Missouri Bicycle News

The 2004 Mean Streets report (previously reported on MoBikeFed News, also recently covered in Urban Review-St. Louis) puts the finger on something rather important for highway safety in Missouri.

10 years ago, Salt Lake City was basically in the same boat as Kansas City and St. Louis are now (respectively, 15th and 17th most dangerous in the U.S. for pedestrians). Streets were extremely hazardous for pedestrians and getting steadily worse.

Then one prominent politician--Rocky Anderson, SLC mayor--decided to step forward and do something about it. Of course, Anderson created and harnessed a lot of community support. But he was the one individual with clout who had the vision and stayed behind it for the number of years it took to really make a difference.

Nothing the Salt Lake metro area did is particularly striking, original, expensive, unknown, unreasonable, impossible, or even difficult. They just did all the things we know it takes to make a safer pedestrian environment.

And this simple and relatively inexpensive measures dropped pedestrian injuries/fatalities by almost 50 percent.

Let me repeat that, with emphasis: FIFTY PERCENT!

It took a sustained and coordinated effort. And planning. But it got dramatic results.

We need to be challenging our MO politicians to grasp this bull by the horns. We need someone to step forward and be the "Rocky Anderson" of St. Louis, of Kansas City.

This Mean Streets report makes the perfect opportunity to write letters to the editor, to call or mail city councilors and mayors. They need to feel the pressure.

We can do it here in Missouri just like they did in Salt Lake.

Related:

News: STL Post-Dispatch editorial; Print & Mail for a Bike/Ped Friendly MoDOT Leadership campaign continues

News: Local planning organizations make bike/ped-friendly streets better than state DOTs

permanent link to article: "Editorial: Fixing Missouri's Mean Streets"
posted by Brent Hugh at 12/08/2004 02:00:42 PM |comment on this article