A bill to regulate golf carts on St. Louis City streets is headed to the full Board of Aldermen, even after some residents lobbied the committee to make the proposed regulations more lax.
The bill sponsored by Matt Devoti, whose Ward 5 includes the famously golf cart-friendly The Hill neighborhood, passed out of committee yesterday. It could gain approval by the full board as early as next month.
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Devoti noted that right now, golf carts aren’t legal to drive in the city (although they are tacitly accepted in numerous neighborhoods). He wants to change that, as well as add some common sense regulation
“We are legitimizing, we are legalizing golf cart use on city streets,” he said at yesterday’s hearing. He quipped prior to the meeting that he was surprised about the pushback this effort has gotten from what he jokingly called the “golf cart mafia” in this city. One meeting at a funeral home on Southwest Avenue got particularly heated. He noted that there is a golf cart parade on The Hill this weekend, and he’s gotten a lot of invitations to it sent his way.
But Devoti made it abundantly clear he likes the carts. “I am a fan,” he said, noting that anyone who lives in his neighborhood or Benton Park or St. Louis Hills knows the joys and benefits of tooling around town in a cart. “They’re easy, quick, effective ways to get around. They take motor vehicles off the road. And they’re fun, frankly.”
Devoti’s bill would require carts to have headlamps, tail lamps and brake lights, as well as a parking brake, mirrors, and a turn signal. A driver would need to have a driver’s license. Passengers who are minors need to wear a seatbelt. Carts can operate on any roadway where the speed limit is 25 mph, or less as well as some roads where the speed limit is 30 mph, but would have to stay off major arterials, which are generally set at 35 mph.
Devoti said he didn’t envision police actively looking for golf cart violations, but officers would enforce the ordinance if they encountered scofflaws. An initial violation would result in a $100 fine. A second would be $250.
West End resident Emmett Coleman, who has been driving around town in a golf cart since 2020, spoke during the public comment period, saying that he supports the bill but wants to see the seat belt and licensing requirements removed as well as a more lax approach to what roads golf carts would be allowed on. He noted that he often sees his alderwoman, Shameem Clark Hubbard, on her cart driving around his ward. (Alderwoman Laura Keys and Alderman Shane Cohn are also golf cart users.)
Ward 5 resident Adam Treaster said that he thought the proposed regulations around which streets the carts could traverse was too complex. The bill states that a cart can be on a 30 mph road if it is only two lanes, but Treaster noted that some roads expand and contract. And also it can be unclear on any given block what the speed limit is: “There are sections of Grand where it is over a mile without speed limit signs.”
Alderwoman Jami Cox Antwi said that major roads in her ward, which drivers would have to cross to get anywhere, have a speed limit above 30 mph. She also expressed concern about the cost of retrofitting golf carts with some of the safety features Devoti’s bill would require. Alderwoman Laura Keys agreed that the bill needed a little more work. She noted that in her ward, ATVs and four wheelers on city streets are a much bigger, more contentious issue.
Devoti said that his approach to the issue is informed in part by his years as a personal injury attorney. In the past year, 11 children have been severely wounded in golf cart accidents in the city, he said, according to data from just one hospital. Devoti noted that a pedestrian hit by a car going 30 mph had a 90 percent chance of dying. He conceded that was for pedestrians, not people in golf carts, but that when someone is in a golf cart, “They are on the roadway and in something that is essentially unprotected.”
He said he’d rather the bill go down than permit golf carts on roads where he doesn’t think their use is safe.
Throughout the meeting there was an undercurrent of skepticism from some alders that golf carts were a pressing issue worthy of the Board of Aldermen’s time.
“We got 99 problems and I can tell you golf carts aren’t one,” said Alderman Rasheen Aldridge. Similar to Keys, who also represents a ward that stretches into North City, Aldridge felt like ATVs were the bigger scourge.
