Given the amount of state and federal funding that was sunk into reconstructing 40 through town I don't think eliminating it is an option. Further, of all the highways in town that one is probably the least disruptive, since it's at a place that's always been a natural barrier: first the Mill Creek and later the railroad yards and surrounding industry. At no point as the city ever been particularly well connected north to south through that corridor. And the highway is mostly just along the edge of it where it does little to no additional damage. Unless you close it removing the elevated highway structure just means it takes up more space, which sounds like a bad idea to me.chriss752 wrote: ↑Aug 21, 2018I think it would be beneficial to at least reconstruct some of the street grid. The Elevated 564 bridge in the neighborhood is a mess and needs to be lowered/eliminated. The Market Street-Forest Park-64 Interchange also needs to be redesigned to restore a street grid on the East side of midtown by Harris Stowe. Some train tracks could be removed. Taking my brother down here to rail-fan makes me think that not all of these tracks are needed. Rarely will I see tons of trains parked and waiting. Most of the time, only three of four are occupied. The Steelcote area is ripe for development but I only see the Steelcote Loft Building staying with the other buildings going away if any more development is to take place here. I never heard of the massive mixed use project that SLU hinted at Grand and Chouteau (if I am getting my directions correct). If that project is real, then some of the streets over by the Armory need to be connected to Chouteau somehow for the sake of pedestrians being able to move around without having to walk to the Grand bridge, cross and have a hell of a time getting to the Armory and City Foundry.
There are some lightly used railroad facilities in the area, but I don't know that they're the ones you think they are. The old Frisco yard just to the south of Central Industrial, which I believe is officially the 39th Street Yard, is pretty quiet now. And the old MoPac intermodal facility colloquially called the "circus ramp" (officially the Sarpy Avenue Yard) is probably not long for this world. But eliminating both of those in their entirety wouldn't really do anything to fix access, since they're both situated in the heart of what is otherwise active industrial super-blocks sited east/west along the tracks and blocking north/south communication anyway. It's not until you get east of Spring that it's really the railroads blocking things. And that? That is one of the busiest rail junctions in town. Easily the busiest west of the river crossings. The overwhelming majority of east/west traffic through town goes through that interlocking. It'd be a multi-billion dollar project to close that and move things elsewhere, since you'd have to build new bridges across the river and at least two major new railroad yards. And new lines to connect all of it. And as an added bonus you'd probably lose some of the industry that's still there or you'd see more truck traffic to serve it or both. (Probably a mix of the two. Which has been happening anyway.)
All of which is a long way of saying the yard tracks aren't in the way and the mainlines are fairly busy. (There aren't really that many yard tracks there anymore anyway. Most have already been torn out. What's there is much more mainline than you might guess, and there really shouldn't be anything "parked" on a main anymore than on an interstate highway. It happens. But it's usually a bad sign for all concerned.)
Anyway, don't get me wrong. I want to see more N/S connection through there. But the right way to do it is replacing things like the Spring Street viaduct. Even as expensive as that is, it's probably the cheapest solution. And quite likely also the best. That's probably about the limit of what you can accomplish there without tearing down the very buildings that make the area worth restoring.
