Grand Bridge Now Closed For Replacement
The Grand bridge over the train & MetroLink tracks was closed earlier this morning. Last June I spent some on and under the bridge, looking at the poor condition. From a press release issued by Mayor Slay’s office on February 28th:
“The Grand Bridge project is expected to take 18-24 months; Grand Boulevard is expected to be closed for about 14 months. The new Grand Bridge will feature improvements that benefit transit riders, pedestrians, and drivers. While the City of St. Louis replaces the Grand Bridge, Metro will redesign the Grand MetroLink Station and create a Scott Avenue Transit Plaza, which will feature seating, vending, attractive landscaping, improved lighting and a new park-ride lot.”
The current bridge dates to the early 1960s.
Replacement long overdue!
– Steve Patterson
While this bridge clearly needs replacement (for several reasons) I'm wondering why the KH viaduct isn't being done first. I read in the Post-Dispatch that the city is now doing daily safety inspections of that structure due to it's horrific condition. I went for a run a few weeks ago that took me under it and I have never in my life seen a bridge/viaduct (that was still in use) in that kind of condition. To say that the KH viaduct makes the Grand bridge look new would be a huge understatement. The kids at the skate park under the KH viaduct were saying that they can't really park under it any more because pieces of the structure fall off daily and damage their cars.
For me the bigger question is…why are we letting bridges/overpasses get to the point that they might fall down before they are replaced? (seems to me the I64 overpasses that were replaced over the last few years were also generally in appalling shape) Is this only a local issue? State wide? National problem? While my exposure to living in US cities is limited to STL, in the other places I have lived infrastructure is not allowed to deteriorate to such a worrying level before it is addressed.
It's like this throughout America, not just in St. Louis. Suburban sprawl has left us with more miles of roads and bridges than can be repaired with current tax dollars. People just blame it on nebulous charges of “government waste” to explain our lack of funding, but the fact remains we are building more roads than our tax base can afford.
It's all about priorities. Bridges versus schools. Parks versus trash collection. Government pensions versus public transit. Tax dollars are finite. None of us like to pay, but we all like to consume. It comes down to tough choices, and, ideally, finding “someone else” to pay for it!
Yes… only build what we can afford to maintain properly, a truly novel idea. I for one would be quite happy to pay 1% – 10% more income tax if it meant balanced budgets, proper maintenance and better schools etc…that or close/stop the things we can't afford to operate….like schools, bridges and the like. Despite what most Americans have come to believe you can't eat your cake and have it too…
JZ – I disagree. This is not about an “either or”. The problems we face today are due to choices made in the past. And as Chris notes, we chose to subsidize sprawl for decades, and now the infrastructure of the urban core is falling apart. Put another way, the “priorities” years ago were misguided. We failed to maintain what we already had. Maybe that's why Europe is not so sprawl based as the US. They take care of what they have; we let it go to waste.
This is going to sound teapartyish, but choices ARE an “either or” issue. You can have more services and better maintenance, but it will require higher taxes. You can have lower taxes, but services will be reduced and maintenance will be deferred. You can invest relatively more in the new, sprawling suburbs, while ignoring the urban core, or you can invest relatively more in the urban core, leaving the suburbs with two-lane roads and ever-worsening traffic. Whether “the 'priorities' [of] years ago were misguided” depends very much on one's perspective – there are plenty of people in the 'burbs and rural areas of Missouri that believe, as strongly as you do, that THEIR priorities are being slighted or ignored.
Building interstates was a choice. Replacing streetcar lines with buses was a choice. Spending stimulus funds on shovel-ready projects is a choice. Closing the Grand bridge for over a year is a choice. Other alternatives could have included building it in halves (maintaining one lane in each direction) or building a new structure next to the old one, before demolishing the old one, but both would have been more expensive. But government is all about making choices to allocate limited resources. Whether you view it as a whole bunch of individual “either or” choices or the aggregation of a series of larger “policy” decisions, the results are the same, what we see today. And the real challenge is that every issue has an advocate, and many times both the priorities and the answers are in direct conflict (freeways versus neighborhoods, highways versus rail transit, etc.).
Or, to put it another way, in a perfect world, we'd have a realistic maintenance and replacement program and we would fund it at a level to keep pace with the annual needs. The challenge is that it could easily be two or three times what we're spending now. The best examples are the Tri-State Tollway around Chicago and the Kansas Turnpike. As toll roads, built in the 1950's, their original construction costs were paid off years ago, yet the tolls remain today, where they've been used to both expand and rebuild the highways on a continuing basis, without having to fight for their share of their respective statewide highway pies. And the comparison to Europe isn't really valid – their cities are centuries older than ours, predating the automobile, and we live in a country of cheap land. The German Autobahn has had nearly as much impact on their sprawl as our interstates have had on ours . . .
