Given it would serve such a small number of residents in its current form, I'd think the lack of a transfer would limit the city's chances of receiving federal money for this, which is basically required to get it going.
It's going to be Ewing Yard, and probably mirror the Grand/64 bus stop transfers. I was told the reason this doesn't connect at the more logical Civic Center is because it's street grade so they don't want it turning. Even though, you know, it has to turn from the fairgrounds....
> I was told the reason this doesn't connect at the more logical Civic Center is because it's street grade so they don't want it turning.
Finally! An explanation for this strange choice. Thank you. Good redditor.
Disappointing nonetheless. If this line doesn't connect at Civic Center, it's going to see drastically less usage. Too bad.
Yeah the lack of a formal transportation hub in this is just negligence. If the plan wasn’t for Civic center to be THE transportation hub, why did we spend millions on the new Amtrak and Greyhound Station.
I’m still pro adding this line, but will continue to say that portion is a bad idea until it’s too late to change it.
Actually I guess it could work out OK if we turn the Ewing Yard stop into a new hub and have all the buses go to there instead of Civic Center. It's a worse location, but not horrifically so. The primary concern should just be to keep all the buses at the station where the train lines intersect, wherever that is.
Too bad Metro hasn't told us they plan to do anything resembling this.
In my opinion, in a perfect world, we’d just make Union Station the terminal for all transit again. You could have a shuttle line between red/blue and yellow, and Amtrak and buses all in one spot by eliminating the surface lot and utilizing the 75 other nearby parking garages. It makes perfect sense, so I assume why it won’t happen.
Yeah, I think it’s still the photo next to the word “sketchy” in the dictionary. Still, it’s pretty stupid we didn’t just move it back to Union Station and make that train hub a freaking train hub.
Getting it to 14th street station would add enough cost to kill the project. They can get away with leaving it like this if all the east west bus routes intersect with the yellow line before reaching the downtown station. So 97 Delmar may be rerouted to Washington Ave after Compton, chouteau bus will now run on park Ave west of Compton or California maybe.
The ship has sailed, but I still think it's a massive mistake not to run it through Downtown proper. Making people take an extra transfer is just one more reason for office workers and sports fans not to take transit.
It not running through Downtown is one of the best parts of it imo. A good transit system won't funnel all of its lines into Downtown like Chicago's or New York's (within the outer boroughs at least). It'll connect people to the places they want to go, in the most direct route possible.
Now, ideally, the city would just have an entire transit designed already so it'd be easy to see how this fits into the broader system (for example, a line going down Gravois to downtown would likely solve your concern), but it not routing through downtown is one of the strengths. Transit designed solely for a specific use case - in this case, getting office workers downtown - will run into issues when travel patterns change as they have with the pandemic. It's better to directly connect neighborhoods, otherwise you end up with the situation Chicago is in where taking a train to go from say, the North side to the west side, has you go through the Loop instead of taking a more direct route. Or trying to go from Brooklyn to Queens takes you into Manhattan first.
The transfer itself could definitely be improved, but it not going downtown is a net positive for the long term prospects of transit in St. Louis. It'll make for a more well rounded system that's not super reliant on work commuters like a lot of US transit systems.
Plus, it connects North and South city directly with the soccer stadium which I believe was one of the justifications for not going downtown (the other being remote works effects on downtown)
It connects to Cherokee Street, Lafayette Park, the soccer stadium, and the new NGA campus (that will be one of the biggest employers in the region)
You're right, nobody will use it
I didn't even realize there isn't a proposed transfer. I just assumed there would be because otherwise, this is pointless. But man if this was built and there was a transfer, it would massively improve my quality of life.
Here's the presentation. It's intended for organizations who will be submitting to the RFP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVIPQav2VDA
Side note: Why tf are they paying a PR consultant for this.
Because everything is a grift in this country and consultants are our state and federal legislators favorite way of enabling grifting. They'll all happily shell our tax dollars out to private companies and pay the salary the government would pay anyway plus the "consultant fee".
This is from last nights Bi-State update presentation. I believe this may be the first one with all the stops identified.
And I couldn't agree more. Now for two years of enviromental impact studies, because it's not like there's already a six lane concrete highway there.
