Mayor Slay Supports New Bridge But Doesn’t Justify Why
I’ve written about the proposed new Mississippi River Bridge a couple of times. First on January 3, 2005 and earlier this month on August 2, 2005. Add this to the list.
Over the weekend the “from the mayor’s desk” included a brief item on the new Mississippi River Bridge. Surprise: The Mayor Supports the massive project! But I take issue with some of the logic the Mayor uses to support the bridge. Lets take a look at all of the text from his website:
Somebody recently asked me why I support construction of a new Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis. Such a span, said the person, would only make it easier to continue the residential sprawl that has scattered the region’s population miles from the City. And with the same transportation money, the region could rethink and rebuild its shrinking bus routes to support workers and employers in the urban core.
True enough. Bridges and highways have enabled people to continue to operate single occupancy vehicles and build sprawl far away from the core. At the same time the core has suffered from lack of proper support for other means of transportation including walking, bicycling, buses, light rail and bringing back street cars. Lots to ponder, let’s see how the mayor responds.
I agree that the public transportation needs more thought – and more money. But, I still support the new bridge.
Here’s why:
Oh I see, political answer. Restate the question so you know you’ve been heard and then give the answer you want to give that really doesn’t address the main issues.
The new bridge will make it easier for commuters to get into and out of Downtown. That will help us grow Downtown, which is important because Downtown is our City’s and our region’s central business district.
After reading this paragraph I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t 1950. St. Louis and most other U.S. cities have been doing just that — making it easier to get in and out of downtowns for about 60 years now. Where has that put us? We have highways we can’t afford to maintain. We have massively wide roadways that are not friendly to walk beside much less cross. We have countless acres devoted to parking. We have more bridges now than when the population of the city was nearly 3 times great than it is now.
Downtown is important to the city and region. But to think we need to continually make it easier for auto drivers to get in and out is short sided. They’ll tell you it is good long range planning because of projections for commuting times in the year 2025. This, of course, assumes we will continue to build sprawl further and further and and that gas is plentiful and cheap. At what point do we begin spending money, real money, on making our downtown and other neighborhoods where people want to flock to rather than just come in briefly for work, dinner, a show, a game and then flee across a new bridge?
I also believe that by opening more of Southern Illinois to development, the new bridge will shift the economic hub of the region east towards our City. That is a very good thing for us. Anything that grows our region’s economy will be good for the City, too. If the region adds 100,000 new jobs, we will get our fair share.
I’ll agree that I don’t like all the development activity happing so far west in extreme St. Louis County and in St. Charles County. I’d like to see the city be more in the middle which does mean a balance of development in metro East.
But what about development in Southern Illinois. From what I’ve seen it is building sprawl as much as St. Charles County. We’ve got MetroLink out to Scott Air Force Base but I don’t see good examples of Transit Oriented Development (aka TOD) happening along the various stops. Instead we have big park and ride lots and sprawling suburbs in between. Sure building sprawl to the East of downtown St. Louis will balance things out with us more in the center but is that the best our region can do.
“Anything that grows our region’s economy will be good for the City, too.” Really? Is that certain? Who is to say this growth wouldn’t come at the expense of the City? Seems like a lot of assumptions are being made.
Finally, I know that our success as a City is never going to hinge on making it more difficult to leave the urban center nor harder to live in the suburbs.
Notice the subtle message here: If you oppose the bridge you are trying to make it more difficult to leave the core and harder to live in the ‘burbs.” This is a common strategy — to paint any opposition as having an unreasonable position.
Rather, we will succeed or fail as a growing City based upon our ability to give new employers, young families, immigrants, business travelers, empty nesters, students, and tourists the reasons to come to us.
To me, that means encouraging the things that make us different from other places: our neighborhoods, our ethnic and social diversity, our universities, our tolerance, our cultural institutions, our Downtown, our public celebrations, our Riverfront . . .
If we concentrate on doing those things well, a new bridge will just make it easier for more people to come here.
I completely agree with the first two sentences: we need to give people reasons to come here and we need to set ourselves apart. Unfortunately every other city is also thinking the same thing. What are the reasons to come to St. Louis? Are they neighborhoods, diversity, higher education, tolerance, cultural institutions and so on? Probably so. But saying we need a bridge to make it easier to get here is just laughable. To me the bridge still hasn’t been justified.
The real issue is people — not cars. Yet billions of dollars are being spent subsidizing private auto transportation. Billions! All in the name of progress. History clearly shows us the making it easier by car logic simply doesn’t work. The most desirable places to be are those that make it easier to be a pedestrian than a driver.
The best thing that we could do to grown and improve our city is to stop the bridge now and speed up the process of rebuilding internal connections. Remove highways by turning them into lower capacity boulevards. Put back the street grid in many places where it has been cut off by “progress” of highways. Scrap plans for a costly Northside and Southside MetroLink line and instead build many more miles of street cars serving greater portions of the city.
We must decide if we are going to continue with the 1950s auto-centric urban renewal way of thinking or are we going to recognize the mistakes of the past and truly look forward. This is a critical time in St. Louis and I don’t think the political or business “leadership” understands what needs to be done.
What do you think?
– Steve
