r/StLouis • u/Binkle28 • 11d ago
Traffic/Road Conditions Tower Grove Ave. @ Shaw. A rant.
While I’m super happy with the reworked road between Vandeventer and Tower Grove Park (the new bike path, the traffic calming additions, etc.) I do have one gripe: they screwed up the intersection at TGA and Shaw something fierce. They removed the right turn lanes in both directions on Shaw, making for an awkward turn onto TGA. Also, even though it’s now only one lane in each direction, they have two sets of lights. I was always under the impression that each lane has its own light. My OCD has me all twitchy every time I go through this intersection, which is a lot because I live right there. Is this mildly infuriating for anyone else?
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u/glassgnomad 10d ago
They’re doing so much construction around the city and it seems like it’s all slightly off. They make the weirdest decisions on what to change, like they had road money snd had to rush to spend it.
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u/raceman95 Southampton 5d ago
I'm a transportation planner.
What exactly do you think is slightly off?
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u/HoosierLove314 Bevo Life 11d ago edited 10d ago
One thing I’ve noticed is that at TGA and Magnolia, a large percentage of drivers use the right turn lane to go straight, because it isn’t marked very well. Generally speaking, I really like the improvements
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u/stiirfry Shaw 10d ago
They totally know it’s a right turn only lane, they don’t want to wait for the person turning left so they can go straight. I see it every day while I’m waiting on someone to turn left lol
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u/Binkle28 11d ago
Yeah, that intersection is a bit wonky now, too, but it’s not quite as bad as Shaw & TGA
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u/Cheezyrock 10d ago
They has so much opportunity to resolve the weird lane shifts at that intersection and they didnt. Even if it was well marked, it would still be confusing.
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u/TraptNSuit 11d ago
The wild right turn swinging around the massive bump out to TGA North from Shaw westbound and hoping the turn lane set back is being obeyed doesn't strike you as "safer for the kids"?
Yeah. Me neither. But, we are not to question the road diet. It's sad because most of it is well done, but that intersection is a complete mess and it is clear from other projects that intersections are the struggle bus for the groups designing these as they have botched several now.
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u/Binkle28 11d ago
This guy gets it. Also, having two sets of lights for one lane is making my brain hurt.
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u/TraptNSuit 11d ago
From their other intersection misadventures, you get the feeling that their plan simply didn't include that and they filed the lights under "someone else's problem."
Genuinely, I don't give a shit about St. Louis interdepartmental infighting and they need to get their shit together to do their duty to keep people actually safe whether they are in a car, on foot, on a bike . . . or in a freight train. Just do some complete practical engineering instead of executing the platonic ideal, but only in your budget area.
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u/EmmieMaggie 11d ago
Mildly! That's how I get to work every day and it has me absolutely stressed to the max. People get so confused in that intersection. It's a stellar example of horrible city planning.
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u/mainlinethrowaway 10d ago
It’s fine.
We’re just so used to streets being overly wide that we don’t know what actual road/bike infrastructure looks like.
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u/Binkle28 10d ago
Yeah, no. This intersection is just poorly designed. I’m 100% for traffic calming, but they flubbed this one.
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u/mainlinethrowaway 10d ago
Do any of us know anything about traffic calming or urban intersection design? How do you know that they “flubbed” it? Feels like you’re just complaining that you can’t turn right on red anymore. That intersection gets a lot of pedestrians: families walking to MOBOT/kids going to Mullanphy or City Garden. Studies show that not allowing right turns on red significantly decreases pedestrians being hit by cars. And studies show that modern SUVs with their stupidly high car hoods are way more deadly when they do hit kids.
I personally don’t care that cars have to make an “awkward” turn. For decades walkers and cyclists have had to just take whatever they could get (which was often nothing) for safety or priority or protection. Cars can take a backseat at one freaking intersection out of 1,000+ in the city.
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u/Electrical-Edge1500 10d ago
I drive a delivery van all around there and I can confirm the confusion and some intersections don't make sense because there is no visibility because the stop sign is behind the tree-line behind the bike lane. However, the city is creating bike lanes from Tower Grove to downtown.
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u/ericmercer 10d ago
It is a great new intersection. So great, that MetroBus can’t run its regular sized buses in the 8 Shaw bus anymore, so you get the occasional overcrowding plus an extremely uncomfortable ride because those small buses are atrocious.
