North-South MetroLink Unlikely to Get Money From Trump
Date Posted: December 19, 2024
Posted In: Discussion,
From St. Louis Business Journal:
by Les Sterman, former director of the East-West Gateway Council of Governments
The proposed extension of the MetroLink light rail system known as the Green Line has been described as affordable for the city of St. Louis, transformational for the surrounding neighborhoods and providing economic benefits vastly outweighing its costs.
It is none of those things.
As a longtime advocate for MetroLink, it is painful to reach that conclusion. MetroLink does indeed need to be expanded, but the Green Line is not the way to do it.
The Green Line is a small segment of a route originally conceived to run from south St. Louis County through downtown St. Louis and into north St. Louis County. It is now only 5.8 miles, entirely in the city of St. Louis, but bypassing downtown, with no prospect to expand beyond that limited segment. Unlike other completed MetroLink routes, the Green Line is not a shared regional project, but one financed solely by the city of St. Louis with a combination of loans, sales tax revenue and federal money. The route has been projected by its sponsors to cost as much as $1.1 billion and carry 5,200 riders a day at its projected opening in 2031, fewer than some bus routes.
The financing plan relies on 60% of the construction costs coming from the federal government. It is rare for any project to be funded at the level, let alone one performing as poorly as this one. While the federal government will consider ancillary benefits, those will not be sufficient to overcome such low projected usage. And with an incoming Trump administration that will not be kind to spending on public transit, it is very unlikely that the Green Line will receive significant federal money, if any.