Traffic onslaught in Richmond Heights
The closure of Big Bend Boulevard at Highway 40 (Interstate 64) is creating some dangerous traffic conditions along residential streets in Richmond Heights. Parked cars are getting sideswiped. Residents can’t get out of their driveways.
According to the Missouri Department of Transportation, many motorists are using narrow neighborhood streets as north-south alternatives during their morning and evening commutes. Instead, the department suggests that drivers use Brentwood Boulevard, McCausland Avenue and Interstate 170 to Eager/Hanley Road instead.
If you do choose to use neighborhood streets in Richmond Heights, the department in a press release today advised drivers to slow down, yield to pedestrians and cars pulling out of driveways, to be mindful of children in the area, and to be courteous and patient. Traffic should improve once the Hanley Road overpass reopens later this summer. Still no word on when that will be, except sometime before the end of August. Big Bend is scheduled to reopen Dec. 1.
Duh — well, what did they expect.
Umm… maybe they should have waited until Hanley was open to close Big Bend!
Be courteous! Something that is hardly found in Saint Louie Misery!
Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you… absolutely correct.
I was taking Boland to and from work and never saw any out of hand driving.Its sad how they cater to the residents of the upper class neighborhoods if this was a diffeerent neighborhood they would just say deal with it but instead they shut down the streets and turn them into oneway streets,I bet that changes once Hanley and or Big Bend open back up.
So this is “our” fault, the people FORCED to find viable options due to decisions made by MoDOT, Gateway, Richmond Heights and St. County. Whose idea was it to shutdown 2 of the 4 main north-south access points at the same time? All the side street overpasses were completed during the Western Closure. Why wasn’t Big Bend done instead to avoid this situation?
Whose idea was it to improve the Hanley-Eager interchange one year into the project? St. Louis County finally got off their duff after knowing about this project for years and decided to do something about Hanley-Eager which ultimately lead to this situation by delaying the Hanley bridge work.
And let’s not let Richmond Heights of the hook, poor abused Richmond Heights. I can’t wait to hear the outrage of the west county folk as they head downtown for baseball, hockey, football, etc…when they find out that the traffic jams that started at 170 still exist because Richmond Heights blocked widening 64 to 4 lanes for their 1.5 miles of the project. 90% of St. Louisians believe that this shutdown “fixed” that issue. Nope. Thanks your mistreated friends in Richmond Heights. Galleria tax revenue is falling and they can’t afford to lose one single property tax paying home.
So instead of lambasting the people who now spend an extra 20 to 30 minutes trying to get to and from work, why doesn’t someone come up with a plan to move the traffic. May Richmond Heights police could get out of their cars and direct traffic or MoDOT could actually engineer a solution verses playing the same old record about not driving during peak hours and find alternate routes… At least it will all be over soon and hopefully MoDOT can go help some other deserving community. Maybe Richmond Heights.
“Parked cars getting side-swiped” - that’s not normal traffic overflow, that’s someone fleeing from something, a punk speeding and losing control or just an absolute terrible driver! If this is happening regularly (which would be very odd), the Richmond Heights police need to do some extra patrolling! Or at a minimum, the Neighborhood Watch group needs to have someone sitting on these streets to catch the plate numbers of these drivers.
All that we residents of these *residential* streets in Richmond Heights are asking is for some courtesy from our guests, who have been forced onto our otherwise friendly streets. Slow down. Turn down your music so it is not shaking our homes. We’ve all been inconvenienced by MO-DOT choosing to close Big Bend while Hanley is down as well. Please just be courteous and follow the rules of the road. Most of these residential streets have a 15 or 20 mph speed limit. And U-turns are still illegal. We welcome you. Just please respect that people, and lots of children, live on these streets.
One other thing I forgot to mention…nice reporting by the Post. Elisa must be commended for copying the news breif from Gateway/MoDOT and posting it under her by-line. I’m sure she added a word or two. I smell Pulitzer! Typical of the Post. Most of the stories come from the NY Times or Associated Press. So I’m not surprised there isn’t anyone left at the Post to “report” on the local news. That’s why I stopped getting the paper and only grudingly go to this site for the headlines and the three sentences that have any information in them. Oh yeah and the sports section. At least Bernie does his on stuff.
I agree - they could have waited to close Big Bend until Hanley reopened but God forbid they don’t get their big bonus to finish by year end. Greed - not so good.