Metro Bus in Kirkwood: Change is Coming.

The title of this article could’ve been, maybe should have been, “If young Metro don’t trust you…[something about bus service in Kirkwood],” but my grandparents (my only loyal readers) wouldn’t have gotten the reference and if somehow any young person came across it, they’d probably just assume I’m a huge dork and stopped reading. So here we are with a boring title about the always sexy topic of busses. So why a post about busses now? Change has come to Metro’s service in Kirkwood and even more changes are on their way. Last month Metro to eliminate 370 stops with the stated goal of decreasing redundancy and increasing efficiency. On September 30th the re-imagination of the routes themselves will follow suit. The results are mixed. So first, let’s break down the changes themselves and then take a look at how Kirkwood can maximize the effectiveness of the routes we do have.

Changes:

Almost all the routes that service Kirkwood are experiencing some kind of change. The specifics of those changes are listed below.

Route 21 (enhanced frequency)

• Weekdays: Every 30 minutes (Day) | Every 60 minutes (Evening)
• Weekends: Every 60 minutes (All Day)

Route 48 (replaced)

Replaced with the new route #49 Lindbergh

Route 49 (new)

• New route will operate between South County Mall and North Hanley Transit Center, replacing service in areas served by the #48 South Lindbergh and #49 North Lindbergh. Will provide service to Baur, Guelbreth and Old Olive, will not serve Ballas Transit Center.
• Weekdays: Every 30 minutes (Day) | Every 60 minutes (Evening)
• Weekends: Every 60 minutes (All Day)

Route 56 (Sunday service added)

• Changes: Will provide service between St. Louis Community College at Meramec and Shrewsbury-Lansdowne I-44 Transit Center. Route will no longer serve Adams, Woodbine, Couch or Lockwood west of Berry.
• Weekdays: Every 60 minutes (All Day)
• Weekends: Every 60 minutes (All Day)

Route 57 (enhanced frequency)

Changes: Renamed, formerly the #57 Maplewood-Wildwood. Will operate two trips; between Maplewood-Manchester Transit Center and Barrett Station Road, and between Maplewood-Manchester Transit Center and Wildwood.

• Maplewood-Barrett Station
  • Weekdays: Every 30 minutes (Day) | Every 60 minutes (Evening)
  • Weekends: Every 30 minutes (Morning & Mid-Day) | Every 60 minutes (Early Morning & Evening)
• Maplewood-Wildwood
  • Weekdays: Every 60 minutes (All Day)
  • Weekends: Every 60 minutes (All Day)

Route 58x (replaced)

Route 68 (discontinued)

Discontinued due to low ridership, partially replaced by new Route 56

Breakdown:

Metro has changed up their changes so much its hard to keep track of what’s happening and what’s not. Furthermore all the changes have obviously been framed by Metro in the most positive light possible making it even harder to discern the true impact. With those qualifiers in mind the main drawback in my mind seems to be the discontinuation of service along Woodbine, a street that has hosted public transportation since the tracks still buried under its service carried trollies. Woodbine, a street recently made much more walkable as the pilot project of Kirkwood’s Complete Streets program, has tons of potential to expand Kirkwood’s urban footprint beyond its downtown. With that aside, most of the changes do seem to be mild improvements. Specifically, the Kirkwood-Webster connector (Route 56) adding Sunday service is a nice get.

How We Can Improve

With that being said, Kirkwood doesn’t do as much as it could, or should, to get everything out of public transportation. So how can Kirkwood improve bus access? Glad you asked.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

The idea is pretty straight forward: Busses can carry way more people than people driving alone in their own cars. Those 20+ individual drivers however, take up way more space than a bus does and thus generate a lot more traffic than said bus. It is only fair, therefore to say that those 20+ responsible bus riders deserve to avoid that disproportional traffic by giving the bus its own dedicated BRT lane. (Note: Some BRT lanes are designed as Bus/bike combo lanes. The effectiveness of this combo largely depends on the volume of busses that use the lane. The viability of a combined lane in Kirkwood require more expertise than I have to offer).

As far a where this is actually viable, essentially all the remaining routes in Kirkwood have room. The 4-5+ lane wide Manchester Road has more than enough space for a BRT lane in either direction, Kirkwood Rd South of Argonne (where on street parking for some confusing reason doesn’t exist) does, as does the 5 lane wide Big Bend. All it takes is a little paint!

Transportation Oriented Development (TOD)

Next comes the suggestion that would produce by far the most significant change: TOD. Basically in exchange for building dense residential developments around bus stations, the city gives a little kickback to the developer in the form of relaxed rules. Allowing the buildings to be built taller, requiring fewer parking spaces and allowing more units per floor are all ways for the city to make perspective developer’s projects more profitable while incentivizing good urbanism where it’s most useful.

Shelters & Stops

Although I have it listed last, this is really step one. Kirkwood City Council as currently constructed isn’t super super ambitious regarding implementing urban practices, but that’s not to say they are anti-urbanists either. While some of the later proposals in this article would likely take someone who is legitimately passionate and not afraid to shake things up, improving bus stops is the sort of common sense, good optics-project that seems attainable even under current cohort. In order to more objectively analyze the state of Kirkwood’s bus stops I took to Google Maps and did my best to plot the location and status of all the stops within city limits (Please Note: the map includes several symbols and colors representing bus stops. Black label stops will be eliminated in the September 30th changes; Red stops have no access via sidewalk, or are otherwise dangerous; Orange stops while safe/clean have no discernible amenities; yellow stops have uncovered resting places (i.e. benches) but are not protected from the elements; green labeled stops have full coverage. I haven’t gotten around to evaluating the blue labeled stops yet).

As far as how these shelters should be funded and by whom, it would appear that Kirkwood itself is largely on the hook. As much as I loathe the existence of Chesterfield, in this case they offer a good example of how collaboration with Metro works. Basically local governments (or in this case a ” Transportation Development District”) pay for the improvements while Metro provides “planning, engineering and administrative support for the project.” The article mentions collaboration with the County as well so it remains unclear whether they provide some funding as well. While Chesterfield just opted to fund the shelters out of pocket, if Kirkwood was really looking to pinch pennies, there’s a pretty simple solution: Just sell advertisements on the new shelters and they’ll pay for themselves as well as fund future maintenance.

Kirkwood currently has approximately five fully covered bus stops in addition to about five more comprised of uncovered benches. Out of these fewer than ten bus stops with any sort of amenities, all of them are located on Manchester Road, South Kirkwood Rd beyond Big Bend, or Big Bend itself: areas far away from what anyone would consider remotely walkable or human oriented.

With the recent reduction in the number of serviced stops in Kirkwood the job has become all the more focused and easier to execute. Kirkwood doesn’t need to make every stop great; rather it needs to, and I gag as I write this, follow Chesterfield’s lead pick the most heavily frequented four or five stops and the two or three in the worst shape (red on the map) and make them worthy of the dignity of the people who use them.