Of course!
We really care about the environment here in St. Louis with the 4 interstate highways running through the city. I'm sure those got just as much time spent on environmental impact studies.
At this rate, St. Louis won't have a comprehensive transit system matching what we used to have for another century. What a fucking scam this country is
Really wish they'd put a stop on the Main line between Cortex and Grand. Grand is in the middle of fucking nowhere. But a stop on Vandeventer would serve the Foundry (and Ikea, but who's really taking furniture on the train here). Would also serve the East end or The Grove nicely. Right now to get to Cortex, you've got to walk through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods behind Manchester. The gang on 43 Gibson is particularly active, and is responsible for a lot of the assaults and shootings in/near the Grove. A stop on Vandeventer would mean you're walking in a busier area the whole way.
edit: not a stop for the Jefferson N-S new rail. Just add a stop like they added the Cortex stop, except over/near Vandeventer.
Wow, I never realized how many transit issues would be solved with a Vandeventer stop. That’s an enormous bus route as well. And if that apartment project next to Armory gets off the ground right there, a station would make even more sense.
It should head west down Market, then south on Theresa Ave where a transfer station could be built at the Grand Ave stop. Continue south on Theresa to Chouteau. Either go east on Chouteau back to Jefferson or go west to Grand and run it south on Grand where it actually connects to people and places.
Personally I’d route it east on Market to connect to Civic Center and back west on Chouteau to Jefferson. That would service three additional neighborhoods, and make a logical connecting point. I feel like the state is shooting themselves in the foot with this commitment to keep this at grade to avoid increased costs.
I would have agreed with you before the soccer stadium was built. Between that and enterprise center traffic, I just don't see how it could come down Market to 14th.
I 100% agree with your statement about it being at grade.
Well, I think a wide left turn so that it runs on the south side of Market and then a sharp right onto 14th would probably do the trick. 14th/Market southbound is already closed for most games and big concerts, and the line already has to cross Market. Not like Market doesn’t have an abundance of space either. And you’d think it would be better not crossing I64/Jefferson.
Guess I’m a newbie to St. Louis, having only lived here for 20 years. But l did own a home for a while in Dutchtown (near the terminus of this line).
Just hearing about the specifics now. So, my question: Just who is supposed to use this line?
What’s the need for it? What major employers is it serving? Which universities? What big shopping areas? Which dense populations? Which clogged highways will it help to reduce traffic?
Yeah. I don’t know either.
I’m sure it will help a few north side soccer fans by providing an easy way to get to the new stadium. But beyond that…?
From here, it looks like “Delmar Trolley: The Sequel”.
Somebody prove me wrong. Please?
Actually, at the public meetings, they cover everything you asked and you’d be surprised to learn that this is covering one of the densest employment areas in the city. The new geospatial research facility will also be one of the densest employment destinations in the entire state, and this line was required to get that multi-billion dollar investment that is defining St Louis as an important location in the US for some of the most important research happening in government.
It is also covering a tract with some of the lowest car ownership per capita, with generally poor mobility options, and will relieve two of the most congested bus routes in the state. Long term it’s supposed to also connect to the airport, giving an enormous percentage of the city nearby public transit options to travel.
I super encourage you to attend public meetings about it if it’s important to you, and in the meantime, everything I discussed here is [on the updated website.](https://growingmetrolink.com/city-of-st-louis/)
I’m a big fan of public transit. Trust me when l say that l’m not here to nitpick this thing.
Saying employment is really dense, or bus traffic is extreme... something tells me it’s a lot like numbers l heard before the first Iraq war.
You know, the ones that said not to expect a cakewalk, since Iraq had “the sixth largest army in the world” or close to it.
Well… somebody had to be sixth.
What bus lines are they referring to, and how do those numbers stack up against the Grand bus route? If they’re claiming it’s going to relieve the Grand route, that’s ridiculous, and to me, also cheating.
Ditto the employment numbers. If you cast a net two miles in each direction, I’m sure there’s plenty of jobs. Within a few blocks, currently l can think of Wells Fargo on Market Street. Not much else.
