Proposed River Bridge to finish decimating Near North Side
Road happy Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) and the Illinois Department of Transportation (IDOT) have for ten years been designing a New River Bridge to cross the Mississippi at downtown. More correctly, the approach on the Missouri side will manage to destroy some great warehouses on North Broadway and sever any possible connection between Old North St. Louis and the downtown loft district. But why?
The future of cities depends on quality transportation. Statistics show the transportation network at the core of the St. Louis/Metro East-Illinois urban area will be at the point of failure within 20 years.
The Poplar Street Bridge, a focal point of interstate traffic movement through downtown St. Louis since the 1960’s, is severely over-burdened, and the forecast shows congestion on the entire core highway network will only get worse.
Of course, the forecasts predict traffic will get worse because state “transportation” (read: highway) agencies depend entirely upon traffic getting worse. How would it look if they predicted a drop in auto traffic? So, they continue promoting suburban sprawl by building highways through corn fields and then tell us we need to build yet more highways to handle the traffic. Self serving bastards.
By the year 2020, the 90-minute period of rush-hour congestion will double to three hours. Average delays will increase from 10 to 55 minutes.
Doom & gloom predictions. How about this? Gas prices rise to levels seen in Europe and commutes of more than 10-15 miles will become too costly. Economics will dictate that people live closer to work places. Urban regions will naturally become more compact once the staggering costs of sprawl are reveled at the gas pump.
In the transportation business, this is considered “traffic failure” — a highway that doesn’t function. But traffic isn’t the only consideration.
What is considered a failure in an urban city is a highway system that efficiently floods the city with cars in the morning and then as efficiently expels those same cars at 5pm. However, this very rush of cars in and out of a city a traffic success in the transportation business. Success for the traffic engineers is to move the maximum number of cars in the least amount of time. But, they make pretenses the new bridge will actually benefit the city core…
The economic future of the urban core on both sides of the river depends on the efficient movement of goods and services, and the ability of people to simply get to work. Transportation paralysis will force businesses, jobs and new growth out of the urban core. An improved highway system at the heart of the Bi-state will help to revitalize downtown St. Louis, the north riverfront and the Metro East area, notably East St. Louis and the National Stockyards redevelopment area.
Well, we’d better get started tearing out buildings and the nearly two hundred year-old street grid! After all, highways and bridges have managed to – uh, well – fuck up our city. But, this one will be different than all the others as it slices and divides the city right? These traffic engineers know more about designing urban highways…
Function, efficiency and safety are the first concerns in the design of new transportation facilities, but they are not the only ones. It is also important for a facility to complement its surroundings and reflect the character of area neighborhoods. To address this need, IDOT and MoDOT have involved citizens in developing urban design plans for the MRB improvements.
They ask what Urban Design is in relation to the bridge…
Urban design is a catch-all phrase that describes aesthetic enhancements to transportation projects. Shapes, colors and textures of bridge piers, retaining walls and other structural elements, the look of landscaping and signing – these are some of the elements of urban design.
Are they serious? They have the balls to propose yet another gash in our city and then label their lame attempts of red brick and some shrubs as “urban design.” Cutting another big hole in the city cannot be compensated with a brick & stone theme. A hole is a hole!
The estimated cost is currently around $1.6 billion dollars. I expect the actual costs will be higher – likely a safe assumption. The big picture problem is that highway departments and traffic engineers can only envision more traffic. Determining how to create a diverse transportation system isn’t parr of their mission. Metro – not MODOT or IDOT – are charged with the task of providing light rail or bus service in the St. Louis region on both sides of the river. MODOT & IDOT have no motivation to reduce auto traffic and lessen the need for greater highways & bridges. The road & bridge building industry know it is easier to get funding support for roads so they are often working in favor of roads and against mass transit. The health of the City of St. Louis is not a consideration.
The money spent over the last ten years planning this bridge should have gone to planning additional light rail lines. The $1.6 billion would go a long way to creating additional MetroLink lines on both sides of the river. Some money could be used to create streetcar lines radiating from MetroLink stops. Light rail and streetcar lines in Missouri and Illinois would encourage additional Transit Oriented Development (TOD) such as a proposed project in Belleville.
I’ve made some serious claims about how the bridge approach will create a hole and divide the city but I haven’t backed it up. Of course, as you’ve seen the bridge supporters make claims as to what the bridge will do without any backup. To support my claims, I ask you to take a look at the Missouri Side Map (1.4mb PDF).
As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words and from the map you can see how Old North St. Louis would be separated from downtown – a mistake that will hurt both areas. Downtown businesses will be stronger if they have customers coming from the North and Old North St. Louis’ biggest asset is it’s proximity to downtown.
Building more bridges & roads for cars is not what the region needs. We need to work on density to support our mass transit systems.
– Steve
As its name suggests, the Regional Plan Association, a long-established presence in the NY/NJ/CT region, takes a comprehensive view of projects and legislative proposals as they affect the economic and social well being of communities in three neighboring states.
Rather than expend the energy/money to create yet another ad-hoc committee or organization, I’m wondering if there is a similar body in St. Louis–one with credibility and a regional outlook–which can be used as the instrument through which a defense of the urban core and the street grid can be mounted.
When Robert Moses proposed a Lower Manhattan Expressway that would have decimated what is now Soho in New York . . . when the NY State Legislature was considering an expressway that would have devastated a chain of older Brooklyn neighborhoods whose renaissance was already well established . . . and now, as City Hall tries to jam a discredited $600 million taxpayer-financed stadium proposal down our throats–an outrageous waste of an important waterfront site–it’s massive citizen protest, with strong support from unimpeachable data and support as well from local political leadership, that can force a compromise between the key interest groups–highway construction, expanded mass transit, and neighborhood preservation.
I’m arguing for an overall regional solution, one which avoids taking sides but rather attempts to address the concerns of each constituency. Such a solution could establish a mechanism for addressing the needs of the region cooperatively. It could also serve as a platform for establishing standards not only for road building/transportation but for community preservation within Urban St. Louis itself.
Is there an entity, an organization that can/would be willing to assume this role?
Soulard and Lafayette Square have seen organic redevelopment despite their cutoff via double-decker highway 40. Though the new bridge won’t help Old North’s connection to downtown, it surely won’t be the main detractor to its inevitable rebirth.
Besides, despite the new bridge’s need (fewer bridge lanes today than when PSB opened) and a win-win for the City (Illinois sprawl would push our regional employment center back east from Clayton), it won’t be built anytime soon.
Why not? Because Missouri’s parochialism allows it to focus on less needed projects (past Page bridge, replaced 40 Missouri River bridge) not benefiting Illinois. If the City were in Illinois, IDOT would have had the thing under construction by now. But seeing it as a bi-state project, we now have to hope for “pork” in the next transportation bill. Maybe the bridge be thought of as a “homeland security” project.
[I still fail to see any need for the bridge. If you build more lanes of road you simply increase auto use and you get congestion again. Bridge building is not city building. As a former resident of Old North I can tell you the relationship to downtown is its best asset. Put a big & noisy hole in the ground between Old North & downtown and you might as well write it off permanently. – Steve]
As a resident of Old North, I am opposed to the bridge, but as someone whom loves public transportation and would like to see more of it, I am really against such an idea. I think the goal should be to make cars less convenient and walking/public transportation more so.
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