Local Politics at Work: Celebrating Cycling in St. Louis

24th Ward Alderman Scott Ogilvie

Around 30 people gathered this past Friday in the new bike shop Spoked in the rapidly changing Cherokee neighborhood. There were two half kegs of Civil Life beer on ice and free pizza from the wine shop next door. One wall is painted a bright, invigorating orange and the silvered tin ceiling looms overhead above bike rims hung up high. I met up with several friends and ran into others I knew from Gateway Greening and CityArchRiver who, like me, had come to bond over cycling, hear about new bike infrastructure and, yes, drink the free beer.

My mom was visiting too, and was by far the oldest person in the room. But she shared stories of biking in Boston almost 40 years ago and how she knew it was too cold to bike to work that day if her nose hairs froze on the way to the bike shed behind her apartment. Everyone was welcome.

Spoked was hosting a happy hour principally to celebrate the huge success of painting buffered bike lanes on Tower Grove Avenue ahead of the closure of the largest north-south thoroughfare in the city, which will divert traffic to Tower Grove and other detours—this effectively preserves my only route for cycling to work.

Scott Ogilvie , the alderman for the 24th ward and an avid cyclist, leapt up on the counter to welcome everyone and entreat us to be active advocates for biking in St. Louis. He introduced Matt Wyczalkowski, the man who led the fight to stripe Tower Grove before the Kingshighway closure. Matt told us how he had used Tower Grove to commute to Washington University for years and felt passionate about this short mile that is so crucial to bike commuters in the city.

Matt Wyczalkowski

When he learned that the planned bike lanes would be postponed until after the construction to allow more car traffic to use the route—essentially closing the street to all but the most diehard cyclists—he gathered a coalition of biking advocates and neighborhood associations. Together they held votes that convinced my alderman, Stephen Conway of the 8th ward, to expedite the bike lanes. It was done days later. Without Matt's intervention, Conway was prepared to let the planned striping lapse for two more years. At the behest of his constituents, persuaded by Matt, this important route is maintained.

I owe Matt two years worth of my biking commute: hundreds of hours worth of both pleasant and difficult exercise that starts and ends my working day.

Matt took questions and I asked him, "What's next for you?" His response was to ask me the same, and to point out how focused determination on a finite problem can lead to real results. His pet project was expediting bike lanes on a short stretch of his local street. If each of us in the room that day found our own tractable issue and pursued it by building coalitions of neighbors and friends, we could accomplish the same.

Rhonda Smythe

Rhonda Smythe, until recently the policy and advocacy manager at Trailnet, closed out the speeches by outlining her goal of including more people in the cycling community by reducing the barriers to biking. Outside of the spandex-wearing road cyclists, Rhonda wanted to get people who bike once a month to start biking four times a month. By creating low-speed, low-traffic routes through neighborhoods, she wanted to encourage families to bike for more of their short trips.

In my former neighborhood of Skinker-DeBaliviere, this takes the form of the Des Peres bicycle boulevard that improves through-access for cyclists over cars and has highly-visible markings to encourage more relaxed biking.

The owners of Spoked, Matt and Shane, also encouraged us to be advocates mainly by getting on our bikes and riding. Improving the visibility of the cycling community, they said, attracts the attention of neighbors and local leaders so they can internalize how vital it is for our city.

Somewhat unexpectedly, this event became the highlight of my week and a resounding lesson in the power of local politics that, I believe, lifted up everyone in attendance and left us all feeling energized and ready to act, alone and together, to make our home better.