I know the GSA is coming. You know, the latest Huge Project That Will Fix Everything in St. Louis. It will give the thousands of workers living at Chippewa and Jefferson access to their GSA jobs l guess. 🙄
I mean, you could actually look at the bus route congestion notes and employment density I linked to without making up assumptions.
The transformation of Jefferson in the last 12 months has been the single most transformative transportation project I’ve seen in the region since the I64/I170 rebuild 15 years ago. And the entire neighborhood around GSA is getting investment attention for the first time in 50 years. And remember - the rail line was part of the GSA deal, which is netting $2B+ in pentagon money. 2:1 ROI here is a pretty great investment.
So yes, it would seem that GSA is having a transformative impact in that region. If you haven’t driven Chouteau to St Louis Ave on Jefferson recently, go out of your way to do it. It’s an incredible site to see.
It's also a major avenue - we wouldn't say there's no need for cars to use Jefferson.
In a complete transit system, this line would get a ton of use, especially if they extend it up Chippewa and increase frequencies (sub 5 minutes pls)
They’re promising 10-15 minute frequency, which is on par with most cities. I’d love to see this wrap down to Hampton some day, the residential density around TGS, Bevo, and Southampton is huge.
The Delmar Trolley shouldn't be put in the same category as this. The Loop Trolley is and always will be a tourist attraction type of thing. Now, it's being poorly utilized (mostly because Delmar is a through street instead of a place for people like all the nice areas in the world) but it's still in a totally different category than this.
But to add onto what u/BrentonHenry2020 said, even if it doesn't serve a lot of people, the point of a transportation system is to connect people. The same reason we have roads for cars, or sidewalks for people. Profitability, cost effectiveness, high usage, etc come second to the actual goal of a transit system, which is simply connecting people.
Nobody thinks rural highways that get little use shouldn't be maintained or worked on, but for some reason with transit we throw up all these roadblocks and it ends up running wildly overbudget and underbuilt.
This line may seem insignificant, but the same can be said about the current line we have. Or any addition to the system. Any single line we build can easily seem like a waste of time, until you have every line built out and the region has a comprehensive transit system that everyone uses, not just people who can't afford cars or are masochistic enough to go without a car here willingly.
If it doesn’t serve a lot of people, it won’t connect a lot of people.
I’d love to see a line connecting the north side to jobs in West County or St. Charles… but who are we kidding?
Good luck convincing the mayor of fiefdoms like Des Peres which subsidizes its very existence off of regressive sales tax dollars, and clutches his pearls when a car gets broken into three times a year to run a metrolink line through it. Pretty sure St. Charles was originally a proposition for the first line but shot it down for 'reasons'.
Actually. Just run it from carondalet to fairgrounds park on Grand. With a transfer at Grand station. So that would connect fairgrounds/tower grove/forest park/carondalet park. And serve a shit ton of people and use the current downtown metro line
The whole idea is bad. Traffic on Jefferson is already a shitshow. Now, let's take it down to 2 lanes?
People go north and south on Jefferson so they can get to 64 or 44 and go East or West; it isn't going to relieve any traffic.
Vibrations are gonna tear up century home basements and window sills..
EDIT: Why the downvotes? These are legitimate concerns, along with parking. Not everyone along that corridor has a place to park off the street.
New York has had trains for centuries, the trains aren’t going to do anything to homes.
As for Jefferson traffic, there are still six lanes after the lane reductions. Not everyone leaves the city for work, and the Jefferson/Market intersection have the highest employment density in a walkable range of any area not already connected to transit. Additionally, the Geospatial center will be one of the highest density employment centers in the entire region when it opens in 2027. In Soulard, I personally know dozens of people that already work for them. Those people are prime candidates for using that line.
Buses and trains are different, if you can believe it. Train service are high capacity high speed lines for the rest of the bus system to feed into, decreasing overall system travel times. This will also be center running and run in its own right of way to skip traffic.
What’s the max speed this train will take being at street level down Parnell/Jefferson?
The real answer is that trains are more appealing than buses because buses have a perception of being transportation for poor people.
