EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Introduction

Walking and bicycling are essential to St. Louis County’s vision for the future. The 2013 strategic plan, Imagining Tomorrow, creates the framework and policies through which St. Louis County and its residents can grow, thrive, and prosper with healthy, engaged residents; desirable, connected communities; and accessible, attractive opportunities. A safe, comfortable, and connected network of walking and bicycling facilities can support healthy and active lifestyles, contribute to a community’s identity and sense of place, increase access to education and employment opportunities, and provide transportation options for many County residents who cannot or choose not to drive.

The Action Plan serves as a guiding document for investments in infrastructure, programs, and policies to support walking and bicycling. While the Action Plan focuses primarily on projects and actions for the St. Louis County Department of Transportation, it is also a valuable resource for other County departments, municipalities, MoDOT, Great Rivers Greenway, East West Gateway Council of Governments and other local governments.

Pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure recommendations are intended to:

• Increase safety and comfort for people walking and bicycling

• Address facility network gaps on County-owned and maintained roads and increase connectivity to important destinations and clusters of activity

• Provide practical strategies to implement the Complete Streets ordinance

• Update the Gateway Bike Plan’s recommendations for bicycle infrastructure based to better reflect shifting priorities and best practices in facility planning and design

Policy recommendations provide strategies to better integrate walking and bicycling into transportation investments and decisionmaking, increase community outreach and participation in all phases of County projects.

The Action Plan Vision

Vision statements guide planning processes by describing the long-term hopes and desired outcomes of transportation agency staff, residents, and other stakeholders. Vision statements indicate a plan’s importance and reasons why they are undertaken. They are repeatedly considered throughout a planning process to make sure the plan’s recommendations and priorities align with the long-term vision. The St. Louis County Action Plan for Walking & Bicycling vision statement is shown at right.

Values and Goals

The County has identified seven essential values to guide the Action Plan’s development and recommendations. These values provide structure and direction for decisionmaking throughout the planning process. They guided the County’s recommendation development to help bring to life the Action Plan’s unifying vision. Each value is accompanied by a corresponding goal, which provides the overarching direction to advance that value through transportation-related decision-making and investments.

Safety

Create an environment in which people feel safe and comfortable traveling in St. Louis County, regardless of their mode of transportation.

Connectivity

Increase connectivity and access to key community destinations, like schools, parks, community centers, transit, and employment opportunities.

Equity

Enhance mobility options for those who can benefit most, including communities of color, children, seniors, and people with limited income and means.

Health

Invest in public infrastructure and active transportation as pathways to a healthier St. Louis County.

Inclusivity

Support walking and biking for all people, regardless of age or ability.

Reliability

Provide a consistent, dependable environment for walking and bicycling across the County Road System.

Collaboration

Achieve shared goals for active transportation through interdepartmental and interagency partnerships.

Key Findings

The Action Plan documents the physical and policy landscapes throughout the County that influenced the plan’s recommended investments in active transportation. The character and quality of the transportation system plays an important role in how people choose to travel. Major findings from existing conditions analyses are summarized here and expanded in Chapter Three.

EXISTING SIDEWALKS, TRAILS, AND BIKEWAYS

The County inventoried existing walking and biking facilities to understand the systems’ current connectivity and quality. The review found that 39% of roads on the County Arterial and Collector Roadway system (ARS/CRS2) have sidewalks present on both sides of the roadway, while 43% of roads have no sidewalks at all. Multi-use paths represent the type of bike facility found in the county most often. However, people walking can also use these pathways. There are 116 miles of existing multi-use path and 57 miles of bike lanes in St. Louis County.

PLANNING & POLICY CONTEXT

St. Louis County, local municipalities, and many regional partners have a long history of planning for and supporting walking and biking. This plan’s recommendations build from previous initiatives.

Walk And Bike Comfort

The County used two analyses to study comfort of walking and biking along the St. Louis County ARS/CRS2. Pedestrian comfort is not uniform throughout the system. Nearly half of all ARS/CRS2 roads received the top two highest-stress scores for the Pedestrian Level of Service (PLOS) analysis that analyzed walking comfort. The Bicycle Level of Traffic Stress (BLTS) Analysis evaluates how stressful it is to ride a bike along County roads. Ninety percent of roadways scored received the top two highest-stress designations for biking. The results from these analyses show that pedestrian and bicycle mobility is limited by these high-stress roadways on the County road system.

Demand For Active Transportation Facilities

The County conducted a demand analysis for walking and bicycling in St. Louis County showing concentrations of places people live, work, learn, play, shop, and take transit. Inner ring communities, historic commercial main streets in “streetcar suburbs” like Kirkwood and Ferguson, major employment centers like Westport Plaza and Downtown Clayton, parks, and greenways, contribute to the mosaic of places that people in St. Louis County travel to and from on a daily basis

Health Analysis

A health analysis identifies locations in St. Louis County with high concentrations of health concerns to better understand health disparities and transportation needs. The County examined the rates of diagnoses of diseases and health indicators that have a stronger connection to transportation system and physical activity. The analysis showed a concentration of diseases and conditions in northeastern St. Louis County.

Equity Analysis

This analysis identifies concentrations of St. Louis County residents that have been historically disadvantaged or are otherwise considered vulnerable to unsafe, disconnected, or incomplete active transportation facilities. The composite shows greatest need in for walking and bicycling investments based on a combination of demographic indicators in northeastern St. Louis County, particularly in the area bounded by Olive Boulevard, I-270, Lindbergh Boulevard, and the City of St. Louis.

