Readers: Don’t Build South County Connector
A majority of readers favor Trailnet’s suggestions to focus on transit, biking, and walking efforts to reduce automobile congestion:
Q: How should St. Louis County reduce auto congestion between Hanley & Watson?
- Focus on transit, bicycling and walking solutions 60 [57.14%]
- Build proposed “South County Connector” partially-elevated roadway 25 [23.81%]
- Do nothing 16 [15.24%]
- Unsure/no opinion 4 [3.81%]
The pro-Trailnet crowd combined with the “do nothing” group total a whopping 72.38% that didn’t select the built it option.
A public meeting will be held Thursday May 30th.
The South County Connector Draft Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) will be available for public review and comment from Friday, May 3, 2013 to July 19, 2013. During the review period, the St. Louis County Department of Highways and Traffic will host a public hearing for the Draft EIS on Thursday, May 30, 2013 from 4:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at the Shrewsbury City Center (located at 5200 Shrewsbury Avenue, Shrewsbury, Missouri 63119).
The public hearing is an opportunity for interested persons to give testimony concerning the Draft EIS, including potential social, economic, and environmental impacts of the proposed roadway alternatives. Representatives of the South County Connector Study Team will also be available to provide information and answer questions about the Draft EIS at an open house meeting held at the same time as the public hearing. No formal presentation will be made. Display boards and copies of the Draft EIS will be available for review at the open house meeting. (South County Connector)
If you are among those who don’t think this project should move forward please contact all of the following:
- The study team (link with form and email address)
- The St. Louis County Council (this is in the 5th district)
- St. Louis County Executive Charlie Dooley
We’ve invested millions in transit, now is the time to double-down on transit to get a return on our existing infrastructure investment.
— Steve Patterson
In my ideal world we wouldn’t have any intra-urban interstate highways. We’d have highways only between cities that would connect to urban roads when they hit a city and would have a bypass around the city for people who are just passing through. Of course, that’s a tad bit idealistic in St. Louis as most of the suburbs were built depending on the existence of the intra-urban highways. At the very least we can stop building NEW ones like this and work toward removing the ones from the pre-war parts of STL (city and county).
I can’t imagine why you and, obviously, others like you are opposed to intra-urban highways. How are people who live in North County and work in South County supposed to conveniently and expeditiously get from one county to the other? Good God! Why don’t we just tear up the pavement on all our roads and force people to drive around on rutted dirt roads? Let’s forget altogether that we now live in the 21st Century vs the 19th Century! …and I favor the South County Connector because it wouldl make travel more accessible and convenient for all potential users.
Don’t you get it? Everyone should walk, bike, or take a streetcar everywhere they go.
Sounds good to me. Say goodbye to the obesity problem and global warming!
Seriously though: I know these aren’t options for a majority of people in the STL metro area. That’s why changes need to be made to make them viable options. How do we do this? Increase density to foster greater walkability and increase transit viability, add bike lanes, connect walkable centers with transit (preferably rail).
Your last point is the most important one – as long as sprawl is unimpeded, it will continue, at the expense of any meaningful density . . . .
Walk, bike, and streetcar wouldn’t get you from North County to South County. Light rail would though.
Except for that 15 minute wait to transfer between the Red and Blue lines . . . .
Can you not get there with the highways/roads already in place? Do you need this connector?
The more millions we dump into new highway construction the more
accessible we make the fringes of the city to new development. This
will lead new auto-dependent development which will require new highways
(back to step one).
I wasn’t saying we should rip out 270 or anything. It’d be impossible to get around. Almost all of STL that was built post-war is dependent on the highways for mobility. I was just saying we need to stop building more of this and need to start fixing/redeveloping what we already have.
It doesn’t make economic sense to live so far away from your job that it takes up a majority of your time and money and then seek the public to finance your lifestyle of needing more and more highways so you don’t have to live with the consequences of too many people not living anywhere near their work…
In this economy, people go where the work is, and many times either can’t afford to move and/or their partner works in the opposite direction . . . .
Exactly, I had to take a new job that was a pretty good opportunity in Marin County, North of San Francisco. My wife was able to transfer her ATT job in downtown St Louis to their main office in San Ramon, CA (East Bay). The only way it worked for us to afford decent housing and the school district we desired for our kids is both of us working. The choice of living where we want to walk, bike, and/or have a reasonable commute is not readily available like everybody image it to be. Get married, get a family and JZ comments hit home.
To boot, my extended family went back to three cars after getting rid of one in St. Louis. I’m fortunate in my financial life, but it truly truly sucks having more instead of less vehicles in a lot lot of ways. But the reality is that i’m not spending 2 plus hours one way to take 4 hours a day out of my life to take transit for my new job while my wife and I raise our family. The issues that really drive choices is not how many buses or fixed transit lines but time, conveniance of vehicle is about time.