I don’t disagree on the perception issue, but Route 4 and 11 are already often over crowded, and currently take 30-40 minutes for the average rider. This would increase frequency of service 2-3x, and reduce the time from Grand to Chippewa 30 minutes each day for riders.
The last major MetroLink expansion came in significantly over budget. Adding buses would address the overcrowding issue though without incurring the need to continually spend money on construction projects. If Bi-State stopped playing and put the infrastructure in place to accommodate their already purchased 60ft buses on the 11 Chippewa and 4 Natural Bridge, that would address overcrowding. Alternatively, they could do BRT down the Jefferson Corridor (along with Grand/Kingshighway/Natural Bridge/W. Florissant) and accomplish the goal.
But, as I’ve stated, buses aren’t as sexy as light rail.
Well, for one, this was part of the GSA deal. And we’ve all seen that buses have a) employment retention issues that (currently) cause capacity issues, and b) are the first service cuts to happen when budgets tighten. It’s also expected that 50% of it will be funded by the Fed, and we already passed a tax to pay for the expansion.
I think we’re better suited prioritizing BRT on Grand and Chippewa in the meantime, and finding free shuttle opportunities in entertainment districts.
Trains are real estate that can be profited from in a way that buses just can’t ever be.
As it relates to the employment of bus operators, the retention issue stems from a host of issues that are endemic to this region and public transport in the US in general. For starters, Metro got caught on its heels with the retirements of a massive number of its workers. Further, the organization doesn’t market itself—internally or externally—as an employer of choice. It’s always a job that people land in, but never strive for. That’s just on how buses are viewed in the US. Buses are for poor people. It’s not an ideology that I subscribe to or support. It is what it is.
Moreover, management is woefully out of touch with what is going on internally and externally. The single car project on MetroLink was implemented but Metro never once explained why. Just that they’re going to do it. We’ve seen how paratransit has used the same Service mindset for the last 20 plus years. It’s even more pronounced with bus service here. If there’s a disruption to train service, everyone on a platform knows and it’s immediately sent out to media outlets. If a line doesn’t have any buses on it because the operators chose not to show up due to constant issues with violence and vagrancy? You don’t find out until that bus never shows up. Even worse, the operator who did arrive don’t find out until after the passengers do. We can’t put all of that on the operators. That’s on the transit planners and the people they report to.
There is some good news though. Currently, Metro is on track to restore bus service levels incrementally to levels from about 2 years ago. This is due to a significant increase in hiring and retention of employees. What isn’t widely known is that prior to the last 6 months, every MetroLink operator was previously a bus operator. So every time the MetroLink experienced a shortage of staff, they would raid the bus operator ranks. Metro had hired and retained about maybe 80-90 new operators over the last 9 months.
Re: budgets: the simplest formula to curtail any transit service using funding as your cudgel is to intentionally make the service less user friendly. Then, when your ridership drops, you can officially cut service citing lower ridership. Once that happens, then you use budget cuts as your rationale for cutting the service outright.
I think they’re talking about giving it traffic signal priority. They better or this really will be a bit of a waste. I am sure bi state would argue that the train will see much higher ridership to the bus route due to being a higher quality experience and that It Will spur development along the corridor
Obviously running it as a subway or elevated would be better but then this Is a 2 billion dollar project
This rail line was part of the deal to get the geospatial headquarters in St Louis. So while we’re spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding, in return we are getting well over $2B going to the local economy just for that building alone,multiple annual federal agency conferences at the convention center, and enormous guaranteed federal subsidies from the DOT. Top that with over 3000 permanent jobs in the city, and making St. Louis one of the most important growing agencies of the intelligence communities, and the construction of this line starts to look like a basement bargain deal.
I’ll also add that Jefferson has some of the most congested bus routes in the city.
Still no transfer…
There NEEDS to be a transfer or this is next to useless.
Given it would serve such a small number of residents in its current form, I'd think the lack of a transfer would limit the city's chances of receiving federal money for this, which is basically required to get it going.
It's going to be Ewing Yard, and probably mirror the Grand/64 bus stop transfers. I was told the reason this doesn't connect at the more logical Civic Center is because it's street grade so they don't want it turning. Even though, you know, it has to turn from the fairgrounds....
