Elevated Highway Will Continue To Divide Downtown From The Mississippi River
The CityArchRiver 2015 effort has been about connecting the city to the Arch and to the river. But I think the name needs an asterisks, followed by a legal disclaimer in fine printer.
The disclaimer would read something like this:
*The connection will be applicable for a block or two at the center of the Arch grounds, the north & south portions will remain disconnected. We’ll make a few token changes, nothing significant.
I agree there isn’t time now to raze the elevated highway and complete an urban boulevard before October 28, 2015, but I’d like to see us work on starting shortly after the 50th anniversary of the last piece of the Arch. If we start now we can have the urban boulevard by the 75th anniversary on October 28, 2040.
Only after this is removed will downtown be reconnected to the Mississippi River in a meaningful way.
— Steve Patterson
Very timely post, Steve. This morning at around 7:40 am, I drove through this area and was surprised to learn that the massive concrete underpass has become a homeless encampment. Welcome to St. Louis!
It has been attracting homeless people for some time. They are mostly harmless, I say mostly as many of them are mentally ill and you can never know for certain. But what a thing for a visitor to our city to have to walk by to enter the Arch grounds! As an aside, many of these people are coming to the city to take advantage of the free meals being offered by the NLEC and are than left to fend for themselves the rest of the day and end up begging money on downtown streets for alcohol.
Maybe we should be helping the homeless with their problems rather than just judging and wishing they weren’t there, Mark. After all Mark, they aren’t all wearing hoodies.
Maybe my family has a right to a safe and secure neighborhood without being criticized by someone who doesn’t have to deal with the issue? Since many of the homeless downtown come from neighborhoods like yours where they are not wanted and are not provided services, perhaps instead of telling other people what they should do, maybe you could step up and take care of your neighbor so he doesn’t end up under an overpass downtown? Its easy to tell someone else what they should or should nor be doing when you are sitting some where else, but until you actually live downtown and deal with these problems on a daily basis you should refrain from criticizing those who do.
Your comments might carry more weight if they weren’t heavy with bigotry and weren’t from 500 names.
Sybil, apparently you will see bigotry in anything anyone has to say unless they are in-agreement with your views. My comment was just stating the facts, it did not refer to any particular population characteristics. But the facts are that the underpass in question is on the direct path of one of the few pedestrian pathways to the lower arch grounds. My wife, who grew up in downtown Chicago and is no stranger to city life, does not like walking by these groups of homeless people when she goes to work. If she feels uncomfortable, imagine how someone that is visiting the city would feel? As I said my wife and I have a right to live in a safe and secure neighborhood just like everyone else, so before you make comments about bigotry or try and cast distain on my supposed motivations maybe you could instead try and see it from my point of view. Let me try and help you, say for instance there was a crack house down your block which was attracting drug addicts and gang members into your neighborhood everyday and you or your spouse had to walk by these people every time you left your house. Now suppose that you care about the safety of your family and your neighbors. wouldn’t you speak up about the problem? Now suppose when you did speak up, or express your dissatisfaction with the occupants of this crack house, someone named Maewho or Sybil tried to imply that your motivations stem from bigotry, wouldn’t you think that they were idiots?
Has nothing to do with crack houses, it has to do with lumping all people together which is exactly what you do….in this case, Mark, Mae, or whoever you are today it is homeless people are drunks and will rob people….or is it that they are harmless? After all if they are harmless like you first postulated, then why be afraid of them in your next post? YOU seem to think that unless people deal with the same issues and in the same way as you, they are wrong. How do you know what I do and not do for the homeless? for my neighbors? or where I live to do such? Maybe I live in Ladue where there are no homeless (actually there are) or maybe I live in a loft on Washington? Maybe I was raised not to be afraid of someone in a hoodie.
As I said, your comments would carry more weight if they weren’t heavy with bigotry and weren’t from 500 names.
the arch is the worst thing to happen to downtown st louis. sure the downtown was filled with old buildings but a highway and an arch, useless.
No, the worst thing to happen to downtown St. Louis was the separation from St. Louis County in 1876.
No, the worst thing was the refusal to build a cross-river train bridge in the 1850s (lest it compete with river traffic) which led to Chicago displacing us as capitol of the Midwest.
Bingo.
Hmmm, well, I don’t know about that.
