When the System Breaks Down

When the System Breaks Down

Ya know, I have a lot of respect for the work the City of St. Louis Citizens Service Bureau does. I helped developed the first online version of their complaint submission system; and I'm even using their data as part of the basis for my dissertation.

Anyway, back on January 25th during the morning rush hour, the traffic signal at McCausland and Southwest was on flash. This caused a substantial backup in northbound traffic coming from I-44 at Jamieson.

After I arrived at my destination, I used the online form to submit a complaint about that problem.

Today I got a message about the CSB Survey which included a text summary of the resolution to the problem. The resolution was:

"refer to modot/signals belong to them"

This is frustrating to me, because when I emailed MODOT directly, in October 2005, this was the response I got to my query about which streets in the City of St. Louis were now maintained by MODOT.

Joseph Frank, thank you for your e-mail request for an official highway map
and questions about MoDOT maintenance of City streets and/or signals.

First of all, let me say that your state highway map was mailed to you
today and South Broadway is not a state road. However, to answer your
question about Gravois & Grand, the state road is Gravois (Rte 30) and the
street, as well as the signal, are both maintained by the state.
Approximately seven(7)city streets are maintained by MoDOT at this time.

Rte H Riverview from I-270 to Hall St 3.63 miles
Hall St from Riverview to Adelaide 3.47 miles
Adelaide from Hall St to I-70 .46 mile

Rte 367 Halls Ferry Circle from 367 to Riverview .09 mile
Riverview from Halls Ferry Circle to I-70 2.10 miles

Rte 100 Manchester/Chouteau from City Lmt. to I-55 6.15 miles

Rte 115 Natural Bridge/Salisbury from City Lmt. to I-70 4.88 miles

Rte D Page/MLK/Tucker/Cole from City Lmt. to I-70 5.71 miles

Rte 180 MLK to City Lmt. to Rte D (temp. surface only) 3.8 miles

Rte 366 Watson/Chippewa from City Lmt. to Broadway 5.25 miles
(surface only *NO SIGNALS)

Hopefully this information answers your questions about state maintained
city streets. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to
contact us.

We appreciate your questions/comments and encourage you to contact MoDOT in
the future with reference to maintaining our state roads.

This was a thorough and complete response. However, it did not indicate that either McCausland nor Southwest was a state road.

So I'm wondering: Just how many signals in the city that are not on designated state routes are now controlled by MODOT?

If I had known this, perhaps I would have just used the MODOT online repair report form.