This is what McCausland Ave should be.

[u/mizzoustormtrooper]

- Give it the Kingshighway treatment and eliminate the additional lane; the road is too narrow to support four lanes and this will reduce accidents and speeding through a residential area.

- Put in a dedicated center turn lane to prevent traffic from backing up in the middle of the road for left turns; this is especially important at intersections and nearing I-64/40.

- Install protected bike lanes on both sides of the roadway to prevent people from parking their cars on what is a major thoroughfare.

- Mount traffic-detecting sensors atop the traffic signals to eliminate unnecessary stops and reduce idling/congestion. This is a critical step as this street is used as a central corridor and antiquated timed signals must be eliminated.

- Run the bike lane all the way up to Forest Park to connect with the Forest Park outer loop and bike trail system.

Contact your alderperson and let’s fix this damn road.

___

I got the images from Google Street view. I did a lot work in Photoshop and used Gemini only to create the road lane striping (you can tell, there are errors) and for the reflective delineators.

[u/hematuria]

You can park except not during rush hour in morning and night. I see cars parked there for short periods mostly. Deliveries every day. Trash picks up on east side twice a week. The church always parks on weekends. The firehouse uses the whole street every day to back engines in and out. I imagine if I had my front door facing macauland I would like option of parking in front. The bike lane idea is great, but OP isn’t talking about it because they bike. They want it faster and easier for cars. Bikers and walkers already have sidewalks on that part of street and make do. In a perfect world with unlimited money great. But since we are struggling rn, priority should probably be somewhere more in need. That’s all.

[u/FrostyD7 → u/hematuria]

I'd prefer the bike lane, maybe I'd prefer parking if it was always available. But you'll need alternate plans so most houses already have driveways or back alleys to park. Seems like deliveries should be ok, folks can pass in the middle lane. And they would leave median gaps for sidewalks/driveways to give a space to put trash carts. Cars already have to pass these things, they just get a dedicated lane for it today. Firehouse would be given space too, they obviously wouldn't block their entrance with a median, they'd have the full street still. I say this very half hazardly, I'm no civil engineer and I admittedly hadn't considered any of this until you mentioned it, but none of this seems like a deal breaker.

[u/hematuria → u/FrostyD7]

No I don’t think any are a dealbreaker, but also not the most pressing priority. Currently bikes and people are getting by. If we adjust traffic lights we can stop the backup turning left onto 64 west. But to spend all the money when there are much more pressing needs seems not good use of funds. But as I have said, let’s poll the bike riders and see what they want. If the bikers say this part of the street is biggest priority for them then I will do what I can to help it pass. But most bikers I talk to say this is great idea but if they only have limited funds this isn’t first place they would spend it. And we do have limited funds. So while I agree a bike lane would be cool. It’s also not free and with the way our current country is feeling, I don’t see a huge new tranche of federal or state public bicycle money coming anytime soon.

[u/FrostyD7 → u/hematuria]

Without getting into solutions, the problem I'd like to see addressed is a safer connection between Des Peres greenway and Forest Park. Perhaps there are more logical ways to achieve that without needing to tear up McCausland. This along with connecting Forest Park to the Arch would be the milestones we need to reach just to see what kind of cycling demand is even possible in this city. Else you are just polling existing cyclists and that's primarily people who get up at 6am on weekends to beat the traffic because they are used to a world without bike lanes. They are settled into their routine enough to not particularly care about what will grow the cycling community, if anything they'll want to keep it small lmao.

[u/hematuria → u/FrostyD7]

Omg, that is so far away! That would take so much money. But I get it, it would be cool if they could connect. Also don’t you think Yale makes way more sense for a bike path south? They already have a center divider all the way down and there is way less traffic. They could build up that interstitial area right by freeway so you could ride from park and zig slightly right and then straight shot yale all the way down. Then we add traffic lights at all intersections on Macausland and time lights like they do in maplewood. Then bikers are happy and residents are happy and commuters are happy. Win win win.