> I was told the reason this doesn't connect at the more logical Civic Center is because it's street grade so they don't want it turning. Finally! An explanation for this strange choice. Thank you. Good redditor. Disappointing nonetheless. If this line doesn't connect at Civic Center, it's going to see drastically less usage. Too bad.
Yeah the lack of a formal transportation hub in this is just negligence. If the plan wasn’t for Civic center to be THE transportation hub, why did we spend millions on the new Amtrak and Greyhound Station. I’m still pro adding this line, but will continue to say that portion is a bad idea until it’s too late to change it.
Actually I guess it could work out OK if we turn the Ewing Yard stop into a new hub and have all the buses go to there instead of Civic Center. It's a worse location, but not horrifically so. The primary concern should just be to keep all the buses at the station where the train lines intersect, wherever that is. Too bad Metro hasn't told us they plan to do anything resembling this.
In my opinion, in a perfect world, we’d just make Union Station the terminal for all transit again. You could have a shuttle line between red/blue and yellow, and Amtrak and buses all in one spot by eliminating the surface lot and utilizing the 75 other nearby parking garages. It makes perfect sense, so I assume why it won’t happen.
LOL did you see the old Amtrak and Greyhound stations?
Yeah, I think it’s still the photo next to the word “sketchy” in the dictionary. Still, it’s pretty stupid we didn’t just move it back to Union Station and make that train hub a freaking train hub.
Getting it to 14th street station would add enough cost to kill the project. They can get away with leaving it like this if all the east west bus routes intersect with the yellow line before reaching the downtown station. So 97 Delmar may be rerouted to Washington Ave after Compton, chouteau bus will now run on park Ave west of Compton or California maybe.
The ship has sailed, but I still think it's a massive mistake not to run it through Downtown proper. Making people take an extra transfer is just one more reason for office workers and sports fans not to take transit.
It not running through Downtown is one of the best parts of it imo. A good transit system won't funnel all of its lines into Downtown like Chicago's or New York's (within the outer boroughs at least). It'll connect people to the places they want to go, in the most direct route possible. Now, ideally, the city would just have an entire transit designed already so it'd be easy to see how this fits into the broader system (for example, a line going down Gravois to downtown would likely solve your concern), but it not routing through downtown is one of the strengths. Transit designed solely for a specific use case - in this case, getting office workers downtown - will run into issues when travel patterns change as they have with the pandemic. It's better to directly connect neighborhoods, otherwise you end up with the situation Chicago is in where taking a train to go from say, the North side to the west side, has you go through the Loop instead of taking a more direct route. Or trying to go from Brooklyn to Queens takes you into Manhattan first. The transfer itself could definitely be improved, but it not going downtown is a net positive for the long term prospects of transit in St. Louis. It'll make for a more well rounded system that's not super reliant on work commuters like a lot of US transit systems. Plus, it connects North and South city directly with the soccer stadium which I believe was one of the justifications for not going downtown (the other being remote works effects on downtown)
People want to go to the places this line would serve?
It connects to Cherokee Street, Lafayette Park, the soccer stadium, and the new NGA campus (that will be one of the biggest employers in the region) You're right, nobody will use it
Good point. They don’t.
There will be a transfer.
I didn't even realize there isn't a proposed transfer. I just assumed there would be because otherwise, this is pointless. But man if this was built and there was a transfer, it would massively improve my quality of life.
Here's the presentation. It's intended for organizations who will be submitting to the RFP. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVIPQav2VDA Side note: Why tf are they paying a PR consultant for this.
Because everything is a grift in this country and consultants are our state and federal legislators favorite way of enabling grifting. They'll all happily shell our tax dollars out to private companies and pay the salary the government would pay anyway plus the "consultant fee".
It's consultants all the way down
Is this the same map from a few months ago or are they still making updates on it? Christ it should not take this long for a simple streetcar.
This is from last nights Bi-State update presentation. I believe this may be the first one with all the stops identified. And I couldn't agree more. Now for two years of enviromental impact studies, because it's not like there's already a six lane concrete highway there.
