If you have noticed more bicycle lanes are getting real estate where mostly motorized vehicles used to be, it is by design. The St. Louis Streets department has been making two-wheeled transportation easier for those who choose a helmet, hand brakes and legwork for health, enjoyment, economic benefits or just traveling green.
“We’ve got bike lanes on Union, Manchester, Choteau, Chestnut, Broadway, Morganford, Oakland, West Florissant – a whole slew of them all over the place,” Commissioner of Traffic for the City of St. Louis, Deanna Venker said. “We’ve got about 133 miles of bike lanes in the city.”
It’s taken more than a decade and three phases of work, with input from Bike St. Louis in partnership with Great Rivers Greenway and the City of St. Louis.
“They came together to start implementing bike lanes on our routes,” Venker said, which involved mapping and extensive outreach among bicyclists to find out where they lived and where they want would like to bike in order for the City to put the paths in the right place.
“Then it was a matter of looking at what infrastructure we had in the area and where we could look at utilizing an extra lane or a lane for capacity for bikes instead of cars,” she explained.
They call it “road diets,” when the city reduces the number of lanes on a road.
“You can do multiple things with those,” Venker explained. “Most likely, we’ll add bike lanes to it, but in some locations, we’ve been making the sidewalks wider so that more people can walk, or sidewalk cafes can be vented – that sort of thing.”
Recently, the city completed its third phase of Bike St. Louis.
“This year we rolled out 40 miles of bike lanes in the city and we upgraded another 60 miles of existing ones; making sure they are still striped – that they still have signs.”
Venker said bikers in St. Louis like to ride east to west, into downtown and into the parks, such as Forest, Tower Grove and Francis parks.
“Great Rivers Greenway, in addition to Bike St. Louis, has an entire network of trails that they built. One of the big trails that they’ve built is the River Des Peres Greenway, that kind of follows right along that city/county border in the southern part of the city,” Venter said, as well as other greenways they venture into parts of St. Louis.
“Getting those greenways hooked up with where those bike lanes are so that people can travel to them is a huge thing,” Venter said, “And from people coming from the county and how they get through – there are several greenways they take advantage of.”
2015 Walk and Bike Count data released in November from Trailnet reveals that St. Louis ranks 22nd for bicycle commuters among the 70 largest U.S. cities and is the 5th fastest-growing bicycle commuting cities. St. Louis also ranks as the 23rd most walkable city in the nation.
Trailnet offers tips on how to bike St. Louis, “travel green” and other information for bikers and pedestrians at www.trailnet.org.
If you are considering joining the biking movement, Great Rivers Greenway offers tips on trail etiquette, from basic rules to what to wear at http://greatriversgreenway.org/learn-stuff/.
