urbanSTL

Understand what is being said, but you can build sidewalks, add permnament or temporary event shuttle buses (have ridden a lot of those as a business traveler), and change bus routes and even add density to an existing office park and modify your light rail route. The hard reality of politics is that Westport line will be built first and then North-South in some distance future. That being said, my question is

Westport/Daniel Boone the best option for the county and therefore more beneficial to the city vs. extending the current lines? or is extending the current metrolink lines a better option overall, for both the county and city? I think their is some good pros and cons.

Everybody has convinced me that North-South is the best option by far, North-South ridership numbers would do a better job of securing Federal transit dollars and wondering if I should have made a new thread since I got this conversation veered off course.

Most on here have such a different vision from what metro is visioning.
I agree with most of you accept for the thinking of a earth city metro link expansion i don't think it could or would.
I was reading Saint.Louis ranked 59th in transportation Portland ranked 13th & Kansas City ranked 139th .. We're in the middle when it comes to those respective cities so yes Metro could do a much better job..
Maybe they could & should take advice from the people on here & residents throughout the proposed future lines.

Note in that 59th ranking they use 2.1M people as the population.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how- ... stacks-up/

quincunx wrote:Note in that 59th ranking they use 2.1M people as the population.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/how- ... stacks-up/

he claims to have used the urbanized area population, but i'm not seeing where he gets 2.1M people. in any case it still doesn't make sense considering that Metro only serves a fraction of that area.

urban_dilettante wrote:in any case it still doesn't make sense considering that Metro only serves a fraction of that area.

Well, he's attempting to rank regions, not organizations.

mill204 wrote:^^ While I certainly sympathize with those that wish to see MetroLink extend to Earth City, I just don't see the benefit. The station's primary use would be as a Park+Ride; the area is just too sprawling to permit many workers from using the station as part of their daily commute. To DePaul Hospital, perhaps, but not Earth City. The image below is properties within half-mile walk of a theoretical MetroLink station.

I work in one of those highlighted buildings. It would be so awesome to be able to take the train out here.

There's other issues with this though. Riverport has no sidewalks, like at all. The bus stops here are right on the edge of the curb with just a signpost. No shelters, no concrete, and close enough to the road to be dangerous.

STLEnginerd wrote:Just curious. Why do we have to assume that the metro link would station would drop passengers off at the highway overpass. Thats a pretty terrible place to drop passengers. Why not a half mile north in the heart of earth city business park.

Keeping it by the highway sets it up to cross the river into St Charles.

The Grand station should be at FPA or Lindell, but we went the cheap and easy route. That would probably happen here.

Mayor of St.Charles City is very supporting of transit and wants to bring it to the city

St. Charles seems like a better candidate for commuter rail than Metrolink, given the distance.

Not sure but right now there is no talk for any sorts of light trail expansion...its very quite and i have a feeling it will stay that way for a long time.

"After Ferguson?"

STLEnginerd wrote:

Also, after Ferguson, I think WestCo expansion is dead in the water.... stupid idea to prioritize that to begin with.

Since I missed my window on another thread I'll respond here.

I really don't see how Ferguson can be linked to N-S Metrolink expansion. Consider While not directly served there are 2 Metrolink station very close to Ferguson. One is at Hanley Rd. , and the other is UMSL North. there are several bus lines that serve the main corridors through Ferguson as well and connect to the Metrolink stations. A N-S Metrolink as planned doesn't serve Ferguson directly either, and instead better serves North St. Louis City and Jennings.
I get all the arguements for N-S over Westport expansion, and I agree with most of them, but I really don't see how it can be tied to Ferguson. Your not really suggesting that, 'geez if only they had built a N-S line this Ferguson thing would have never escalated like it did', are you?

That is incorrect, it would have went down W. Florissant. The same street the rioting took place.

With that said....if the county plans to go forward with Westport, it will just further highlight the bad public policy and cronyism that goes forward in this region. A Westport line with no meaningful zoning changes will only be a nice commuter toy to get West County folks from a park and ride garage at Westport to Cardinals, Blues, and Rams games. Not very good for public policy. Now some of the stations on the Westport line do have merit, specifically the Olive Rd. station in University City and what they want to develop at the Danforth Plant Science Center.

I would actually like to see us use the I-70 express lanes for the Northern leg and have it meet up with the red line near Northpark. I would also like to see the South city ROW used through the city and follow I-55 until it gets to South County Center. The N-S Line for Jefferson and Natural Bridge should be changed to BRT. I think we get more benefits from metro being grade separated, even though many don't like transit on highways, we have to be honest about the realities that our region has developed and continued to development around highway infrastructure.

^^ No, not at all... just that NoCo has serious transit needs and that wasting $$ on a questionable WestCo expansion will make it more difficult to solve/meet them. What I do hope is that the region urgently address its public transportation needs and move boldly forward. We need a strong plan that meets true needs and that can be implemented in a reasonable time.

I really don't like transit in the middle of highways. Waiting for the train at the Clayton station is quite unpleasant being in the middle of FPP. It'll be all that worse in the middle of an interstate. Plus it puts you on the edge of things not in the middle of them. It would have been better to have tunneled down Forsyth and put the station at Central. Or put the Grand station at Grand and FPA.