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Old 07-30-2012, 01:43 PM
 
Location: Pueblo, CO
466 posts, read 1,057,693 times
Reputation: 284

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I have lived in quite a few big cities in the US and I have never encountered that many stop signs like I have since we moved to St. Louis! Why does the St. Louis metroplex has so many stop signs in the neighborhoods?
I mean it is ridiculous, I even saw a stop sign at a parking garage, or a parking lot, and I mean not in the parking garage or the parking lot, but in front of it on the street!!!!
Did they had a real good bargain at the stop sign factory and thought, wow, that is cheap, let's get a couple of thousand and plant them all over the metroplex, so drivers have to stop every few yards, yeah, that is fun.
So, who knows the answer? Who find it as annoying as I do? Or are there people who think it is a good system?
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Old 07-30-2012, 02:20 PM
 
Location: South St Louis
4,356 posts, read 4,517,882 times
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I once read that St. Louis has the greatest number of stop signs per capita of any US city. Not sure if that is accurate or not, but it does support your observation.
As to why, I can only offer a few theories.
One: Residents in a particular area complain to their alderman about motorists speeding through a residential neighborhood, endangering children and pedestrians. In response, the alderman requests that additional stop signs are erected to slow the traffic flow.
Two: Unlike some larger US cities that have a major thoroughfare every 5 blocks (Vegas, for example), the city of St. Louis consists of large grids of narrow terciary streets that aren't frequently crossed by a main artery. With the lack of a major thoroughfare taking precedence, the result is a great number of four-way intersections with stop signs within each street grid.
Three: Any area near a school or church is automatically going to have more stop signs, plain and simple. So the sections of St. Louis that contain the churches and schools will be more heavily signed than, say, an industrial area.
In sum: all of St. Louis does NOT contain an overabundance of stop signs. After you live here long enough, you learn which routes to take that avoid having to make multiple stops.
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Old 07-30-2012, 03:04 PM
 
Location: Pueblo, CO
466 posts, read 1,057,693 times
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I don't know, I lived in the Shaw neighborhood for 6 months, till my landlord raised the rent by 18% (no improvement made, though) and even a street like Shaw boulevard had every 2 or 3 blocks stop signs in stead making it a thoroughfare street. And why don't they make proper crossroads or even stop lights around schools instead of lots of stop signs. And like I said, I saw quite a few stop signs that didn't make any sense at all, like on the street in front of a parking garage (that's near Trader Joe's at Brentwood Promenade) or at a parking lot, even if that is a parking lot that belongs to a hospital. The street should be automatic be a thoroughfare here!
And I think 30 miles per hour through a street like Shaw Blvd. isn't speeding through, but I guess there are a lot of people that do complain about motorists in their neighborhood.
And I think most of St. Louis does contain an overabundance of stop signs. I drive more on streets than on the freeway and I see them all over. We live now in St. John (North County) and it doesn't matter in which direction I go, I see an overabundance of stop signs. Tell me a neighborhood that doesn't have them, please.
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Old 07-30-2012, 05:08 PM
 
15,546 posts, read 11,912,248 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by kagicre View Post
even a street like Shaw boulevard had every 2 or 3 blocks stop signs in stead making it a thoroughfare street.
A street like Shaw blvd? Its a two lane road that runs through a neighborhood, of course they're going to try and keep cars from driving too fast. I could understand if Kingshighway had stop signs every few blocks and you were complaining about that, but a neighborhood street? Isn't that common anywhere in America? I know anywhere I've lived, residential streets usually have stop signs every few blocks.

Quote:
Originally Posted by kagicre View Post
And like I said, I saw quite a few stop signs that didn't make any sense at all, like on the street in front of a parking garage (that's near Trader Joe's at Brentwood Promenade)
Are you talking about the parking garage over by Metrolink? If so, have you ever parked in there? So many people use that street as a cut through, that without the stop sign you would have a hard time getting out of the parking garage. It helps a lot with the flow of traffic.
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Old 07-31-2012, 08:08 AM
 
1,150 posts, read 1,636,860 times
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That's why St. Louisans don't stop at stop signs...
http://stl-style.com/all-styles/tees/roll-
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Old 07-31-2012, 08:48 AM
 
Location: Pueblo, CO
466 posts, read 1,057,693 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sundaydrive00 View Post
A street like Shaw blvd? Its a two lane road that runs through a neighborhood, of course they're going to try and keep cars from driving too fast. I could understand if Kingshighway had stop signs every few blocks and you were complaining about that, but a neighborhood street? Isn't that common anywhere in America? I know anywhere I've lived, residential streets usually have stop signs every few blocks.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sundaydrive00 View Post

No, it is not common every where in the US. Like I said, I have never lived in a city with that many stop signs, and I lived in Huntington Beach, CA, Portland, OR and Tulsa, OK and driven through Dallas, Fort Worth, Denver and some other big cities and never encountered anything like St. Louis.