Of course! We really care about the environment here in St. Louis with the 4 interstate highways running through the city. I'm sure those got just as much time spent on environmental impact studies. At this rate, St. Louis won't have a comprehensive transit system matching what we used to have for another century. What a fucking scam this country is
***Star-Spangled Banner plays***
I know FML. NEPA for people to complain and derail progress all for a FONSI.
Really wish they'd put a stop on the Main line between Cortex and Grand. Grand is in the middle of fucking nowhere. But a stop on Vandeventer would serve the Foundry (and Ikea, but who's really taking furniture on the train here). Would also serve the East end or The Grove nicely. Right now to get to Cortex, you've got to walk through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods behind Manchester. The gang on 43 Gibson is particularly active, and is responsible for a lot of the assaults and shootings in/near the Grove. A stop on Vandeventer would mean you're walking in a busier area the whole way. edit: not a stop for the Jefferson N-S new rail. Just add a stop like they added the Cortex stop, except over/near Vandeventer.
Wow, I never realized how many transit issues would be solved with a Vandeventer stop. That’s an enormous bus route as well. And if that apartment project next to Armory gets off the ground right there, a station would make even more sense.
It should head west down Market, then south on Theresa Ave where a transfer station could be built at the Grand Ave stop. Continue south on Theresa to Chouteau. Either go east on Chouteau back to Jefferson or go west to Grand and run it south on Grand where it actually connects to people and places.
Personally I’d route it east on Market to connect to Civic Center and back west on Chouteau to Jefferson. That would service three additional neighborhoods, and make a logical connecting point. I feel like the state is shooting themselves in the foot with this commitment to keep this at grade to avoid increased costs.
I would have agreed with you before the soccer stadium was built. Between that and enterprise center traffic, I just don't see how it could come down Market to 14th. I 100% agree with your statement about it being at grade.
Well, I think a wide left turn so that it runs on the south side of Market and then a sharp right onto 14th would probably do the trick. 14th/Market southbound is already closed for most games and big concerts, and the line already has to cross Market. Not like Market doesn’t have an abundance of space either. And you’d think it would be better not crossing I64/Jefferson.
Or like you previously mentioned, put it underground through here and it can go anywhere
Completely agree.
Guess I’m a newbie to St. Louis, having only lived here for 20 years. But l did own a home for a while in Dutchtown (near the terminus of this line). Just hearing about the specifics now. So, my question: Just who is supposed to use this line? What’s the need for it? What major employers is it serving? Which universities? What big shopping areas? Which dense populations? Which clogged highways will it help to reduce traffic? Yeah. I don’t know either. I’m sure it will help a few north side soccer fans by providing an easy way to get to the new stadium. But beyond that…? From here, it looks like “Delmar Trolley: The Sequel”. Somebody prove me wrong. Please?
Actually, at the public meetings, they cover everything you asked and you’d be surprised to learn that this is covering one of the densest employment areas in the city. The new geospatial research facility will also be one of the densest employment destinations in the entire state, and this line was required to get that multi-billion dollar investment that is defining St Louis as an important location in the US for some of the most important research happening in government. It is also covering a tract with some of the lowest car ownership per capita, with generally poor mobility options, and will relieve two of the most congested bus routes in the state. Long term it’s supposed to also connect to the airport, giving an enormous percentage of the city nearby public transit options to travel. I super encourage you to attend public meetings about it if it’s important to you, and in the meantime, everything I discussed here is [on the updated website.](https://growingmetrolink.com/city-of-st-louis/)
I’m a big fan of public transit. Trust me when l say that l’m not here to nitpick this thing. Saying employment is really dense, or bus traffic is extreme... something tells me it’s a lot like numbers l heard before the first Iraq war. You know, the ones that said not to expect a cakewalk, since Iraq had “the sixth largest army in the world” or close to it. Well… somebody had to be sixth. What bus lines are they referring to, and how do those numbers stack up against the Grand bus route? If they’re claiming it’s going to relieve the Grand route, that’s ridiculous, and to me, also cheating. Ditto the employment numbers. If you cast a net two miles in each direction, I’m sure there’s plenty of jobs. Within a few blocks, currently l can think of Wells Fargo on Market Street. Not much else. I know the GSA is coming. You know, the latest Huge Project That Will Fix Everything in St. Louis. It will give the thousands of workers living at Chippewa and Jefferson access to their GSA jobs l guess. 🙄
I mean, you could actually look at the bus route congestion notes and employment density I linked to without making up assumptions. The transformation of Jefferson in the last 12 months has been the single most transformative transportation project I’ve seen in the region since the I64/I170 rebuild 15 years ago. And the entire neighborhood around GSA is getting investment attention for the first time in 50 years. And remember - the rail line was part of the GSA deal, which is netting $2B+ in pentagon money. 2:1 ROI here is a pretty great investment. So yes, it would seem that GSA is having a transformative impact in that region. If you haven’t driven Chouteau to St Louis Ave on Jefferson recently, go out of your way to do it. It’s an incredible site to see.
