ever-increasing speeds, we forget that we’re actually cutting communities up. When you walk or bike or get on a light-rail, you realize it’s all about the communities.’

Walking

St. Louis is also a fairly friendly place for those who choose to get around on foot. The city was ranked the 74th best walking city in the country in the latest joint study by Prevention Magazine and the American Podiatric Medical Association. The study gave the city high marks on it’s parks and convenient downtown area.

Unless you live and work in the same neighborhood, walking is probably not a viable commuting option as a stand-alone mode. But combined with other options such as MetroBus and MetroLink it can be an integral part of a multi-modal commute.

“No one’s going to walk three miles to-and-from work consistently. It takes up too much time in the day, said Mack. “If you have a healthy multi-modal system, then you’re enabling people to do something that’s reasonable.”

Citizens for Modern Transit (CMT) started the Ten Toe Express program last year to encourage residents to link walking and public transportation use for fitness and commuting.

Tom Shrout, executive director of CMT, commutes on foot and via bus and Metrolink daily himself and said its fairly easy to get around the city proper and many of the older suburbs since ”everything is close together.”

Shrout, who took up walking after selling his family’s second car, said one of the major benefits he gets from walking is actually interacting with people he meets along his route. Instead of taking longer, Shrout said walking to errands actually saves time. He can walk to the grocery store while his neighbor is still circling the lot looking for a parking space. And there’s the health benefit: Shrout said he has averaged about 13,000-steps per day.

Still, there are downfalls to being on foot. Shrout said some motorists still don’t pay enough attention to the walkers out there.

“More than once I’ve not been either seen or respected,” he said. “You have to be careful out there.”

You can e-mail Matt Sorrell at matt@mattsorrell.com.