ST. LOUIS — The City of St. Louis released new plans Wednesday afternoon to revamp Kingshighway.
It’s all in an effort to make the roughly 9-mile corridor safer for everyone.
Two intersections on the project are on the list of the city’s top ten worst places for crashes: Delmar and Kingshighway and Lindell and Kingshighway.
Mayor Tishaura Jones' Chief of Staff Jared Boyd said road engineering is a crucial part of making our streets safer.
“Kingshighway, like a lot of other streets has been designed for large amounts of cars. And in recent years, that has led to more traffic incidents that we want to really take a look at to make our city safer for folks, whether they're walking, biking, or driving,” Boyd said.
The project is split into eight segments that stretches from the intersection of Kingshighway and Florissant Avenue to the intersection of Kingshighway and Gravois.
They plan to implement a variety of traffic calming measures including curb bump-outs to slow traffic down and protect pedestrians in crosswalks, medians, high visibility crosswalks and ‘road diets,’ which means changes to the lanes.
“Whether we're raising the crosswalk or painting crosswalks in a way that draws attention for drivers so that they can be safer when they see pedestrians. Visibility is key to safety,” Boyd said.
The project will cost several million dollars, but they don’t have a final price tag yet.
The money will come from more than $40 million of ARPA funding already set aside for road improvements.
Ward 5 Alderman Joe Vollmer said he hopes to see the public input collected at the meeting put into the final plan.
“But the fact that we have the money to do this, and Kingshighway is one of the most traveled of all our arteries in the city, St. Louis, and it parts one of the most dangerous so we need to take this into consideration and it's a very good thing what we're doing here,” Vollmer said.
Area residents said this is long overdue.
“I mean, people love to go to the park and they love to walk the streets. But when you fear for your life crossing the street, I don't think I want to do that. I feel safer driving across the street in my car, which is really silly,” Tower Grove resident Terri Philippi said.
Noah Goldman said as a cyclist he also wants to see this road get some updates.
“I think there are some sections that will lead to an improvement. But I think others are sort of insufficient. I like the median idea where they put the median in the center of the road. So you can't come across from one lane of traffic to the other. I think if they continued that along the whole corridor that would make things immensely safer,” Goldman said.
Vollmer said while all of this is great, there needs to be a shift on the drivers' end of things.
“They call them ‘stoptionals’ around the neighborhood. Because if I'm at an intersection at a red light stopped, and it turns green, I will count to three before I step out and cross the street. N nine out of 10 someone's flying through. The biggest point of all is we need more police protection. Hopefully the red light cameras and speed cameras when implemented will help cure some of that and give people some fear. Because right now there is no fear and that has to change,” Vollmer said.
They got a lot of public input Wednesday, but this is only the first of two public meetings, there will be another one at the Wohl Rec Center next Thursday, May 23 from 4-7 p.m.
After they finish collecting public input, they will get bids on the project and start construction in 2025.