County Gov Bullies Missouri Town Into Abandoning a Safer Main Street

This is, frankly, one of the most unbelievable scenarios we have seen in many years of advocacy for better communities for walking and bicycling. The city, which is close to the situation and knows its own needs, had gone through a detailed planning process for improving its main street. The process included public meetings, interviews, and many other forms of public outreach to find out what O'Fallon citizens and businesses really want and need from the project.

After all of that, the County -- without doing any similar research or public outreach -- stepped in and, attempting to exercise bald political power, issued a threat: If the city goes through with its citizen-supported plan, the County will withhold $2.5 million in funding from the city.

This is not the first time St. Charles County has used a similar threat to derail a city's work to make its city center more walkable and bikeable. St. Charles County recently pressured the City of St. Charles to remove planned bike lanes from a project.

It is unfortunate that St. Charles County is taking these steps backward at this important time. Because cities around Missouri, around the United States, and around the world are taking dramatic steps to improve their city centers for bicycling and walking.

And this is not just an issue about who is going to prevail in a political tug of war. The reason advocates and community members are so passionate about implementing road diets in the streets that run through the hearts of their communities is that road diets save lives.