The Bessemer steel process was not patented in this country until 1855, and according to the City’s own preservation website http://stlcin.missouri.org/history/structdetail.cfm?Master_ID=1324, a bridge was proposed as early as 1839. It was rejected due to the cost of such a bridge being built at that time. Most likely because the cost of steel was ridiculously expensive before the industrial process–the Bessemer process and the blast furnace–began production. Now, a full iron bridge may have been possible, but it would most likely have been limited to a suspension bridge design composed of numerous flat ‘bars’ grouped together, and then linked by massive pins. The first Grand Ave. viaduct was just such a design.
Mr. James Eads pneumatic caissons were the first application of that technology in the US at the time, and even though the severe and fatal problems were mostly solved by the time the second pier work was begun, fifteen men died as a result of decompression sickness (the bends, or caisson disease) in work on the western pier.
It is true that the steamboat companies put restrictions (in law) on the dimensions of any bridge crossing the Mississippi, but the technology needed to construct a bridge capable of standing up to the vibrations and weight stresses (not to mention its own mass) produced by trains simply did not exist in the 1850’s. Well, not entirely, as the first use of a pneumatic caisson was in 1841 (France), and another by 1851 (a bridge in Britain). However, as this pdf notes, http://archive.rubicon-foundation.org/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/4028/15686275.pdf?sequence=1, the specific causes of ‘the bends’ were not known to a degree which we today would call scientifically precise.
And, as we all know, the Civil War was also an intervening contributory cause, as it most likely made the money normally available for such constructions rather scarce. Not to mention the shortage of manpower and materiel.
Informative. Thanks
My opinion is that we should not be encouraging people to drive through the heart of our city by building and maintaining highways through the heart of the city. I would like to see our highway city designed to route people who are traveling elsewhere around the downtown area by eliminating this eyesore completely.
NIMBY?
NO not NIMBY, just common sense. Why direct people who are looking to drive through St. Louis on their way to Memphis or Kansas City through the middle of St. Louis? The river creates a natural barrier to good traffic flow so why direct people coming into St. Louis from Illinois on their way elsewhere into the heart of what should be a focal point of the city? I don’t believe that we need to be directing large amounts of car traffic into our city.
Since the highway’s been here for 40 or 50 years, I’m guessing that it was here way before you made the choice to move downtown. No one really likes a freeway in their backyard or in their neighborhood (me included), but they do have to go somewhere. If traffic isn’t going thru downtown, it’ll be going through East St. Louis or along Tucker, Broadway/4th or even Jefferson. Do the residents of these neighborhoods “deserve” the highway that you don’t want? Or are you just superior to these residents and deserving of special treatment?! Yes, in theory, our interstate highway system is designed to serve interstate travelers, but, in reality, it serves many, many local commuters, as well. Life is full of choices. Choosing to live downtown includes choosing to live with negatives as well as the positives. A boulevard will never have the same capacity as the existing freeway, so any argument to reduce capacity in the existing corridor needs to include identifying where the diverted traffic will go and how its impacts will be minimized!
1. Didn’t Mark say once that he lives in Clayton? So not NIMBY.
2. It’s silly to expect intercity travelers to use the same highways that are already clogged with commuters.
3. I remember well when Forest Park Parkway was closed for MetroLink construction, and I64 was closed for rebuilding, the surrounding roads absorbed the diverted traffic with no problems.
Your perception of “no problems” is different than mine. Traffic is like water – it follows the path of least resistance. Making I-70 “go away” downtown is not a bad idea, but any discussion needs to include which corridors will be carrying the traffic diverted from the freeway. I live off of I-44, so I put up with increased traffic during the projects you noted, much like how I put up with increased traffic on Jamieson while the Ellendale bridge was being rebuilt. But since these were temporary increases, I (and my neighbors) didn’t complain too much. If they had been permanent, our responses would have been different.
And wasn’t there a big stink when Metro had to go underground at Wash U. with that whole fiasco, just to please some residents who didn’t want the additional traffic?
Also the same as for the residents along Elm during the re-build who didn’t want the extra traffic, even temporarily.
I think it would be great if we had a city boulevard like Chicago but that will never happen. For one is $$$ and secondly, on one side will be the Arch and the view of the park….the other side….gee…the view of the back of apartment buildings and Adams Mark….not very appealing. No museums, no grand hotels, no retail.
