Connecting Gateway Arch Grounds, City Garden from 4th to 20th Streets

People who ride bicycles in Downtown St. Louis are getting a safer travel route between City Garden, Kiener Plaza, the Gateway Arch grounds, and other businesses and restaurants along Chestnut in the City’s first parking-protected bike lane.

The bike lane on Chestnut is the final corridor of Bike St. Louis Phase III, a partnership between the City of St. Louis and Great Rivers Greenway, which has recently upgraded and added 100 miles of on-street bike routes throughout the City of St. Louis.  Phase III is also part of an important milestone in Mayor Francis Slay’s Sustainability Action Agenda to increase the number of dedicated bicycle lanes and shared road facilities in the City by 2018.

The new parking-protected bike lane stretches along Chestnut Street between 4th and 20th Streets using parked cars and flexible posts to separate the space for people to ride bikes and the driving lane (see attached photo).  A striped buffer painted on the street also creates space between open car doors and the bike lane where people are riding.

Because the road width on Chestnut varies from block to block, planners worked to design a continuous corridor for people driving cars and people riding bikes, while offering the additional protection and comfort of the parking-protected bike lane.

The new lane design is a result of the City’s enhanced Complete Streets policy, which aims to improve planning, design, and maintenance of transportation, road, sidewalk, and trail networks.

“When Chestnut was repaved, it gave the City a new opportunity to re-imagine how best to include safety improvements for pedestrians,” Mayor Francis Slay said.

The improvements are also part of the United States Department of Transportation Mayor’s Challenge for Safer People, Safer Streets, which Mayor Slay signed onto in February, by (1) incorporating designs that are appropriate to the context of the street and its uses, and (2) taking advantage of opportunities to create and complete ped-bike networks through maintenance.

To learn more about the parking-protected bike lane on Chestnut, click here.

To see how the parking protected bike lane connects each street from 4th to 20th, click here.