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click to enlarge The intersection of Spring and Grand Avenues, where a pedestrian was struck and killed last year.

Yesterday was a doozy. It has left me wondering what, pray tell, is happening in the city of St. Louis — and pleading with our leaders to address traffic violence as the urgent crisis it has become. 

It started out bright and early biking past Froebel Elementary School on my way to work. As I approached the speed bump, crosswalk and Schoemehl pots by the school’s entrance, a driver behind me revved his engine aggressively and blazed into the oncoming traffic lane, going around me and the school at what I guessed had to be 40 or 50 miles per hour.

An older gentleman walking along the sidewalk near me shook his head. “Man,” he said. I shook my head back in sad solidarity, then pulled over to the curb to take a breath and snap a pic on my phone. The juxtaposition of the reckless speeding with the child-decorated, traffic-calming pots, clearly marked crosswalk and innocent students arriving at school hit me hard.
On my way to @StlBWorks to prep for multiple bike classes today. Here on Nebraska by the Froebel school, a driver on this residential street was so angry at me for biking he blazed around me at 50mph and went into opposing traffic as kids are arriving for school. Fix this, #STL! pic.twitter.com/iBxh92aUds— Evie Hemphill🌹 (@evhemphill) February 2, 2023

But I didn’t linger long. I needed to get to St. Louis BWorks, where I work, earlier than usual. That’s because, for the second time in the space of a week, I was determined to provide public testimony regarding Board Bill 120, a piece of legislation prompted by Mayor Tishaura Jones’ pledge this past fall to commit significant resources to creating safer streets.

“The American Rescue Plan funds remaining in the bank give us the transformational opportunity to take a citywide approach by funding much-needed measures to reduce traffic violence,” Jones wrote in the RFT in October.

Her prioritization of this issue followed public outcry after the deaths of far too many pedestrians and cyclists in recent months and years. My BWorks colleague Patrick Van Der Tuin, our longtime executive director, was one of many people who spoke out as the carnage continued.

“I’m begging the city as well as our advocates for faster solutions because I, our volunteers and staff are constantly concerned about our kids’ safety and the effect this has on growing up,” he pleaded last August.

So when Board Bill 120 was introduced, it felt like progress to me. It felt like those with power in our region were taking the epidemic of traffic violence seriously.

The introduction to the bill includes this sobering statistic: “[I]n 2020 there were 80 people who died and in 2021, 71 people who died from traffic violence [in St. Louis].” The bill goes on to outline sorely needed allocations ranging from sidewalk improvements to traffic calming. While I strongly believe such infrastructure efforts must be paired with investment in road-user education and driver accountability in order to effect real change, it felt like a pivotal step in the right direction.

But then I learned who the bill’s sponsor was: Ward 3 Alderman Brandon Bosley. This is the same alderman who testified against the adoption of an aldermanic rule that would have cut down on distracted driving by local legislators, including himself. Bosely has been shown on video driving during aldermanic sessions.

Then came the news just before Christmas that Bosley had accused a woman of carjacking him — a woman he brandished a pistol at and live streamed as she lay helpless on the ground in the snow. Bosley’s account of what had happened was a truly baffling one, leaving lots of folks scratching their heads (and the woman locked up for a week during the holidays as a result of his accusations before the circuit attorney abruptly dropped the charges against her).  RFT note: Earlier today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported that recently released court documents mention Bosley in conjunction in the bribe-taking scandal that felled then Aldermanic President Lewis Reed and aldermen John Collins-Muhammad and Jeffrey Boyd in 2022. Bosley denied any involvement.

Meanwhile, the local legislative clock ticked onward, and last week, Board Bill 120 made its way before the city’s Housing, Urban Development and Zoning Committee, or HUDZ. Lots of local citizens joined the Zoom meeting, with a solid handful raising our voices to urge our local leaders to pass this bill and do right by pedestrians and cyclists.

For Bosley, though, the game had clearly changed. The four-hour committee meeting on January 26 became confusingly focused on anything except traffic violence. Bosley indicated he planned to spend $400,000 of the funds on a splash pad for a park in his ward and also divert $6 million in funds from sidewalk allocations to various culture-focused nonprofits instead.

These cultural institutions certainly deserve funding, but diverting resources away from improving our dilapidated sidewalks harms those with mobility challenges and disabilities, not to mention those of us who are trying to push a stroller, catch a bus or walk our dog without tripping and face planting. 

So yesterday morning, when HUDZ reconvened to take the topic up again, I was fired up and ready to provide public testimony once more about the crisis facing people just trying to get around our city — and the importance of Board Bill 120 as part of the solution.

But Bosley didn’t seem to share that sense of urgency, despite being the sponsor of the bill, which got nowhere and is up for committee discussion yet again on Monday, February 13, at 9 a.m.

It’s hard to say whether this important legislation will actually make it to the full Board of Aldermen this next week. If it doesn’t, it will be many weeks before it has any possibility of movement again. Frankly, we’ve waited long enough. The children of this city, and all of us, deserve to be able to move around outdoors safely. 

But yesterday … this doozy of a day was actually just getting started. As I gladly turned my attention from exhausting Zoom hearings to cycling instruction, KSDK reported that police have surveillance video that may show Bosley striking the woman he accused of carjacking him with his SUV back in December.

Police “requested that charges be filed against Bosley for filing a false police report, assault and unlawful use of a weapon,” according to KSDK.

“A dark SUV can be seen in the upper right-hand corner, striking a person,” Christine Byers explains. “Investigators then tracked that SUV as it pulled onto this gas station lot, and the driver was Bosley.”

The irony is simply unbearable.

If you, like me, believe that St. Louis’ fledgling efforts toward making things better for vulnerable road users should not include Bosley, please add your voice to this movement. Contact your local representatives. Speak up about Board Bill 120 and the other things that need to be done to protect people on our streets. 

Evie Hemphill is the programs director for St. Louis BWorks, which provides free bike and computer courses that inspire children ages 8 to 17 to pursue their dreams, care for the world around them and explore new possibilities through experiential learning.

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