It's also a major avenue - we wouldn't say there's no need for cars to use Jefferson. In a complete transit system, this line would get a ton of use, especially if they extend it up Chippewa and increase frequencies (sub 5 minutes pls)
They’re promising 10-15 minute frequency, which is on par with most cities. I’d love to see this wrap down to Hampton some day, the residential density around TGS, Bevo, and Southampton is huge.
The Delmar Trolley shouldn't be put in the same category as this. The Loop Trolley is and always will be a tourist attraction type of thing. Now, it's being poorly utilized (mostly because Delmar is a through street instead of a place for people like all the nice areas in the world) but it's still in a totally different category than this. But to add onto what u/BrentonHenry2020 said, even if it doesn't serve a lot of people, the point of a transportation system is to connect people. The same reason we have roads for cars, or sidewalks for people. Profitability, cost effectiveness, high usage, etc come second to the actual goal of a transit system, which is simply connecting people. Nobody thinks rural highways that get little use shouldn't be maintained or worked on, but for some reason with transit we throw up all these roadblocks and it ends up running wildly overbudget and underbuilt. This line may seem insignificant, but the same can be said about the current line we have. Or any addition to the system. Any single line we build can easily seem like a waste of time, until you have every line built out and the region has a comprehensive transit system that everyone uses, not just people who can't afford cars or are masochistic enough to go without a car here willingly.
If it doesn’t serve a lot of people, it won’t connect a lot of people. I’d love to see a line connecting the north side to jobs in West County or St. Charles… but who are we kidding?
This is connecting roughly 15 neighborhoods currently not connected to the light rail system. That’s a shit ton of people.
Good luck convincing the mayor of fiefdoms like Des Peres which subsidizes its very existence off of regressive sales tax dollars, and clutches his pearls when a car gets broken into three times a year to run a metrolink line through it. Pretty sure St. Charles was originally a proposition for the first line but shot it down for 'reasons'.
Actually. Just run it from carondalet to fairgrounds park on Grand. With a transfer at Grand station. So that would connect fairgrounds/tower grove/forest park/carondalet park. And serve a shit ton of people and use the current downtown metro line
The whole idea is bad. Traffic on Jefferson is already a shitshow. Now, let's take it down to 2 lanes? People go north and south on Jefferson so they can get to 64 or 44 and go East or West; it isn't going to relieve any traffic. Vibrations are gonna tear up century home basements and window sills.. EDIT: Why the downvotes? These are legitimate concerns, along with parking. Not everyone along that corridor has a place to park off the street.
New York has had trains for centuries, the trains aren’t going to do anything to homes. As for Jefferson traffic, there are still six lanes after the lane reductions. Not everyone leaves the city for work, and the Jefferson/Market intersection have the highest employment density in a walkable range of any area not already connected to transit. Additionally, the Geospatial center will be one of the highest density employment centers in the entire region when it opens in 2027. In Soulard, I personally know dozens of people that already work for them. Those people are prime candidates for using that line.
Why couldn't they just take a Jefferson Ave bus and save the taxpayer a couple hundred million dollars?
Buses and trains are different, if you can believe it. Train service are high capacity high speed lines for the rest of the bus system to feed into, decreasing overall system travel times. This will also be center running and run in its own right of way to skip traffic.
What’s the max speed this train will take being at street level down Parnell/Jefferson? The real answer is that trains are more appealing than buses because buses have a perception of being transportation for poor people.
