Editor's note: a version of this article originally appeared on Notes from the Sprawl and is republished with permission.
On the final Saturday of 2024, I took a bus to Ted Drewes Frozen Custard on Chippewa Street in the St. Louis Hills neighborhood. But I wasn't going there, as I had hundreds of times before, to relish its famous concretes or sundaes.
This stretch of Chippewa, part of the historic Route 66 that enshrines an image of fast-paced freedom through automobility, is a current flash point in the negotiations between the public — many of whom do not own cars and rely on public transit, biking, and walking —and the powers who control how our streets are designed.
I stepped off the #11 Metrobus at Watson Road as the sky darkened and walked another four blocks on the south side of historic Route 66. It was unnerving and typical. On the way, I traversed five unmarked crosswalks, two of them slip-lanes that allow drivers to turn while maintaining high speeds, and twelve driveway entrances to parking lots attached to an auto shop, fast food chains, drive-through coffee chains, banks, doctors' offices, and other varieties of business, keeping my head swiveling as drivers sped by, or waited for their chance to.
This is a dense stretch of commerce where the imagined, idealized customer is an automobile owner/driver who can, in many cases, order, pay, and consume all from the comforts of their vehicle.
Route 366 is a "legacy highway" that includes this stretch of Chippewa at the western edge of St. Louis City, which extends to the Interstate 44-Interstate 270 interchange in St. Louis County. It shares a key design intention with other Missouri Department of Transportation-maintained highways in the city, like Natural Bridge Road (Route 115) and Gravois Road (Route 30): move a high volume of cars quickly, even through neighborhoods with significant bike and pedestrian traffic and public transit ridership.
For anyone moving outside of a car along Chippewa, this design intention is, at best, stressful and annoying. But at worst, it's dangerous, and it's resulted in crashes and injuries for at least nine different people attempting to enjoy a trip to Ted Drewes since spring 2022.
Two of these individuals, 77-year-old Edward Walter and 17-year-old Matthew Nikolai, were killed. Walter and Nikolai were drivers who parked on the north side of Chippewa Street and were crossing to get to Ted Drewes. The road designed to serve them as drivers is the same road that facilitated their deaths as pedestrians. [Editor's note: another woman was struck in December 2023, and six more were hospitalized in December 2024.)
Many are quick to blame reckless drivers as a class of people who just don’t know how to follow rules. But we now have entire books that reveal the role of traffic engineers, automobile magnates, and other authority figures in creating rules that embolden aggressive driving.
It matters that one can zoom on the five-lane Chippewa straightaway outside of Ted Drewes, where swerving can easily result in injury or death. At 30 miles per hour, a driver's stopping sight distance is around 200 feet, whereas at 55 it’s around 500 feet. Five percent of pedestrians are fatally injured by a vehicle going 20 mph; that likelihood sky rockets to 85 percent when the vehicle is traveling at 40 mph. With a nearby posted speed limit of 35 mph, I think it’s safe to assume that the average driver is passing the custard stand going around 40 mph.
It matters that both Walter and Nikolai were struck by drivers in super-sized vehicles that are more likely to kill pedestrians. The hit-and-run driver who killed Nikolai was driving a 2006 Ford F-150; that truck was the best-selling car in the United States in 2023 and weighs well over 4,000 pounds.
The people whose lives were needlessly lost or irrevocably changed are the reason I went to Ted Drewes that day. I joined a small, quickly-organized protest prompted by the most recent incident of traffic violence there.
Just a few days before Christmas, a 19-year-old swerved into the parking lot, where he injured six people. According to news reports, he swerved to avoid something in the road.
Rorke Chhouk, one of the organizers of the protest, handed out sheets that demanded action from alderpeople and Mayor Tishaura Jones and encouraged data-driven Vision Zero policies that will strategically eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries. People held signs that read, “Protect Pedestrians Now,” “2023: 225 People Injured 8 People Killed from unsafe streets and drivers,” and “Traffic Violence is Preventable.”
Ironically, there is an abundance of anti-car infrastructure along this stretch of Chippewa; it just doesn’t follow an overarching philosophy that puts peoples’ safety first.