Yes I live on Washington and I am not unduly affected by the highways other than that they are a mess and distract from the city center. Cities by their nature are high density and successful cities will have a high density of residential, business and tourist traffic in their downtown area, all of which are at cross purposes with the idea of bringing major interstates through the heat of downtown. By spreading traffic out toward the edges of the city the overall density will be reduced with only the driver who want to enter the city needing to do so. St. Louis should consider the ring concept of interstates used in other major cities to direct traffic around the most densely packed urban areas. The new bridge routing traffic through Tucker is one step in this process.
We already have the ring road – it’s called I-270 and I-255 – and many cross-country travelers do take advantage of it to avoid downtown. Unfortunately, downtown is no longer the center of the universe when it comes to jobs, so many people have to drive through downtown to get to their jobs somewhere else in the region. The new bridge actually does little to help interstate travelers; its biggest benefit will be to local commuters who choose to live in Illinois and work in Missouri.
And one additional comment. Your statement that no-one like an interstate in their back yard could not be more true, but it is the outward flight of city residents to outlaying areas that made the creation of all of these highways necessary. Those of us who live in the city should not have to suffer because so many have chosen to drive their personal car everywhere. leave it home and use public transportation.
If public transit were a more viable option for more people, more people might choose to use it. But given how our land-use patterns have evolved, for both residential options and for employment options, it simply does not work well for most residents of the region. I agree, suburban sprawl makes these highways “necessary”, but the highways are not the root cause of sprawl, the root cause is that the personal car has enabled people to choose many more places than they could/can if they had/have to rely solely on public transportation.
But all that ducks the NIMBY issue, especially as it applies to “newcomers”. It doesn’t matter if it’s a highway, a hog farm, an airport or a public transit vehicle maintenance facility, if it was there before you moved in, why should you expect it to “go away” just because it doesn’t fit your sensibilities? Not all aspects of modern living are pleasant, and some are downright obnoxious. Most of us have a wide range of choices when it comes to housing, and many involve trade-offs – price, location, amenities, schools, aesthetics, diversity, lack of diversity and, yes, obnoxious adjacent uses. If you don’t like it/them, odds are pretty good that most other people won’t like it/them either! If it’s not in your backyard, odds are pretty good that it’ll end up in somebody else’s backyard, somebody who is already living without the negative impacts that you’re trying avoid. Those of us who live in southwest city shouldn’t have to suffer because you’re happy to have the things you enjoy every day that are delivered by truck on I-44 . . . .
Or Highway 55…don’t forget that one. And unfortunately, thanks to our leaders (and I use that term loosely) in Jeff City, we may have hog farms close to St. Louis. (If house bill 360 made it through once, they will try again).
You keep referring to NIMBY as if this were part of the discussion, it is not. This discussion concerns what is best for downtown so that it can continue to act as a catalyst for surrounding areas, and attract residents and visitors to the city core. And I believe that public transportation at least for downtown is already a viable option, so the excuse that it is not good or extensive enough is just that an excuse as it is still to easy and inexpensive for people to drive into the city in private vehicles. Unfortunately, most of us have witnessed people driving endless around mall parking lots waiting for a spot t open that is close when there are hundreds of spaces a short walk away. Unless there are measure to make driving more inconvenient and expensive than things will not change..
I agree that it would be better if the highway had not been built where it was 50 years ago. The unfortunate reality is that it does continue to serve a major role in both our local and regional transportation networks. It simply can’t just be removed / converted to a boulevard / have its capacity reduced without negatively impacting other, adjacent areas and corridors, unless, of course, you’re satisfied with making driving around downtown so onerous that people will either choose public transit (your ideal) or to stay completely away (a more likely outcome, given the multiple other alternatives around the region).
I also agree that it’s pretty stupid to drive around looking for the perfect parking spot, but people do so for a variety of reasons. And while I agree that people need to be “motivated” to look at alternatives to driving, unless the motivation occurs regionwide (highly unlikely), downtown needs to balance being “tougher” with being left out / left behind. The NIMBY part comes in because you both live downtown and advocate (as you should) for downtown. It’s easy to say that something shouldn’t be happening; it’s much harder to create an alternative that does. In my southwest-city world, I’d love to see I-44 become a boulevard, as well, just like how the people in Webster Groves and Kirkwood would. We simply can’t go back and undo every “mistake” that previous generations have made. And no, downtown is not extra special, it’s one of many neighborhoods that make up the city and the region. Unless and until we figure out how to eliminate all freeways, why should downtown be treated differently, as in NIMBY?!
