The Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL) Partnership, the City of St. Louis Department of Health’s response to the growing rate of chronic disease mortality, will engage the community through pop-up traffic calming demonstrations to address walkability and highlight ways to build safer streets through traffic-calming strategies.
The Missouri American Planning Association received a $120,000 grant for community engagement activities around safer streets for pedestrians through the American Planning Association and American Public Health Association’s Plan4Health program and provided it to the Heal Partnership.
As part of the Plan4Health St. Louis project, the HEAL Partnership will work with local experts to create a variety of tools that can be used for temporary demonstrations for traffic calming. These tools will be used for pop-up demonstrations in four focus areas.
• Saturday, October 10, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Trailnet will hold a pop-up demonstration in Dutchtown on Gasconade Street between Compton Avenue and Minnesota Avenue.
• Wednesday, October 14, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., in the Ville and Greater Ville on St. Louis Avenue between Whittier St. and Sarah St.
• Tuesday, October 20, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., on Carondelet on Bates Street between Colorado Avenue and Alabama Avenue.
• November 10, from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m., in JeffVanderLou on Thomas Street and Sheridan Avenue between Glasgow Avenue and Garrison Avenue. Garrison will be a demonstration site as well—between Sheridan and Thomas.
“We want our communities to have the best street design that can serve all residents,” said Marielle Brown, bicycle and pedestrian planning manager with Trailnet. “Grandparents, parents, and children should be able to walk to the park or local grocery store together and feel safe doing so because streets are designed with pedestrians in mind.”
Through pop-up demonstrations, the HEAL Partnership aims to facilitate a culture shift toward designing streets that encourage walking. The demonstrations will give residents, policymakers, and businesses the chance to experience traffic calming measures that improve quality of life. In the City of St. Louis, 27 percent report no leisure-time physical activity, while 80 percent of city residents live within a mile of a public park, poor pedestrian access in some areas may prevent regular park use.
The City of St. Louis recently bolstered its Complete Streets policy, and has been actively involved in planning the pop up demonstrations. The Plan4Health project will explore and present new street designs that could be used to implement the updated Complete Streets policy.
Deanna Venker, Commissioner of Traffic with the City of St. Louis said, “We are looking forward to having this library of tools that will allow communities to ‘test out’ certain traffic calming options for their community and see the results before a more permanent installation is constructed.”
“Planners throughout Missouri are working to make our communities healthier for all residents,” said Shannon Jaax, president of the Missouri Chapter of the American Planning Association. “The Plan4Health grant is a tremendous opportunity to put best practices into action through demonstration projects that can then be replicated throughout the state.”
The Healthy Eating Active Living (HEAL) Partnership members include: Trailnet, the City of St. Louis (Health and Streets Departments), Missouri Chapter of the American Planning Association, Missouri Public Health Association, Missouri Foundation for Health, Great Rivers Greenway, Gateway Greening, GirlTrek, The YMCA of Greater St. Louis, Washington University, Saint Louis University, Paraquad, and American Heart Association.