The easy (and, yes, somewhat simplistic) answer is to live closer to where you work. That’s why cities exist through history — they are places where you’re meant to live, work and play (to steal an oft-used promotional slogan).
The Federal Interstate system and the single-home-two-car-garage American Dream bucked that trend, and now – rather than expansion by necessity — you have sprawl by design. There’s vacant space to be developed and be damned the central access which worked so well in the past.
I’m not blaming those who moved, literally, to greener pastures, but I have no empathy for their plight of spending more time driving a longer distance.
It’s not (or at least shouldn’t be) a this-or-that battle — living where you spend a 1/3 of your day or 20 miles away from it — but not should the system fully cater to those who choose to do the latter.
I believe that the latest news is relevant to many Urban Review postings: http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/21/18401921-povertys-push-increasingly-is-into-the-suburbs?lite
Poverty push increasingly is into the suburbs from nbcnews.com
Indeed, the suburbs will be the new slums. Many doubt this but my loft is in a warehouse building where mansions were built 50 years earlier. Desirable areas can quickly become undesirable.
Let me clarify that… SOME of the suburbs will be the new slums.
Gas prices will rise until middle class people cannot afford to drive from suburb to suburb. And because taking transit from suburb to suburb is so difficult, many of these middle class people will move to transit-rich areas. And the city is more desirable than in the past. Unlike the early 20th century, it’s not full of polluting factories. Unlike the late 20th century, it’s not full of lead-poisoned violent criminals (depending on the area, but it’s getting better).
Poorer people will move to the suburbs, taking the place of the middle class. They will take bad suburban transit because they can’t afford anything else. So many suburbs will become slums. However, some will not. Ladue residents will always be able to pay for gas, and they will also appreciate the exclusiveness of their location, as they do now. So Ladue will not become a slum. But North County certainly will, and likely much of South County and the Illinois suburbs as well. St Charles County is an interesting question, it has enough jobs of its own, and is remote enough from the rest of the metro area, that it may remain middle class. I should emphasize that all these changes will take decades to occur. People do not switch houses and jobs overnight. But the next time they look for a house or job, they will take these factors into account. And as demand builds up, more urban construction will take place in the city to accommodate it.
One thing you all are conveniently ignoring is the fact that less than 3% of all trips are on public transit now, while 100% of the taxpayers are paying to support it. Doubling transit use will double the cost of operating it. Increasing demand by a factor of ten will increase Metro’s budget by a factor of ten. And increasing fuel costs will impact public transit just like they will impact individual commuters. Are we ALL willing to pay a 2%, 5% or 10% sales tax to fund a truly viable transit system, to replace one or more of our vehicles? Will we be willing to pay more per square foot (and/or occupy less space) to live in denser, urban structures? Transit isn’t “free”, just like how new roads and surface parking aren’t “free”. Admit it, the reason most of us make the totally irrational financial decision to own and operate our own vehicles is convenience – it’s quicker, more comfortable and there’s no waiting and no transfers. Transit becomes more attractive when these advantages start to go away – money is usually only a deciding factor when it comes to paying for parking, not gas, tires, maintenance, insurance or acquiring the vehicle.
How will doubling use of the existing system double the cost of operation?
Twice as many trips will require nearly twice as many vehicles, drivers, fuel, mechanics, tires, etc, etc, etc. Yes, many buses are not completely full at all times, but much like freeways, peak demand comes at rush hour, and most people can’t / won’t wait an hour or two for things to thin out . . . .
Except it’s really rare to have to wait for a space on any route in this city. There’s plenty of capacity on almost every route out there. I bet the system could absorb 30% across the board – with maybe two exceptions – without hiring an extra driver or buying another vehicle. In some cases, the percentage would be much higher.
Given that most buses have so many empty seats increasing ridership will actually reduce costs (at least initially).
Also the reason public transit is so inconvenient & inefficient in St Louis is that it’s so spread out. Paris’s metro region (for example) is roughly the same size but has more than 4 times the population.
Agree on both points. Still, to use an economic term, transit demand is elastic, up to a point, then stair steps – the cost to operate a bus with 5 or 50 passengers is pretty similar / flat. Once you reach the point where you need to add another bus to meet increased demand (70? 80?), then your costs immediately double (unless you can find a larger vehicle). Service on Grand is the classic example – you can’t cram a lot more passengers on at rush hour (because the current buses are full), so you’re either missing / losing potential riders or you’re going to have to find more seats and, likely, operators, ASAP.