$1 Billion Mississippi River Bridge – The Numbers Just Don’t Add Up
Tuesday evening last week engineers revealed a new proposal for the Mississippi River Bridge. As expected, it is less costly and far less intrusive into the city compared to the old bridge. At first glance it looks fine. But when you dig below the surface the new design falls short of acceptable in an urban environment. Dig some more and the conclusion we need the bridge is questionable at best.
If you haven’t seen the previous design take a look at a prior post. Before I get into the question of having the bridge at all, let’s look at the revised design.
Again, the new design is far better than the catastrophic design previously proposed. Keep in mind the original concept many years ago was to make a highway loop around the West edge of downtown and connect with I-64/Hwy 40 just to the West of Union Station. Later this was scaled back as the 22nd Street Parkway but lofts and restaurants in the path of the parkway and lack of funds have killed the concept. But the engineers for the new bridge had continued to act as though the parkway was going to happen. In prior bridge concepts they had a massive hole and roadway stretching across the North edge of downtown that would dump cars onto Washington Avenue. Lack of money, not a richness of good sense, prompted the engineers to reconsider the Missouri interchange for the bridge.
Now, instead of dumping cars onto Washington Avenue they are being dumped onto Cass Avenue. The shortened on/off ramps are still being called “parkway” by the engineers simply because of all the open grass land around the them. Open grass land that comes from razing buildings and erasing the street grid. Long high-speed on/off ramps in an area where buildings and streets used to exist but now has some green grass is not a parkway, it is a mistake.
With nearly every downtown building being renovated as lofts and renewed interest in Old North St. Louis through their new in-fill houses we have a very unique opportunity to mend the city. Between downtown and Old North much has been lost and changed. But the street grid is mostly intact as are many of the buildings that make up a starting point for filling in the gaps between these two points. If done successfully someone could enjoy a nice walk from downtown to Crown Candy Kitchen. Filling in these blocks with new loft-like buildings, rowhouses and other building types we could create an even stronger residential base to support the growing number of downtown businesses. Strengthening our neighborhoods and seamlessly connecting them together should be a high priority for revitalizing the city. The new bridge design will make such connections visually challenging and literally difficult by foot, bicycle and even by car if you don’t know which streets are closed.
The revised design calls for the ramps to dump onto Cass Avenue between 10th and 11th Streets. Engineers have four lanes of traffic exiting the bridge at Cass. Two lanes turn left and two right. The assumption is many of the drivers that turn left will make an immediate right to take 10th Street into the central business district (CBD). 10th Street is currently a one-way street heading south, serving as a speedy exit from the current I-70. During the morning rush the street is crowded with folks just passing through. After 9am the street is desolate unless we have some sort of sporting event going on. The street is not there to serve the residents and to build upon but simply a pass through. Ninth Street is the opposite. No, it is not a lively street 24/7 but simply a Northbound version of 10th, a pass through on the way to somewhere else.
