In April 2023, I wrote a piece titled “Meacham Park is an Island: Part 1” that described the ways in which the historically Black neighborhood in the southeast corner of Kirkwood remained physically isolated from the rest of the community. The article seemed to resonate, and I even got a lot of comments from Meacham residents confirming its thesis, but unfortunately, I never got around to writing up Part 2: what I thought we should actually do about it. Well, a year and a half later, the time has finally come.
Searching for a Solution
The good news is, while I perhaps haven’t been working on solving the problem, other people certainly have. The most visible attempt to make safer pedestrian connections between Meacham Park was an initiative called “Connect Our Community” orchestrated by a group called Safer Street for Kirkwood. As I wrote about in my July, 2023 piece, “Connect Our Community: Wheat from Chaff,” Connect Our Community sought to link the existing Grant’s Trail to the recently completed pedestrian/cycling bridge over the Meramec River via a proposed multi-use path:
While I was supportive of the proposed improvements of the eastern portion of the route on the grounds that connecting Meacham Park to Meramec Community College and Grant’s Trail were a worthwhile goal, I was skeptical that the benefit of connecting Meramec Community College to the far side of the Meramec River outweighed the significant cost. But while I was not fully convinced on the merits of that project, its organizers did have one very important insight regarding a potential funding source for such a route: The SS4A grant.
Safer Streets for All
The Safer Streets for All (SS4A) grant is a series of federal funding source that was created by the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. In order to be eligible for one of these grants, a local entity has to have previously enacted a pedestrian/bicyclist safety action plan. Because City Council had passed its Vision Zero Action Plan in 2022 (and was, in fact, the only local entity to have done so) Kirkwood was eligible for, and ultimately received a SS4A grant worth $480k in February 2023.
This initial grant was known as a “Supplemental Action Plan Grant,” and was to be used to more fully flesh out the city’s 2022 plan. The city identified three uses for the money:
- A city-wide speed study
- A Safer Routes to Schools Plan
- And the Southeast Kirkwood Connectivity Study
The last of these items, of course, refers to the by then well-known cause of connecting Meacham Park to the rest of the community. And while the “Supplemental Action Plan Grant” subcategory has to be used for plans and studies, those plans and studies lay the groundwork for Kirkwood winning one of the coveted and much more valuable SS4A implementation grants in subsequent that could be used to actually build the improvements themselves.
But in some sense, funding the eventual solution is the easy part. The harder part is figuring out what that solution looks like. That’s where the study comes in.
Southeast Kirkwood Connectivity Study
The Southeast Kirkwood Connectivity Study kicked off this September and the accompanying survey has been open to the public throughout the fall, but the most pivotal event so far was the Open House that was hosted by the Meacham Park Neighborhood Improvement Association in November.
By all accounts, that meeting did not go as smoothly as many had hoped. A few outspoken long-time critics of the city seemed to largely drown out the constructive feedback offered by the majority of attendees. Some seemed to worry that the dissent was a death knell for the whole effort, but those more in the know seemed to think that this was kind of typical and to be expected. A few Meacham residents really don’t trust the city. Given the history of the annexation of Meacham, that’s understandable, but it’s also unfortunate because in order to get a good project, and especially a good route for the project, the city really does need the insights of knowledgeable locals.
Preferred Route
The main task of the Open House was to begin to circle in on a preferred route for the connection between Meacham and Downtown. There are lots of possibilities up for consideration but the main hinge point of the decision seems to be the question of which railroad crossing such a route should use. Participants were asked between a) using the existing at-grade crossing at Kirkwood Rd, b) constructing a new raised crossing at Taylor, or c) constructing a new raised crossing further East, at Elliot
These latter two raised crossings would entail a “spiral ramp” crossing, presumably similar to the one pictured below:
As I was unable to attend the open house, I wanted to offer a few thoughts/observations about these options here:
- Many Meacham Park students currently cross the tracks at Fillmore, the most direct route to Nipher Middle School. That route is not amongst the options listed above
- The less direct spiral ramp crossing options at Elliot and Taylor seem fairly inconvenient to use —you have to walk up and down a bunch of big spiraling ramps to not get very far
- The heavy concrete and steel construction of the ramps also seem likely to cost quite a bit and require some notoriously hard-to-come-by cooperation with the good folks at BNSF
- A little-utilized, expensive, bureaucratically complex solution seems to fail basic cost-benefit-analysis
- Utilizing the existing at-grade crossing at Kirkwood Road would allow the money saved from forgoing the spiral ramps to be utilized for much-needed pedestrian improvements elsewhere along the chosen route
- Although the Kirkwood Road route offers an arguably slightly less direct connection to Nipher than some of the alternatives, its commercial orientation and connection to the rest of Downtown Kirkwood offers the greatest potential in terms of future walkability
In short, all of this is to say that I believe that the Kirkwood Road route is the most likely of the alternatives to develop into the safe, convenient, interesting, economically vibrant corridors that tend to induce pedestrian activity. To get the most out of such a route, the city would need to tackle two big challenges.
First, the city would need to be ambitious in its coming redesign of South Kirkwood Road, north of the BNSF railroad tracks. While both St. Louis County’s Big Bend project and MoDOT’s S. Lindbergh project unfortunately failed to include obvious improvements (like the elimination of the Kirkwood Rd-Big Bend intersection’s slip lanes or lane reduction at Big Bend & Geyer), the city should at least ensure we’re following best practices in places where it has sole discretion. Ensuring that South Kirkwood Road gets the same lane reduction/road-diet treatment as was recently approved for North Kirkwood Road is paramount for ensuring that the connection to Meacham is as safe and comfortable as possible.
Secondly, the city should rezone the land adjacent to South Kirkwood Road between Big Bend and Woodbine to B-2 General Business ensure it can accommodate the same sort of mixed uses that flank the road closer to Downtown. If we expect to make changes that will encourage more people that will walk along this stretch of Kirkwood Road, it makes sense to allow commercial businesses to flank the path and cater to those pedestrians rather than limiting the land to tire shops and industrial uses. Similarly, it makes sense to allow multifamily development along the stretch. Allowing people to live along a brand new multi-use path that will take them to the heart of Downtown Kirkwood makes as much sense here as it does along the Grant’s Trail extension. We’d maximize the return on our investment in the path by ensuring more people use it and we’d increase the customer base for Downtown Kirkwood’s businesses while minimizing those new customer’s demand for parking and contributions to traffic.
I, of course, defer to the residents of Meacham if there’s consensus around one of the other routes, but this seems to get us the most bang for our buck, especially if we work to enact the sort of complementary changes I mentioned above.
How You Can Help
The Southeast Kirkwood Connectivity project is key to bridging the gap between Meacham Park and the rest of the Kirkwood community and it would be a shame if we let the city’s previous mistakes get in the way of ensuring we get the best possible solution. Nonetheless, it’s understandable why this trust is fragile. What we need is strong leadership that can distill the concerns of the community, work to identify ways that the city can sufficiently address those concerns, and ultimately help chart a path for both parties to get to a “yes” that actually makes life better for Kirkwood residents. If that sounds like you, and especially if you have ties to Meacham Park, I encourage to engage your neighbors, family, and friends on the subject. Even more actionably, I encourage anyone who hasn’t yet done so yet (Meacham resident or not!) to fill out the Southeast Kirkwood Connectivity Study (and to pass it along to family and friends to do the same). Meacham Park is an Island, yes, but it doesn’t have to be.