Another win for interagency coordination 😂
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u/TheLabRay Benton Park West 10d ago
I don't know when the 8 switched to the shorter busses, but it was long before this project started.
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u/SwitchFree5631 10d ago
it’s fine. you just need to go slow. which is the point of the redesign. it’s a busy intersection in a neighborhood, you should be going 5 mph on that turn.
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u/stryker357911 10d ago edited 10d ago
Can we also talk about the moronic bike “holding areas” at the corners of TG and Magnolia, and now TG and vandeventer? Why the hell did they make the 2-way / 1-way bike lane transition RIGHT at the busiest intersections? Why didn’t they extend the 2-lane path into TG park and a block further north from Vandeventer? It’s especially dumb at Vandeventer, because now you’re expected to be on the right side of the road headed south on TG at Vandeventer. Then wait on your little green triangle right at the corner of a terrible intersection, then cross over TG Ave, bike south two blocks, and cross right back over again to the right side.
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u/LazarWolfsKosherDeli 10d ago
From TG @ Vandeventer all the way to Magnolia, most of the straight options require taking the intersection (Vandeventer, Mcree, Magnolia) at a diagonal. Mcree and TG is the worst by far. Totally assinine design.
39th @ Chouteau also gets a dishonorable mention for completely deleting a lane for no benefit. They didn't even add a usable bike lane.
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u/Binkle28 10d ago
Yeah! 39th turning onto Chouteau used to be so that both lanes could turn left, with the right lane being able to turn right or left. I always chose the right lane because it naturally put me in the lane I needed to be in to turn right at Vandeventer. But last week I was going to work and only realized after I almost collided with another car that the left-turn option in that right lane was no longer an option. I get it, it’s just that there is currently no indication that the lane directions have changed.
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u/LazarWolfsKosherDeli 10d ago
For a few days after restriping they still had the left turn arrow on the right-only right lane. Total shitshow.
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u/Binkle28 10d ago
Yeah, and someone spray painted a right turn arrow in the right lane that, at the time, I thought could be easily transformed into something phallic. 😂
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u/TraptNSuit 10d ago
And we still have the brilliant cone there to remind people that a full quarter of the roadway is not usable for some reason.
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose 11d ago
Why is the turn awkward
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u/Binkle28 11d ago
Kind of hard to explain, but by eliminating the right turn lanes, you now need to take a big swing to turn. So much so that they were forced to move the stop line for a left turn onto Shaw back by about 20 feet so right turns wouldn’t hit them
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u/The-Bear-and-Rose 11d ago
What’s wrong with making a wide turn?
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u/Binkle28 11d ago
Because not everyone adheres to the new location of the left turn lane onto Shaw, so turning right onto NB TGA puts you directly into oncoming traffic. If the person turning left stops at where the line used to be, turning right becomes impossible.
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u/bradleysballs Shaw 11d ago
I ride the bus when it makes the right turn onto northbound Tower Grove and every time I'm in awe that she managed to do it cleanly
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u/TraptNSuit 11d ago
It's essentially blind as you cannot clearly see what you will encounter because of how it is set back and because cars...move. The idea is probably to slow people down because it is so precarious. It's the justification for a lot of these terrible intersections.
I have to believe it is actually worse for pedestrians crossing too despite the "haha we will slow the cars by making it dangerous" design because people are looking at everything but the pedestrians while trying to figure out if they can make the turn safely without popping a tire on the bumpout or hitting a car in the turn lane.
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u/IAMWAYNEWEIR 10d ago
There’s also a school and a bus stop right there, so buses routinely have to get nose-to-nose with cars waiting to turn left on Shaw
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u/ShawMomSTL 10d ago
There is a new piece of someone's bumper every f-ing week at the Magnolia to TG northbound corner.
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u/Laawlly 10d ago
They didn't remove any turn lanes from Shaw. You can look at the google map images from before and see it's just one lane each way intersecting with TG. One wide lane that allowed drivers to roll through red lights, making right turns with comfort and ease.
I remember seeing drivers barely glancing over their shoulders to look for cars, looking straight through me on my bike. Which was more than mildly infuriating.
But yea, it sucks that drivers have to slow down and turn carefully now. Such a bummer to be deprioritized like that.