St. Louis’ I-64 (Highway 40 to natives) To Get $535 Million Makeover
If you’ve ever driven on I-64 in St. Louis and St. Louis County you know the problems – short sight lines, conflicting on and off ramps, and traffic congestion. Soon that will all begin to change. Last week the Missouri Highway Commission approved the massive rebuilding project.
From the Post-Dispatch:
The unanimous vote was all the Missouri Department of Transportation needed to move forward with rebuilding 12 miles of Highway 40 (Interstate 64), from Sarah Street in St. Louis to Spoede Road in west St. Louis County. A contractor should be selected next September so construction can start in early 2007.
The $535 million effort is to be done by October 2010, according to the department. The work will be done “unreasonably fast,” said Dave Nichols, the department’s director of program delivery. The department is accelerating the work by allowing one contract team to do the design and construction in parallel, rather than in succession, trimming the construction time by as many as nine years.
The state actually has a really good website explaining the new project. From the site:
The design of the highway is equally out of date — engineers call it “functionally obsolete”. Entrance and exit ramps are short and loop ramps are tight. Hills along the roadway decrease sight distances and increase stopping distances, especially in rain or snow. This highway, after all, was originally designed to handle traffic at 45 miles per hour!
Forty-five miles per hour? That is about 10mph more than I can do in rush hour! The real culprit is volume. When originally built it was the almost quaint roadway through the country side of St. Louis County. But as split-level ranches and McMansions have littered the once attractive terrain the highway has become filled with more traffic than it can handle. In true sprawl fashion, this is the only East-West route. Sure, some roads like Manchester can take you to the same places but they are equally congested with soccer moms taking the minivan from big boxes to the fast food drive thru.
If you think traffic is bad now just imagine the four years or so they’ll be rebuilding the highway. I’m optimistic that we’ll see more and more people moving to the city and inner ring suburbs to avoid the ordeal. The pessimist in me thinks many company executives will relocate their offices to the sterile mirrored glass office parks West of I-270.
Some have suggested a mass transit right-of-way should be left down the center of the highway heading West from Hanley. This would permit a transfer station with the new Cross-County MetroLink line rescheduled to open next year. Instead of using space for future mass transit an additional travel lane will be added in each direction.
Let us consider the options.
If we rebuild the highway as planned we are forever condemning folks in far West St. Louis County to private cars and possibly bus service. Buses currently run out there but it is not very efficient. Perhaps as gas prices increase we’ll see more riders on those lines — not just housekeeping staff and fast-food workers. But what if we did leave a right-of-way from Hanley to Spoede where this project ends? This still leaves another 12-15 miles of existing highway before you get to Chesterfield. Will we, as a region, ever have the funds to retrofit all that highway for mass transit? Even if we do provide the right-of-way and build a commuter line running from Hanley to Chesterfield I have to wonder how efficient it will be. It is not like Chesterfield has a downtown or anything. People will still end up driving from their tract houses on the cul-de-sac street to reach the nearest transit station.
The transportation prospects for our region as a whole are not very good. The peak oil issue will come while I-64 is being rebuilt. Gas prices will exceed $5 per gallon while we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a new highway. The highway will be obsolete from a sustainable perspective before it is even complete. Other regions such as Chicago have commuter rail lines reaching far into their sprawl. These regions will be better able to compete in the post cheap oil world.
When Trader Joe’s opens a city location I’ll have no reason to drive out I-64. That will be a very happy day.
– Steve
We can’t build a 5 mile extension of Metrolink without years of waste, pain, and futility. How would we ever build a 10-12 mile stretch into the county?
I’ve never understood the winding road cul-du-sac filled layout of neighborhoods past 270. Though I’ll give Creve Couer some credit.
I see no reason why we should even consider concerning ourselves with mass transit past the North Lindbergh/Kirkwood/South Lindbergh ring. The only reasonable exception I could see would be extensions into St. Charles (the city not the whole county) and possbily Arnold/Fenton just as a way to help people get to the airport. However those are projects they should pay for if they want them so badly.
East-West routes are not the problem in the area. They are seen that way because the city and the central-west suburbs are all most people see when looking at this area.
I can get from downtown to I-270 in less than 30 minutes on good days by any one of five routes. (64, 44, Watson, Manchester, Gravois) But if I want to get from 55 and I-270 in the south to UMSL, (as many more people do than most realize) it takes 45-60 minutes.
The poorer and less white neighborhoods in the area are south of Gravois and north of Delmar. They are the ones who most ‘need’ public transport. And yet they are the least likely to get it.
Residents of the ‘central corridor’ west of I-270 have made their bed. They should be allowed to lie in it. I can see leaving space for Metrolink from Sarah to Brentwood but I don’t see any need for it to go any further. Even if such a need arises in the future, there are plenty of other ways to get it there.