Public Input: What We Heard

Community engagement was a key component of the planning process for the Action Plan. The Action Plan’s overall engagement strategy combined tactics designed to reach a lot of people, like public meetings and an online survey, and tactics designed to reach targeted groups less likely to participate, like intercept surveys and small group meetings. Phase 2 of engagement, which began in spring 2020, was disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the County continued both large-scale and targeted outreach as much as possible.

PHASE 1 ENGAGEMENT: PREPARING TO ENGAGE AND EARLY AWARENESS

Phase 1 engagement was designed to develop the engagement materials and protocols for the life of the project. Public engagement launched with mass email announcements, a project website, social media messages, and tabling at local events through the summer and fall of 2019. Tabling at high-traffic locations was a productive way to raise awareness for the planning effort and collect early feedback from the public.

PHASE 2 ENGAGEMENT: ISSUES AND NEED

Phase 2 engagement focused on gathering input on needs, opportunities, and preferences for walking and biking. The project experienced its highest level of engagement during this phase, reaching hundreds of people through four public meetings and an online survey. With 906 participants, the online community survey was the most utilized public engagement tool for the Action Plan.

Public meeting attendees and survey participants want the County to improve existing sidewalks, add more sidewalks, and add bicycle facilities. Survey respondents felt the most important factors to consider when setting priorities for improvements were:

• Demand, investing in routes with the most desire for walking and biking (40%),

• Efficiency, investing as opportunities arise through roadway projects (28%).

• Investing equally across the County (18%)

• Investing most in areas where car ownership is low (7%).

PHASE 3 ENGAGEMENT: DRAFT PLAN REVIEW

Phase 3 engagement efforts provided residents and stakeholders an opportunity to share their input on the draft plan recommendations. Residents expressed their desire to focus investments on sidewalk repair, new sidewalks, and off-street bike facilities like trails and sidepaths. The input received through the virtual open house reaffirmed draft pedestrian and bicycle network recommendations and helped the project team to refine these recommendations for the final plan.

Engagement Equity Audits

Throughout the course of the plan, the County continuously reviewed and evaluated engagement efforts to identify gaps in outreach and participation and to seek opportunities to increase participation among communities of color, low-income residents, and residents of geographic areas not represented in early stages of engagement.

With the lessons learned from these equity audits, the County pursued a variety of engagement strategies to better reach underserved and underrepresented populations. These included outreach and events at public libraries; stakeholder meetings with community organizations and school districts; targeted mailings to random addresses in areas of high need for active transportation improvements. Transit intercept surveys were planned at high-volume MetroBus stops and MetroLink stations, but were canceled due to COVID-19 safety precautions.

The equity audits and corresponding actions helped to strategically expand equitable and inclusive outreach efforts.

Pedestrian Recommendations

The recommendations for pedestrian improvements are located on County roads in both incorporated and unincorporated areas throughout St. Louis County. These projects address system gaps, replace deteriorating sidewalks, and support a safer, more accessible, and more comfortable pedestrian experience. The proposed pedestrian improvements are described below and shown in Map 1.

New Sidewalks

Recommendations for new sidewalks address corridor-level gaps in the sidewalk system along the Arterial and Collector Road Systems (ARS and CRS2). These proposed projects provide new connections to transit, schools, parks, commercial districts, and other important community destinations.

Sidewalk Infill

Sidewalk infill recommendations address minor gaps along corridors with disconnected sidewalks. Many of these proposed projects are located along ARS and CRS2 roadways that have experienced redevelopment in recent years, triggering requirements for new sidewalks, which in turn has resulted in fragmented sidewalk development. Creating contiguous pedestrian paths along these corridors will enhance pedestrian safety, connectivity, and access to transit, schools, shops, and other destinations.

Sidewalk Repair

Proposed sidewalk repair projects address sidewalks in poor state of repair or those that provide a poor level of service. These existing sidewalks present significant challenges for people with limited physical mobility or who use a mobility assistance device like a walker or wheelchair. While the sidewalk repair recommendations are likely to be expanded through the County’s ADA Transition Plan, these proposed projects address key deficiencies in the sidewalk system located in high-density and high-need areas.

Sidepaths

Recommendations for new sidepaths support both biking and walking. These represent the most significant recommended pedestrian improvement type by mileage, constituting more than two thirds of all proposed pedestrian facilities. For instances in which sidepath installation is determined infeasible due to lack of available right of way or other physical constraints, every effort should be made to provide a continuous, accessible pedestrian facility along these corridors.

SHARED USE PATHS (TRAILS)

While the focus of pedestrian improvements is the County road system, there are a small number of shared use path (trail) projects recommended in the plan. Some of these projects provide short connections between existing pedestrian facilities and major greenways like Grant’s Trail, and others are more substantial projects that will require significant resources and coordination with the Department of Parks and Recreation and local municipalities to develop.

Pedestrian Facilities

Existing Proposed

Existing Sidewalk

Existing Sidewalk on County ARS/CRS2

Proposed Sidewalk on County Road

Shared Use Facility (Sidepath)

Shared Use Facility (Trail or Greenway)

Jurisdictions

Incorporated Areas

Unincorporated St. Louis County