Public Health Community Gets It

I am at the Lake of the Ozarks for a two day meeting of grantees of the Missouri Foundation for Health. CMT received a grant from MFH to get more senior citizens on public transit. We call it the "Ten Toe Express Program." The idea of the program is that people who use public transit get more exercise since public transit riders end up walking more to get to the train and bus and to get to their final destination. (Find out more about the program at our website.)

But what is encouraging about the conference is that public health community is getting to understand this. One presentation was by Trevor Acorn of Whittaker Homes about New Town St. Charles. Public Health professionals are advocates of sustainable design. Now we can all argue about the merits of a greenfield new urbanists community when there is so much to be done in the core. But Acorn readily acknowledged the need for public transit to connects new urbanist communities.

Meanwhile, its great we have new allies in our quests to build a more sustainable and healthier communities. Kudos to the public health community. Now maybe next year, the annual MFH conference can be somewhere other than the Ozarks which is auto dependent.

Denver Transit Key to Downtown Success

I was in Denver in late July for a meeting, and was impressed with the progress Denver had made in its downtown since my last visit in 2000. A key part of the success is the light rail line that runs through downtown and which intersects with the 16th Street Bus Mall. RTD operates both the bus and light rail system as well as some regional service that serves commuters to outlying communities such as Boulder.

The C and E light rail lines serve Invesco Field, Pepsi Center and Union Station which is the west anchor of the 16th Street Mall while the D, F and H Lines loop downtown, intersecting the 16th street mall on Stout and California Streets. The buses on the 16th street mall operate about every 90 seconds to two minutes. They are hybrid buses and free.


All along with 16th street mall, people were eating out, drinking coffee and shopping. On a Friday evening I walked back to the hotel at about 10:30 p.m. and the streets were packed and the buses full. In LoDo (lower downtown) new condominium building were sprouting up along with some lofts rehab projects. As a group, the older buildings did not appear to me to be of the quality of those in St. Louis.

It is clear that the investment that Denver made in light rail and buses is paying dividends in reviving downtown. Denver has an ambitious rail expansion program called FasTracks. FasTracks is RTD's 12-year comprehensive plan to build and operate high-speed rail lines and expand and improve bus service and park-n-rides throughout the region.

FasTracks passed a Colorado voters few years back and helps serve as a reminder that Denver is moving ahead with transit investments. St. Louis needs to make a greater investment and apparently will get that opportunity in February.