One argument on the protest organizers’ handout centers on a fire hydrant located across from Ted Drewes. The hydrant, which had suffered from multiple collisions, was restored and protected with a bollard that went up quickly in October 2024. Meanwhile, zero infrastructure to protect pedestrians or slow cars down has been installed after years of calls from leaders, the public, and Ted Drewes employees to do so.
“Inexpensive and effective solutions that can be done in one day include speed humps," the pamphlet read. "the [hydrant] bollard also took one day.”
A shortage of ward capital funds, trouble finding the right contractors, and long lead times for signal equipment have all been given by city officials as reasons the traffic calming build-out along Chippewa has been pushed to January-March 2025. The formation of the city’s new Department of Transportation in 2029 should, in theory, streamline and expedite projects that protect pedestrian traffic.
But the fact that it takes nearly three years to do anything to protect customers of one of St. Louis’ most iconic eateries doesn’t bode well for the people who walk, cycle, or take the bus for daily needs. It’s clear that putting a pedestrian beacon on every block that needs it is an impracticality for the city; all the more reason a quick-build task force that installs temporary infrastructure—even construction cones—could go a long way to protect people and establish a commitment of care.
But I worry that once we establish safe pedestrian passage for Ted Drewes customers, we won’t take bolder stances towards decreasing car-centricity writ large. I worry that we will continue to play whack-a-mole at high-crash sites that kill and maim people, without committing to changing the system that invented Route 66 in the first place.
Motonormativity is the unconscious bias that favors mobility through cars despite its traceable patterns of harm. Exacerbated by regional political fragmentations, it deems commonsense solutions non-starters, like bus rapid transit, cycle infrastructure on commercial thoroughfares, bans on the largest, deadliest vehicles, and car-free boulevards. Yet these are the elements that would fulfill promises of safety.
Historic Route 66 is about to turn 100 years old. To celebrate, we should pledge road designs and systems of mobility that increase safety because people are motivated to drive less. Because they are excited to walk to destinations in their neighborhood, or to get on the bus or on the bike to travel further from home.
One thing is clear: We’re not likely to find that motivation from The Missouri Department of Transportation. Local advocate Michael Carmody told KSDK in August 2022 that he was “shocked” that MoDOT continued to ignore safety issues outside of Ted Drewes. Their response? “MoDOT’s responsibilities on Chippewa are limited to maintaining the driving surface.”
Another stretch of Route 366 west of the city limits is currently getting ADA sidewalk improvements, including two rapid flashing beacons for pedestrian crossings, which is great. But in response to the question of whether bike facilities would be included in this project, MoDOT explained that “since [automobile] traffic volumes along Watson Road along this stretch are fairly high, Watson will remain signed to remind drivers to share the road with cyclists.”
We cannot continue to build for cars and expect different outcomes. I’m a fairly intrepid urban cyclist, but if I lived on Watson Road, there’s no way I’d compete with SUV drivers on a bike for a cup of ice cream.
We can’t speed hump our way out of traffic violence. Perhaps I’m emboldened to say so this week after watching videos of bulldozers clearing gridlocked cars abandoned by evacuees of the Palisades Fire in Los Angeles so that emergency vehicles can pass through. We continue to build the infrastructure of our own demise.
As we stood on the death strip affirming pedestrians’ rights to mobility and safety, we faced the aggression of men in their big automobiles. One pick-up driver shouted, “Get a hobby, you stupid f*cks!” Another, “Stop jay-walking!” An older man in an SUV simply examined us sternly before flipping us the bird.
I’m not sure they knew why we were there; perhaps they thought we were against Ted Drewes instead of standing in solidarity with its victimized customers. Regardless, it felt like an example of embodied, militant motonormativity that treats pedestrians as disposable.
Others stopped, including a woman who pulled over in her car to speak with Chhouk. She knew the family of Matthew Nikolai and expressed a desire to help achieve safety. Another passed by on the sidewalk, expressing support for traffic calming infrastructure.
"It can't wait any longer," he said.
