Expat, What did you mean by a "Kansas City"? I have always thought that the Saint Louis highway system was far less efficient than the highways in KC (at least in my own daily experiences) so I am surprised to hear that but maybe you don't mean efficiency and ease of use?
Kansas City does have a larger system than St. Louis, but the Interstates choked off the downtown core from everything surrounding. KC is finally getting over the seperation and connecting the downtown area with the rest of the city, but the highways are still a barrier. If 755 would have been built as planned, downtown St. Louis would have been surrounded by highways as well, choking downtown off from the rest of the city even worse.
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Here is a biker's map of downtown KC that shows the extent of enclosure from the interstates:
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shelbyelyse wrote:Expat, What did you mean by a "Kansas City"? I have always thought that the Saint Louis highway system was far less efficient than the highways in KC (at least in my own daily experiences) so I am surprised to hear that but maybe you don't mean efficiency and ease of use?
I meant that downtown is surrounded by a tight loop making downtown an island. We are lucky they didn't follow through and do that to St. Louis. Just like the Matts have explained.
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Lets make sure this discussion stays focused on St. Louis' Downtown West development plan and not on KC's highway system. Thanks.
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Please excuse me from straying from the topic I can see that never happens but I felt a clarification was necessary to fully understand the ideas that were being expressed here. Not really sure why that was so wrong.
Seeking the clarification was not wrong at all. The only problem would have been if the thread would have continued as a discussion about KC Highways and forgetting about the original topic of the thread, which was the 22nd street area of St. Louis. Any further discussion should be put into a new thread to keep the topics strait.
Expat wrote:shelbyelyse wrote:Expat, What did you mean by a "Kansas City"? I have always thought that the Saint Louis highway system was far less efficient than the highways in KC (at least in my own daily experiences) so I am surprised to hear that but maybe you don't mean efficiency and ease of use?
I meant that downtown is surrounded by a tight loop making downtown an island. We are lucky they didn't follow through and do that to St. Louis. Just like the Matts have explained.
LOL, "The Matts?"
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I have been contemplating lately which highways could be turned into parkways and neighborhoods rebuilt and I-44 and I-64 seem the most practical but sadly I-64 is being rebuilt and I-70 will possibly be regenerated with its own Mississippi River bridge. People can zip onto I-270 in order to get to Illinois. However, if we remove interstate highways how will this affect tourism, business, and accessibility to St. Louis City if the vast majority of people drive? Metrolink could not be built fast enough.
I don't think the soultion is removing the current system of highways (the I-70 between the MRB and downtown being the exception). Instead as Marmar said in another thread, the soution maybe air rights. In many instances, St. Louis highways were built below street grade and perhaps the long term soultion to the problem would be slowly selling the air rights to develope over the highways. In some small test areas to being (think the Bohemian hill area to connect Soulard and Lafayett Square might be a good start) I am sure people can think of other places were such a plan would be possible. Let face it, in the modern world cutting the city off from highways with our current public transit system would be like strangling it, and thats not a good thing. The best is to try and develope where possible and make a funcitonal system out of the coexistance.