The only thing “teapartyish” I see in this analysis is the drawbridge mentality: “I've got mine, so you're on your own”. The tea party says cut spending, but don't cut their pension, Medicare or Social Security! Too bad whatever bad decisions we all made in the past (read national debt, etc), now we move forward and ignore our standing commitments! That's tea party! Yeah, and isn't the comparison to Europe amazing? Their cities are centures older; they're not sprawl ridden; and, their urban cores are vibrant. Huh.
So your solution is to raise taxes, substantially, to pay for better maintenance, better schools, better healthcare, better pensions, better salaries, better parks, better . . . . ?
JZ, how do you explain that the Sisters of St.Joseph's of Carondelet mother house campus in Carondelet, dating to about 1820, is in as good or better shape today that it was 50 years ago? One of the reasons I'd submit is their ethic of preservation and care of their resources. So, yeah, it's about priorities. On that we agree.
Rocket science – they built a high-quality structure and paid to maintain it for nearly two centuries. But what does this have to do with governments and their spending on public infrastructure? Why is Grand going before Kingshighway and after Compton? Why did the new Mississippi River bridge take 40 or 50 years to start construction? Why did Metro cut back services, then restore many of them? Why is the Ladue School District currently in the news for firing several teachers? It gets back to that messy combination of finite dollars and politics, marked by many, many “either or” choices.
I am guessing that both the Kingsghighway and Grand Bridges were “high quality structures” when built. The problem with both is deferred maintenance. Brought on by declining revenues to support maintenance costs. Brought on by reduced tax base in the urban core. Brought on by….?
Partly from deferred maintenance, partly from just wearing out and partly from design obsolecence (heavier vehicles, different design standards) – all the newer suburban infrastructure will need to be replaced, eventually, just like how our urban infrastructure is having to be replaced now. The challenge is that replacement projects are both less “sexy” and more expensive than building something new. Combine that with a reduced tax base and less and less can be accomplished each year, even as the demand continues to increase.
So is this the sort of thing that might be termed a “planners paradox”?
Rick – You appear to have a distorted view of tea party priorities likely due to a misunderstanding of the foundational belief generally shared among the people within the movement.
Please educate me on those “foundational beliefs”. How do they conform to preserving existing investments in public infrastructure compared to the subsidizing of urban sprawl? Would a tea party person oppose the subsidies to build new roads into rural areas as a means of spurring “economic growth”? If there was only $100 in public money available, would a tea party person say: “maintain what we already have” or “build a new road to a new town on the urban fringe”?
The foundational belief held in common among those within the tea party movement is that America is a constitutionally based republic and not a democracy.
So how does that mesh with maintaining investments in public infrastructure?
Isn't it obvious. Are you interested in the most optimal use of public funds?
Sort of off topic from the rest of the comments here, but I was wondering if anyone could speak to how much effect salting the roads to melt snow and ice accelerates the deterioration of bridges such as Grand.
Right off of the top of my head: a lot. Some links: http://www.jsce.or.jp/committe… (start @ page four), http://www.imoa.info/_files/pd… There is some technical nomenclature you may need to wade through, but by and large it is easy to understand.
Jeez Louise….I will soon be three bridges old, I best start maintenance now ! The prior bridge was beautiful too bad we don't build them to look like that anymore.
I think it's strange that no one is concerned that a bridge which was built in the 1960s must be replaced so soon. I never could understand why such an unattractive, poorly designed, user-unfriendly bridge was erected in the first place. (It replaced the beautiful Grand Avenue Viaduct). Take a trip to Chicago & you'll see dozens of beautiful functional bridges that were built in the 1920s & 30s & before. (Clark St., Division St., Franklin St., La Salle St., Madison St., & N. State St., & Michigan Avenue Bridges just to name a few). The Eads, Mc Kinley & Old Chain of Rocks Bridges here still stand although there have been modifications to them. I guess here in Missouri there is some kind of build, neglect, tear down, & rebuild program for the bridges. That's the expensive way of doing things, but it seems no one cares about that.
There are two reasons bridges need to be replaced, they're failing structurally or they've become “obsolete”, too low or too narrow. Your Chicago examples illustrate one answer – build them wide, build them well and maintain them. But your Chicago examples can be offset by other Chicago examples, like their urban expressways and toll roads, that seem to have been in a perpetual state of reconstruction since they were “completed” in the 1960's . . . .
Bridges all over America over the last 50 are poorly built, not just in Missouri.
Perhaps poorly designed and maintained, but I doubt built poorly. They were built according to contemporaneous design standards, and maintained with the dwindling amount of money available to munis over the last 60 years. If the Grand Ave. Viaduct had at least been maintained properly, it wouldn't need to be replaced.