OPINION SHAPER: Why not run a MetroLink line along Highway 40?
By Ruth Rangel
Tuesday, February 20, 2007 4:59 PM CST
There I was in the middle of the night at a meeting where they were discussing the imminent construction on Highway 40. I could feel my heart racing as they prepared to test the subsoil, looking for a stable foundation upon which to start a much needed new interchange for Interstate 170.
"Wait! Stop!" I interrupted. "It's not too late to save ourselves from missing a great opportunity."
I had trouble getting people's attention until I shouted, "Now is the time to build a light rail on, above, below, or adjacent to the present route of Highway 40. While we're figuring out ways to move the people during the construction, why don't we do it right and put MetroLink all the way out to the Missouri River and into St. Charles Country?"
At this point someone called for order and warned that further outbursts would result in my being removed from the public meeting. But I kept on raving, even louder, "Build stations and multi-storied parking garages for commuters along the route." I was just getting warmed up. When I got to "Acquire the property on Mason Road which Troop C of the Missouri Highway Patrol is vacating and build there a MetroLink station and a tall garage," I was already being escorted out of the room.
As I was leaving, I heard voices saying, "Not feasible, not feasible." Then I took a ride in a squad car and spent the night in jail for disturbing the peace.
Have you ever had a nightmare in which you were frantically trying to summon help and you couldn't elicit the sound of your voice? The experience I recounted above was, indeed, a nightmare, the same nightmare I've been having since the costly, discomforting and fragmentary plans for Highway 40 (Interstate 64) were first announced.
Like everyone else in these parts, I drive Highway 40 almost every day. Like everyone else, I'm in love with and addicted to my automobile. But adding another lane of concrete to accommodate more cars will only lead to more congestion on the highway, as more and more drivers fill up the new space. In his State of the Union address, President Bush called for a 20 percent reduction in our consumption of gasoline during the next 10 years.
I think we have to devise long-range, futuristic methods of moving people efficiently now, before the day comes when gasoline shortages, pollution and other factors leave us no other choice.
I had occasion to ride the MetroLink recently from Clayton's Forsyth station to Shrewsbury. For some distance the rails parallel the lanes of I-170 going south to I-64. If only we could lay rails west from here, I thought. From Shrewsbury I then rode all the way to downtown St. Louis, across the Mississippi River, and into Illinois. The MetroLink cars, not crowded at mid-day but far from empty, were bright, meticulously clean and afforded me a quiet, smooth, comfortable ride and a very pleasant early afternoon.
MetroLink plans future corridors going north to I-270 and south to I-55. What about due west?
Three weeks ago, Citizens for Modern Transit hosted a seminar on transit-oriented development, which was about creating improved and more interesting, attractive, functional - not to mention commercially profitable - vicinage around light-rail stations, so that the immediate environs of the stations themselves would be a destination for some riders. Multipurpose land use - such as residential, retail, entertainment, offices, storage and open landscaped spaces - would replace some of the rather barren, abandoned former industrial sites along which MetroLink already has stations.
Transit-oriented development would require, among a host of other things, mixed-use zoning from numerous local governments. However, after listening to architects, developers, municipal officials, real estate professionals and transit advocates, I'm convinced there are exciting possibilities for creating neighborhoods in these spaces. People in Clayton, University City, Wellston and Shrewsbury already are exploring the potential benefits of transit-oriented development.
As I see it, expanding the role of MetroLink in our region, both in building new routes and in developing the areas around some existing stations, depends on two important factors: money and politics, and not necessarily in that order. Politics, in the broadest sense of the word, will require people and their leaders to take something which is clearly "not feasible" and make it possible, in the public interest.
Ruth Rangel of Chesterfield is one of 17 West County area Opinion Shapers. Opinion Shapers are guest writers who submit a column three times a year on areas of interest to them. Rangel is a retired high school teacher of history and German.
