Kirkwood is set to apply for a Surface Transportation Program (STP) grant funding for the final phase of Grant's Trail extension to Downtown Kirkwood. The application will first go before City Council at tomorrow's meeting (Jan 18) and then will be submitted to East-West Gateway (EWG) for consideration. EWG is expected to announce the applications… Continue reading Final Phase of Grant’s Trail Comes Into Focus
The natural way neighborhoods have traditionally developed was as follows: People decide to live in an area and then a smattering of businesses that cater to those people open up shop nearby. Or perhaps the opposite happens: Some place is well-suited for business (maybe a canal is built, or gold is discovered, or, as in… Continue reading Urban Villages: A Vision for a Quainter Kirkwood
Update: 04/01/2024: Last week, the Webster-Kirkwood Times ran a story on cyclists' frustrations that the bring-your-bike pilot program that Amtrak had advertised all winter hadn't come to fruition due to low nature of Kirkwood Station's loading platforms. I talk about the issue surrounding the platform at length in the article below and expressed my frustration… Continue reading Kirkwood Station: Leveraging Our Greatest Asset
Update: 02/02/24 Last night's public hearing saw seventeen people comment against the proposal and just six in favor of it. Written comments submitted to the Council prior to the meeting had a much stronger St. Peter-skew with ~240 emails in favor and ~60 opposed. Council members' lines of questioning offered little insight into how they… Continue reading Jefferson, Clay, & STP’s Cul-de-Sac
It's hard to tell if Connect Our Community actually has the grassroots support that the yard signs and Webster-Kirkwood Times coverage seem to indicate, or whether it's the narrow project of a couple of incredibly hardworking gadflies who have managed to drag support for the project out of the swamp as if it were Sutpen's… Continue reading Connect Our Community: Wheat from the Chaff
A few weeks back, we received word that East-West Gateway's has granted STP (Surface Transportation Program) funding for Phase 1B of the Grant's Trail Extension to Downtown Kirkwood. This is the second of four legs to be funded, with the first leg —running from Argonne to the corner of Fillmore and Monroe— having received TAP… Continue reading Grant’s Trail: Halfway Home, It’s Time for B-GT
Happy (belated) Earth Day, Kirkwood! To mark the day, I wanted to write a little something focusing, as we always do, on the politics of the possible. Before we start, I want to offer my usual annoying caveat that the single best thing Kirkwood can do for the environment is to allow the construction of… Continue reading Time For Kirkwood To Embrace Electric Vehicles
Kirkwood has walled off its poorest neighborhood, Meacham Park, from the rest of the city. It has isolated this neighborhood by erecting physical barriers. These physical barriers prevent neighborhood residents from participating in our town's social, political, and economic activities. The inability of some residents to participate in these social, political, and economic activities, in… Continue reading Meacham Park is an Island: Part 1
This past weekend we got good news (about the North-South MetroLink expansion) that quickly turned into bad news. The good news is that the expansion is moving ahead: The Bi-State Development Board of Commissioners approved a resolution authorizing the BSD team to plan, design and develop the Jefferson alignment of the extension utilizing $7.4 million… Continue reading N-S MetroLink: Devil In The Details
Now that the dust has (finally) settled on the first round of voting in the St. Louis aldermanic primary, I want to take some time to advocate for a policy change that the City should implement but which the entire region would benefit from. That policy is the legalization of Transit Oriented Development (TOD) through… Continue reading To Unlock Promise of MetroLink, TOD is Key