However before anything else is done with Metro the people of this region need to DEMAND that the incompetance that has been allowed to run the organization since its creation is washed away.
I cant wait for this to start! you think commuting on 40 is bad now? Try 2 hour commutes and snarled traffic on entrance ramps with people trying to merge down into 1 lane both directions.
In 1997, as part of the Cross-County MTIA study and again in 2000, as part of the Daniel Boone MTIA study, MetroLink within or along Interstate 64 (US 40) was evaluated. However, these evaluations estimated that there was not enough transit trip generators along the highway corridor that would produce sustainable levels of ridership. In other words, density was lacking.
The 2000 Daniel Boone MTIA did conclude that an east-west alignment from Clayton to Westport was a locally preferred alternative. This line closer to the Page corridor was more ridership rich than along Highway 40, but still lacked riders beyond I-270. Essentially when modeled, only 20% of the riders on a full line out to Chesterfield Valley would be from the over 50% of the line west of I-270. Again, not enough density to produce sustainable ridership levels.
I can’t imagine what Chesterfield resident who works east of his/her place of residence would not want to use a “Park’n’Ride” lot and ride the Metrolink.
I suppose this doesn’t discourage car dependency, if that’s the goal, but it thins out the travel of autos on 40 and thus reduces congestion/pollution.
An alignment of just park’n’ride lots doesn’t produce sustainable ridership. The St. Clair extension comes close to being such a line, but it luckily cost very little per mile to build. The original line and Cross-County lines have a better mix of park’n’ride stations AND major destinations.
Why a line to Westport works better than one to Chesterfield Valley is due to not only providing a park’n’ride near I-270 BUT ALSO serving reverse commuters destined for Westport area employment. Plus, the dense housing at planned Dielman and Delmar West stations along the conceptual Daniel Boone line serve transit-supportive pockets of multi-family residential.
Chesterfield Valley may have increasing employment, but its auto-oriented layout inhibits walkable access for reverse transit commuters arriving at any station within a sea of office parks and strip malls. Plus, building a line to serve only park’n’ride users would mean mostly empty trains at off-peak hours and reverse trips.
Just remember that MetroLink doesn’t just serve downtown-destined passengers, but those also working at BJC, WashU, UMSL, Clayton, the airport and other locations. Ultimately, a combination of park’n’rides AND walkable activity centers makes a line more operationally self-supporting to consider such a major investment.
One way to make rail transit work in the ‘burbs is to focus on park-n-ride lots. Initially, they create “virtual” density because people are willing to drive there even if they’ll never get on a bus. By assembling relatively large parcels at the stations, and working with local planning agencies, the transit agency can help shape appropriate, dense, future development. Remember, it’s actually a chicken or egg thing. Until you get rail, density won’t happen, and without density, the argument is made that rail makes no sense. Somebody just needs to take the risk (and it won’t be the private-sector developers), much like how rail transit is being grown in other midwestern cities like Denver and Dallas
I don’t believe people will move to avoid the I-64 rebuild. They will change their commuting patterns, but they probably won’t move.
The stretch of I-64 from Vandeventer to Spoede really is crumbling; it should be evident to anybody who walks, drives, or rides the bus in that area. The on and off ramps are too short, too tight, and often too close together. This project has to be done.
I wish they could preserve the look of some of the older overpasses, though, like at McCutcheon or McKnight.
As for MetroLink on 64/40:
I hate the idea of transit down the middle of the highway. That’s really quite a dangerous setup, not pedestrian friendly at all. I’m very concerned about the Clayton CBD MetroLink station being situated in the Parkway median.
However, I can see the potential utility in a transit corridor adjacent to the highway. There are a number of major destination nodes very close to 64/40, such as Plaza Frontenac (not that those shopppers would EVER be likely to use transit; but at least the workers might); St. Johns and Mo Baptist hospitals; Maryville U and its adjacent office park; and Chesterfield Mall itself. The train tracks and stops would ideally not be in the highway median, but on the north side or south side of the highway.
The “Rock Island Line” route planned for West County MetroLink has some of these kinds of destinations, but probably not as many jobs in such nodes. Besides West Port Plaza and the (probably closing) National Personnel Records Center, there aren’t the kinds of employment destinations like along 40 itself. So I think that routing may be a mistake.
A Westport station also gets MetroLink closer to St. Charles County and Earth City/Maryland Heights employment. From Westport, trains could someday split to both Earth City-Old St. Charles-Mid Rivers as well as to Chesterfield Valley.
The sooner we hit peak oil, the better, in my opinion. When mindsets change, we will stop wasting money on these ridiculous sprawlville projects. Metrolink is the only good idea, and density. Sooner or later density/rail won’t be a chicken/egg question. It will be more like, lay an egg now or kiss your ass goodbye