This is a 10-block-long viaduct, between Locust and O’Fallon, similar in length to the Grand Avenue viaduct, not so much an elevated highway. If you want an elevated highway, look at Highway 40 / I-64. That said, by building the tunnel / lid on the Arch Grounds, you’re pretty much guaranteeing that this section will be maintained as a viduct.
Way more than ten blocks. It’s almost exactly a mile from Washington Avenue to the new Stan Musial Veterans Memorial I-70 Bridge
The new bridge intersects where I-70 is in a trench. My cross streets are where I-70 transitions from depressed to elevated, where it’s actually at grade (and where any boulevard would logically start or end).
The big(ger) question here isn’t that the highway is raised, it’s the fact that a freeway disrupts the historic street grid. And of the three options (elevated, at grade or depressed), elevated actually gives the greatest potential for maintaining the grid, absent a lid or tunnel. An at-grade freeway is actually the worst option, since pedestrians are prohibited (for good reason) from crossing, at all.
The solution is to do similar to what Lake Shore Drive has become in Chicago.
The stretch is most certainly a freeway (or a highway, at least), but for a short distance through downtown, it isn’t. Drivers entering it from one of several state highways must slow down, stop at lights and yield to pedestrian crossings. Head further north and it speeds back up to highway speed and is separated at street level, with east-west surface access maintained through depressed tunnels every 6-8 blocks or so.
In St. Louis, a Memorial Boulevard would function similarly — the stretch between Poplar and, say, Cass, act as a surface-speed, intersected Boulevard. Outside of these boundaries, car can quickly accelerate back up to highway speed for 55-S and 70-W, respectively.
And if a car doesn’t want to slow down for that one-mile stretch, well, they can always hop across the river via the NMRB or Poplar and deviate from their straight line in the interest of maintaining speed.
[ EDIT: Granted, there aren’t nearly as many stoplights on Lake Shore as I would like o see through downtown STL on a Memorial Blvd. So maybe a bad comparison… 🙂 ]
Lake Shore Drive is a gazillion lanes wide and quite unpleasant for pedestrians to cross. A separated freeway at least doesn’t have those issues. To make crossing a boulevard pleasant, you need to restrict the traffic on it even further.
Can we deal with so little north/south freeway capacity? If we do this, there will be no continuous north/south freeway between 270 in West County and 255 in Illinois.
wow, i cant believe someone on here realizes that lake shore drive sucks and totally disconnects chicago and the lake. wake up alex!!!!
10 blocks = one mile in the cioty of st louis
City blocks vary in size. And JZ’s right. In this stretch, it is about ten blocks. Ten pretty much totally carved up and disconnected blocks. But who cares? Why are we even discussing this? What’s the point? Wump?
the point it you said it was way more than 10 blocks, and it aint
The lid over the highway will not inhibit any future changes of I-70 into a city street. It will simply go underground near that section and reemerge at street level where the current I-70 begins to climb above ground.
Exactly. Looking at it that way it’s not all that different from the grand boulevard City to River was proposing in front of the Arch. Call it a half a loaf being better than no loaf at all! Question is, will Maggie Hales and Walter Metcalf support this idea or work against it no matter what? They got their lid. Now would they let the city get half a boulevard?
I honestly don’t think the elevated section will go away until Stan K proposes his new football stadium on the north river front between Stan the Man bridge to the north and Laclede’s Landing to south with pleny of space for THF to develop in between, Pinnacle sells off its casino to Isle Capris who makes it a signature casino because they are actually based in St. Louis region but don’t have a casino presence, Drury Family goes forward wtih its conceptual high residential tower at foot of Eads Bridge/Wash Ave and finally McKee actually proposes a decent mixed used project for Bottleworks. Maybe at that point, the players with real money going into the area will see the immediate need to knock down the raised section of I70!!!
Any of you ever wonder why I-70 is elevated here, while it’s depressed both to the north and to the south? I’m guessing it’s because of the rail tunnel (currently used by Metrolink) associated with the Eads Bridge – going under it would’ve been a challenge / require a really deep tench, so the engineers (apparently) decided to build over Washington Avenue, instead of under . . . .
And there is the problem, the road system going through downtown was designed by engineers rather than urban designers and/or architects. There have been a few notable engineers who were also artists, but for the most part engineers only are concerned about solving technical problems and are not concerned with the aesthetic or social aspects of life in an urban environment.
As a result we end up with this project that couldn’t be more horrible if they were actually trying to destroy St. Louis.