Thoughts on St. Louis’ Proposed Riverfront Makeover, Lid Over I-70 and Mississippi River Bridge

Three separate public spending projects are being planned that have a direct affect on downtown St. Louis. These are a new riverfront streetscape design, a lid over I-70 to connect the Arch grounds to downtown and a new Mississippi bridge to relieve congestion on the Poplar Street Bridge (aka PSB). I’ve got a solution that will help solve issues with all three. But first lets look at each project.

I detailed my thoughts on the Riverfront on July 1st so I won’t elaborate here. The St. Louis Business Journal ran a story yesterday entitled, ‘Danforth Foundation to fund downtown “lid” study’, which gives good coverage of the issues around the project. No question that trying to walk from downtown to the Arch is a nightmare. Interstate I-70 and Memorial Drive are just not pedestrian or bicycle friendly.

Back on January 3rd I did a long post on the proposed river bridge. I started off my piece with:

Basically I argued against building the bridge at all. With the coming ‘peak oil crisis‘ I think traffic will be less of an issue just because we, as a society, won’t be able to afford to drive as much or transport goods via truck. But, at this point convincing people that we don’t need a bridge is like convincing Rick Santorum that two men marrying won’t hurt his marriage. So I’ll go along with the new bridge but only with a couple of caveats.

[Photo from the 8/2/05 public meeting showing the proposed “North Interchange” would slice through the existing street grid with no regard to the city. Sorry for the color of the picture.]

My main caveat is that I want the spaghetti of lanes and on/off ramps (shown above) to simply be abandoned. First, this design dates back to the day when a highway/parkway was planned on the West edge of downtown — connecting I-44 to I-70. You can see remnants of this to the West of Union Station where ramps to/from I-64 end at nothing. With development in Lafayette Square and along Washington Avenue it is clear we are not going to see such a highway. This is a good thing as such a loop would have isolated downtown from the rest of the city. But it seems the folks working on the proposed Mississippi River Bridge never got the memo that the rest of the loop highway has been abandoned.

The proposal would cut a massive tunnel extending to 14th Street – a tunnel that would divide Old North St. Louis from the rest of downtown. In 2005 we don’t need to be further dividing one part of the city from other. In fact, we need to do the opposite by reconnecting areas that have been cut off from another during the last 50 years or so.

I attended the public meeting tonight on the new bridge. While the consultants from URS Corporation were helpful none could tell me the numbers of vehicles expected across the new bridge vs. the PSB. But I did manage to get the basic concept. I-70 in Illinois would be redirected across the new bridge so that traffic on this highway can avoid the existing PSB. This includes truck traffic heading West on I-70 toward Kansas City and vice versa. I got the distinct impression this new bridge has little to do with getting workers into downtown St. Louis. No, this bridge is about making it easier for East/West traffic on I-70. This, the theory goes, will free up capacity on the PSB that downtown workers will use. Yes, some will use the new bridge to get downtown because it will be more convenient from where they are coming in Illinois. Based on the design, if you are coming any highway in Illinois and want to go West on I-70 it will make sense to use the new bridge rather than the PSB.

Again the point is we don’t need half the bridge capacity directed to 14th Street just a few blocks North of the pedestrian intersection at Washington Avenue. It is time to acknowledge we are not building a West loop around downtown so the bridge proposal needs to be rethought. That is the stage they are in now but mostly due to budget constraints. I think if they had their $1.6 billion in hand they’d be ready to destroy our street grid in the name of progress. Thankfully highway money just doesn’t appear like it used to.

I think most people will agree that we can have the new bridge to get I-70 traffic off the PSB bridge and we don’t need all the capacity going into North St. Louis. Who knows how many hundreds of millions of dollars can be saved? Regardless of money, I think we need to save our street grid for connectedness. They’ve got a few more public meetings at this stage of the game. In September we are supposed to see a presentation on a revised and cheaper bridge. If you want to share your thoughts on the new bridge you can email the project managers at info@newriverbridge.org.

But here is where this project can relate to the lid over I-70 at the Arch and the riverfront. Stick with me on this one…

I want to remove the existing I-70 between the current Poplar Street Bridge and the new bridge.

You read correct, I want to remove the existing highway between the bridges. This will collectively solve a number of issues.

Think of San Francisco’s Embarcadero shown at right. Where a double decker highway once divided downtown San Francisco from their piers is now a palm tree lined boulevard with a center island dedicated to street cars. SF’s 1989 earthquake collapsed a similar double decker highway across the bay in Oakland, killing 42 people. A section of the bay bridge collapsed. The highway in SF was also damaged. The decision to remove it became an obvious choice after much debate.

St. Louis will not have any such natural disaster to convince us to remove the highway dividing us from our river. While this seems radical at first, it is logical if you think about it. I-64 traffic will continue to use the PSB. I-70 traffic can use the new bridge. Do we really need to connect the two together downtown?

So imagine the existing I-70 removed from the PSB to the new bridge (North of Laclede’s Landing & the proposed Bottle District). In its place a wide and grand boulevard lined with trees and shops. The adjacent street grid is reconnected at every block. Pedestrians can easily cross the boulevard not only at the Arch but anywhere along the distance between the bridges. Eads Bridge and the King Bridge both land cars onto the boulevard and into then dispersed into the street grid. The money it would take to cover I-70 for 3 blocks in front of the Arch can go much further not trying to cover an interstate highway. Joining the riverfront and Laclede’s Landing to the rest of downtown will naturally draw people down Washington Avenue to the riverfront.

In one bold decision we can take back our connection to the river that shaped our city. The decision must be made now. The interchange for the new bridge is being designed now — we’ve only got one chance to get it right. Similarly, the lid project in front of the Arch could shift to a removed I-70 and connecting boulevard design before we are too far along the current path.

We are at a crossroads at this point with three major projects involving billions of dollars and affecting St. Louis for at least the next half century. Removing I-70 would, in twenty years, be seen as a pivotal decision. Will our government leaders have the courage to make such a decision?

– Steve