Are you talking about the parking garage over by Metrolink? If so, have you ever parked in there? So many people use that street as a cut through, that without the stop sign you would have a hard time getting out of the parking garage. It helps a lot with the flow of traffic.


Every time I pass the parking garage I never see a car coming out of it, but I am not going there around rush hour.
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Old 08-03-2012, 07:20 AM
 
1,783 posts, read 3,869,197 times
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I disagree. St. Louis does stop signs right and I felt wayyyy safer driving, biking, and being a pedestrian there than I do most places. The problem with two way stops is that cars insist on parking all the way to the stop sign on the street with no stop signs, effectively blocking your field of vision of oncoming cars until you are in the middle of the intersection. Besides, smart drivers slow down approaching all intersections anyway, so putting up a stop sign there isn't that big of a deal.

Safety > Getting to your destination just a little earlier
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Old 08-03-2012, 07:42 AM
 
Location: Pueblo, CO
466 posts, read 1,057,693 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by BoomBoxing View Post
I disagree. St. Louis does stop signs right and I felt wayyyy safer driving, biking, and being a pedestrian there than I do most places. The problem with two way stops is that cars insist on parking all the way to the stop sign on the street with no stop signs, effectively blocking your field of vision of oncoming cars until you are in the middle of the intersection. Besides, smart drivers slow down approaching all intersections anyway, so putting up a stop sign there isn't that big of a deal.

Safety > Getting to your destination just a little earlier
Stop sign isn't slowing down at an intersection, stop sign means make a full stop. And if you feel way safer driving on streets with lot of stop signs, good for you. I feel just annoyed lots of times and not really safer, but that is more about the strange behavior of pedestrian - jaywalking, standing with a bunch of kid on the middle of the street (in the yellow box for drivers), I see that far to often, and I have encountered that someone on my left makes a sudden turn in front of me into a right hand turn lane (that was at a stop light). They said a few months ago on the news that in some statistic St. Louis drivers are the worst. I wouldn't say that though. But anyway, if some people like you feel more safe having all the stop signs than that may be the reason that St. Louis has so many.
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Old 08-06-2012, 06:34 AM
 
101 posts, read 321,439 times
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The post by 1greatcity had the most accurate answer from what I remember, residents would complain to their alderman and he'd get the stop sign installed. Basically shows he/she was doing their job and paying attention to his constituency. Some of the streets were like Macklind Ave, sort of a unofficial main artery, through south St. Louis, plenty of 4 way stop sign. If I remember correctly Arsenal street sort of gets that way when you get closer to the river.

A lot of secondary streets have these at almost every intersection, plays hell with brakes and gas mileage. Lead to the term "St. Louis Rolling Stop" if you did that in any other city and a cop stopped you for it, first question out of his mouth was "are you from St. Louis?"

Back when most cars were "three on the tree" manual shift transmissions, common practice was to only gear down to second and sort of 'roll through' the stop after checking for cross traffic, kids and such.

Another reason for bad driving in St. Louis is the streets are sometimes marked so bizarrely, you're going along in what's normally a traffic lane that with no warning turns into a left turn lane....

Back in the 70's or so, someone went around and rotated the street signs, so that they were showing the wrong street. Say you were on Kingshighway, and you passed cross street Delor, the sign for K'sway woudl read Delor and Delor would read "Kingshighway" Apparently became known nation wide, even a joke on a couple of sitcoms.

Ah, the old days.
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Old 08-06-2012, 08:03 AM
 
Location: Tower Grove East, St. Louis, MO
12,063 posts, read 31,467,731 times
Reputation: 3798
I was thinking about this and I don't really think St. Louis has any more stop signs than Chicago. I do think there seem to be fewer in Kansas City, but that is a product of the parks and boulevards concept around which KC is designed.
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