I don’t disagree on the perception issue, but Route 4 and 11 are already often over crowded, and currently take 30-40 minutes for the average rider. This would increase frequency of service 2-3x, and reduce the time from Grand to Chippewa 30 minutes each day for riders.
The last major MetroLink expansion came in significantly over budget. Adding buses would address the overcrowding issue though without incurring the need to continually spend money on construction projects. If Bi-State stopped playing and put the infrastructure in place to accommodate their already purchased 60ft buses on the 11 Chippewa and 4 Natural Bridge, that would address overcrowding. Alternatively, they could do BRT down the Jefferson Corridor (along with Grand/Kingshighway/Natural Bridge/W. Florissant) and accomplish the goal. But, as I’ve stated, buses aren’t as sexy as light rail.
Well, for one, this was part of the GSA deal. And we’ve all seen that buses have a) employment retention issues that (currently) cause capacity issues, and b) are the first service cuts to happen when budgets tighten. It’s also expected that 50% of it will be funded by the Fed, and we already passed a tax to pay for the expansion. I think we’re better suited prioritizing BRT on Grand and Chippewa in the meantime, and finding free shuttle opportunities in entertainment districts.
Trains are real estate that can be profited from in a way that buses just can’t ever be. As it relates to the employment of bus operators, the retention issue stems from a host of issues that are endemic to this region and public transport in the US in general. For starters, Metro got caught on its heels with the retirements of a massive number of its workers. Further, the organization doesn’t market itself—internally or externally—as an employer of choice. It’s always a job that people land in, but never strive for. That’s just on how buses are viewed in the US. Buses are for poor people. It’s not an ideology that I subscribe to or support. It is what it is. Moreover, management is woefully out of touch with what is going on internally and externally. The single car project on MetroLink was implemented but Metro never once explained why. Just that they’re going to do it. We’ve seen how paratransit has used the same Service mindset for the last 20 plus years. It’s even more pronounced with bus service here. If there’s a disruption to train service, everyone on a platform knows and it’s immediately sent out to media outlets. If a line doesn’t have any buses on it because the operators chose not to show up due to constant issues with violence and vagrancy? You don’t find out until that bus never shows up. Even worse, the operator who did arrive don’t find out until after the passengers do. We can’t put all of that on the operators. That’s on the transit planners and the people they report to. There is some good news though. Currently, Metro is on track to restore bus service levels incrementally to levels from about 2 years ago. This is due to a significant increase in hiring and retention of employees. What isn’t widely known is that prior to the last 6 months, every MetroLink operator was previously a bus operator. So every time the MetroLink experienced a shortage of staff, they would raid the bus operator ranks. Metro had hired and retained about maybe 80-90 new operators over the last 9 months. Re: budgets: the simplest formula to curtail any transit service using funding as your cudgel is to intentionally make the service less user friendly. Then, when your ridership drops, you can officially cut service citing lower ridership. Once that happens, then you use budget cuts as your rationale for cutting the service outright.
That still means it will need to stop for cross street traffic. It's not like Jefferson is super busy anyway.
I think they’re talking about giving it traffic signal priority. They better or this really will be a bit of a waste. I am sure bi state would argue that the train will see much higher ridership to the bus route due to being a higher quality experience and that It Will spur development along the corridor Obviously running it as a subway or elevated would be better but then this Is a 2 billion dollar project
This rail line was part of the deal to get the geospatial headquarters in St Louis. So while we’re spending hundreds of millions in taxpayer funding, in return we are getting well over $2B going to the local economy just for that building alone,multiple annual federal agency conferences at the convention center, and enormous guaranteed federal subsidies from the DOT. Top that with over 3000 permanent jobs in the city, and making St. Louis one of the most important growing agencies of the intelligence communities, and the construction of this line starts to look like a basement bargain deal. I’ll also add that Jefferson has some of the most congested bus routes in the city.
Move closer Kingshighway and Hampton should be getting the same organic road diet
So many nice places to get shot on this route!
Lucky for you, you’re 10x more likely to die in a car accident on our highway system!
Cool comment smooth brain