https://www.reddit.com/r/StLouis/comments/1j7x7lr/the_old_the_streets_department_are_idiots_thread/
created by LeadershipMany7008 on 10/03/2025 at 12:15 UTC
30 upvotes, 6 top-level comments (showing 6)
A while back there was a thread about incomprehensible planning in city street construction. I think I have the poster child: Kingshighway resurfacing.
The city just finished over a year of construction of Kingshighway from Natural Bridge to MLK (so just south of where the guy got shot recently). Removal and replacement of the granite block curbing, grinding and regrading of the old road surface, then repaving. Basically a complete 'rehab' of the road.
LESS THAN A WEEK after they finished the paving work someone has removed the width of the far right lane on the southbound side at every manhole. That lane is now unusable as a through street as people have to stop every hundred feet to crawl over the damage.
North bound is somehow worse--the manholes are closer to the middle of the surface, so the idiots took out both lanes.
That's annoying, but even worse is what this will do long term. They'll patch those cuts, and each patch is a future pothole spawn site. You can't fix that. It's going to be increased expense, every year, for the next twenty years until they resurface the street again. To say nothing of the suck of actually driving over the street now.
Nowhere else, literally, that I've ever been has this problem. This is stupid on a level that's hard to understand, much less explain. When city workers complain about being underpaid, this is one of the reasons why--the streets in this city cost a lot more to maintain than streets with literally any other streets department. And at least those employees aren't underpaid--they shouldn't have jobs at all.
Comment by Korlyth at 10/03/2025 at 12:28 UTC*
1 upvotes, 4 direct replies
I would bet this is due to the utilities not coordinating with the streets department.
Ald Schweitzer put through a bill last session to make the utilities in the region treat the city the same as the rest of the metro... They had been cutting corners and extra fucking the roads because the city wasn't forcing them to treat it the same as say Olivette.
Comment by gorogergo at 10/03/2025 at 13:37 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Kingshighway from Natural Bridge to MLK (so just south of where the guy got shot recently).
Casually referencing violence to enhance giving directions. I feel bad that I'm so amused by this.
Comment by Hardcorelivesss at 10/03/2025 at 12:28 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
I want to understand your concept here. Do you believe that entry level workers, the ones that are paving the street, are the ones that get to plan when and what they do? That they get together around the coffee table before the shift and decide that’s since they just finished paving kingshighway, that now is the time they should go back and mess it all up? And that if they choose to make that decision, that no one above them has the ability to stop them?
Those workers are told what to do, where to do it, and when to do it. They are given those orders by the head of the street department, who isn’t under paid. She also doesn’t come out and look at her streets after a massive ice storm. The complaint that gets made is the mayor has hired inept department heads and refuses to hold them accountable when they make terrible repeated mistakes.
The folks that don’t deserve a job are the folks at the top doing the planning, not the men and women out breaking their backs in all kinds of weather to work on our streets. Do you REALLY think that after doing all of that work that it feels good to them to go back and tear it up? Are you even listening to yourself?
Comment by NuChallengerAppears at 10/03/2025 at 12:30 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
I'm confused you're blaming the streets department for ripping up the newly paved Road or something else I'm lost here.
Comment by stlguy38 at 10/03/2025 at 14:02 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Honestly I couldn't agree more. Everytime they pave a new street in the city the leave the fucking seem in the middle of the road. After 2 or 3 winters it opens up like a fucking earthquake. Then the keep patching it and it gets wider and wider. See how Kingshighway looks especially right at 40. If they did the work correctly in the first place and put the seem on the side of the road likes it's been foe the last 100yrs. The incompetence in the city streets department is maddening.
Comment by DowntownDB1226 at 10/03/2025 at 12:34 UTC
1 upvotes, 0 direct replies
Streets Department doesn’t rebuild roads. BPS does via contracted help