St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones published an op-ed in the Riverfront Times on Wednesday promising that the city would invest $40 million in ARPA money toward safer streets.
St. Louis has a disproportionately high rate of traffic deaths, with 13 pedestrians and cyclists being killed in vehicle crashes this year. The city held a meeting this week with residents to address traffic safety on South Grand, which saw five pedestrian-vehicle crashes in three weeks this summer, three of them fatal.
"Keeping [my son] Aden safe on the road has been on my mind since he started biking to see his friends in Clayton," Mayor Jones wrote in the RFT. "The first few times he did it, I drove behind him the whole way to make sure he got there OK. It’s not just my family that feels this way; St. Louisans haven’t felt safe on our streets for years, a point tragically underscored in recent months by traffic violence on South Grand and in Kingsway West."
Jones pointed to some specific tactics to keep pedestrians and bikers safer, many of which activists have been calling for for months. Those tactics include things like raised intersections, traffic circles, and curb extensions.
Read Mayor Jones' essay here.
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