Northside-Southside Can’t Wait
Date Posted: August 18, 2016
Posted In: Ideas,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Do not call what you are about to read finger-pointing. There’s enough of that going around. This is plain talk.
Light rail has worked in every city across the U.S. It connects marginalized communities to economic growth, increases regional productivity, de-concentrates poverty, promotes healthy living, creates vibrant and accessible public spaces, and catalyzes development in struggling neighborhoods.
St. Louis is dense enough to support more light rail than it has. Denver, which is less densely populated than St. Louis, just invested $7.6 billion in new light rail.
It is true, however, that density is one determinant of ridership, which is the critical metric by which potential routes are evaluated. Les Sterman, who led the East-West Gateway Coordinating Council for 26 years, was recently quoted in this newspaper explaining that the three routes proposed for study by St. Louis County won’t have enough ridership to attract federal funding. He proceeded to make an important point, that the “insistence on studying them ‘seems more like a political gesture than any serious attempt to expand MetroLink.’ ”
Sterman raises a fundamental question that has stalled light rail: Is St. Louis County serious about expanding mass transit?
If it is serious, then we should be exploring regional funding strategies. If it is serious, then we should be engaged in a joint planning effort of the full Northside-Southside alignment, which includes 10 miles in the county, instead of studying those three routes that would only be reasonable after Northside-Southside was operating.