Those Soon-To-Close Highway 40 Ramps are Remnants of a Never-Built North-South Highway
Date Posted: January 31, 2020
Posted In: News, Projects,
From St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Long, looping lanes criss-crossing under downtown streets and on an overpass high over Highway 40 (Interstate 64) are the last remnants of a long-planned, hotly debated highway.
Starting Monday, drivers will not be able to take the ramps to and from North 20th, Market or Pine streets; the exits and entrances are closing to make room for the new MLS stadium downtown.
The 3.3-mile-long North-South Distributor Highway was going to connect Interstate 70 to both interstates 44 and 55. First proposed in the late 1940s, the highway plan died in the early 1980s.
The ramps were built in 1964, when construction expanded the Daniel Boone Expressway from Brentwood Boulevard. They were built to handle far more traffic than they did as exits to downtown streets, and would have been part of a major interchange.
The route of the highway, which would have been Route 755, changed several times over the years. At one point, it would have run through part of Lafayette Square neighborhood, but resident concerns about destroying the historic district convinced planners to alter the plan.
An August 1977 article said that despite the change to the southern part of the route, residents in north city neighborhoods continued to criticize the plan.
“The highway, designed to ease congestion predicted on the area’s interstate system an to provide an outlet into and from the city’s central business district, has been controversial since it was first proposed in 1948 by the St. Louis Plan Commission.”
The same article quoted Alderman Mary Ross: “They just sit around and wait and wait, thinking we won’t do anything about it after a while. And while they wait, nothing, absolutely nothing, has been done for housing.” Residents worried that the highway “would divide neighborhoods, increase air pollution and noise, force residents to relocate and cripple efforts to construct new housing and rehabilitate existing structures.”