urbanSTL

BRT could be useful as risk reduction for defining light rail requirements for a new line (infrastructure prep, traffic rerouting, better budge/schedule definition), and allows for pointed investments that would support future light rail conversion.  But there has to be a transition plan, and it has to be executed. You could even blend the two together: start with a BRT line, identify a station for light rail to grow out from, and replace the established BRT line with light rail (or keep extending the BRT line out as light rail line completes).

BRT lines for the long term may not be optimal, as BRT is somewhat semi-permanent, and in my opinion becomes an easy target to remove/replace/reallocate (similar to bus lines/stops)...and investment dollars may not follow.

addxb2 wrote: ↑

2:49 PM - Jan 16

Yeah but a straight line going down Jefferson with a terrible UNDERPASS MetroLink transfer station and no Downtown connection wasn’t what I voted for. Not to mention that route was going to cost nearly as much as a complete rebuild of the airport.

The mistake of Loop Trolley was wanting it so bad that STL ignored the facts and data.

A straight line down Jefferson with a good transfer station would be entirely effective.

The Green Line could easily be as useful to the city as an update to the airport; possibly more so.

The city of St. Louis had nothing whatsoever to do with Loop Trolley. That was a private company pushing a private agenda that independently applied for federal funding.

BRT is likely to fall into an uncomfortable middle ground. It will cost a substantial percentage of the original proposal, while providing less desirable service, likely at worse intervals, since there's no reason to think Bi-State will magically be able to hire more drivers. This isn't to say they'd magically be able to hire enough rail operators, but at least they're not coming out of the same overstretched pool.

At the end of the day, this is a bus. We already have a bus. Many of the gains of BRT could be realized by the simple expedient of designating a bus lane and ticketing drivers until they begin to respect it. You don't get the sexy stations, but it's a whale of a lot cheaper, and the speeds and intervals will be about the same, since . . . it's a bus. With a driver. Using the same basic sorts of equipment and operators out of the same pool of busses and drivers. You could improve timing with signal priority, but you could do that anyway, even without BRT.

Now let's imagine the service is overwhelmingly popular. Sooner or later you'll run into capacity problems, as we already do with the Grand line at rush hour. When that happens you can add frequency, but that increases your costs quite a lot. Easier to just add cars, which you can't do with a bus. It's quite conceivable that BRT will end up being a middle step that saves us very little money and costs us quite a lot, since it would all need to be rebuilt to accommodate light rail if the demand is there anyway. In terms of risk/benefit I just don't feel like this makes sense. Sure, it's cheaper now, but it's almost certainly less beneficial in the long run, and the moment you rebuild it better all the savings become losses.

So why are we throwing out the work we've already done? Just let it sit. Build nothing for a few more years, but keep planning. We're not getting BRT done during this administration anyway. By the time they start building stations the 2028 elections will be over and done and things could look dramatically different. So wait and plan and make sure everything is ready to go with the next administration. Anything else is a waste of all the money we've already spent, and a disservice to our children and grandchildren.

I'm not anti-BRT but I think the argument that it provides an investment that could become light rail later is naive. They aren't going to spend hundreds of millions redoing Jefferson, Natural Bridge, etc for BRT just to tear it all up for more expensive light rail a few years later.

In Los Angeles they built a BRT in the 2000s they are hoping to convert to light rail maybe in the 2050s.

^Part of why I'm opposed to it is that I believe we'll be stuck with a crumby solution for a long time to come. I'd really rather just wait and build something that's much better than the status quo rather than build something that's only a little better than the status quo for a lot of money that would make it harder to build something much better. This is a half measure. Worse. It's a half measure that makes a full measure more difficult and expensive. So I'm opposed to it.

symphonicpoet wrote: ↑

6:57 PM - Jan 16

addxb2 wrote: ↑

2:49 PM - Jan 16

Yeah but a straight line going down Jefferson with a terrible UNDERPASS MetroLink transfer station and no Downtown connection wasn’t what I voted for. Not to mention that route was going to cost nearly as much as a complete rebuild of the airport.

The mistake of Loop Trolley was wanting it so bad that STL ignored the facts and data.

A straight line down Jefferson with a good transfer station would be entirely effective.

The Green Line could easily be as useful to the city as an update to the airport; possibly more so.

The city of St. Louis had nothing whatsoever to do with Loop Trolley. That was a private company pushing a private agenda that independently applied for federal funding.

BRT is likely to fall into an uncomfortable middle ground. It will cost a substantial percentage of the original proposal, while providing less desirable service, likely at worse intervals, since there's no reason to think Bi-State will magically be able to hire more drivers. This isn't to say they'd magically be able to hire enough rail operators, but at least they're not coming out of the same overstretched pool.

At the end of the day, this is a bus. We already have a bus. Many of the gains of BRT could be realized by the simple expedient of designating a bus lane and ticketing drivers until they begin to respect it. You don't get the sexy stations, but it's a whale of a lot cheaper, and the speeds and intervals will be about the same, since . . . it's a bus. With a driver. Using the same basic sorts of equipment and operators out of the same pool of busses and drivers. You could improve timing with signal priority, but you could do that anyway, even without BRT.

Now let's imagine the service is overwhelmingly popular. Sooner or later you'll run into capacity problems, as we already do with the Grand line at rush hour. When that happens you can add frequency, but that increases your costs quite a lot. Easier to just add cars, which you can't do with a bus. It's quite conceivable that BRT will end up being a middle step that saves us very little money and costs us quite a lot, since it would all need to be rebuilt to accommodate light rail if the demand is there anyway. In terms of risk/benefit I just don't feel like this makes sense. Sure, it's cheaper now, but it's almost certainly less beneficial in the long run, and the moment you rebuild it better all the savings become losses.

So why are we throwing out the work we've already done? Just let it sit. Build nothing for a few more years, but keep planning. We're not getting BRT done during this administration anyway. By the time they start building stations the 2028 elections will be over and done and things could look dramatically different. So wait and plan and make sure everything is ready to go with the next administration. Anything else is a waste of all the money we've already spent, and a disservice to our children and grandchildren.

The City of St. Louis allowed the Loop Trolley to move forward knowing that the FTA would consider it liable. Which is why Bi-State Development reluctantly stepped in to operate knowing that the Trolley's failure would place a stain on the regions ability to attract future funding. East West Gateway had the ability to stop Loop Trolley by rejecting it's incorrect planning conclusions. 
 
Why are we throwing out the work we've already done?  This was exactly my question when STL began modifying the route and removing stations during the Jones administration. The correct solution to cost optimization was to reduce the project's initial phase one length. The route adjustment introduced new segments previously not studied or engineered and reduced ridership estimates by removing Downtown and high density stops in South City.  These changes altered the routes functionality. For example, the most common point-to-point trip South City to/from Downtown went from direct to requiring a transfer. This increased travel time and complexity, reducing utilization for those who have alternatives. The Jones administration should have said "We only have enough money to competitively build the central trunk of this system right now. We will continue to collect sales tax revenue and will deliver expansions north and south piece by piece."  

The idea that a region STLs size would spend $2B building a detached or free-standing rail line WITHOUT a direct connection to it's downtown or primary transit center is laughable and a strong indication of what STL (or at least the Jones administration) thought of Downtown. The willingness to alter the route when facing headwinds implied that the City doesn't understand the problem it's trying to solve. 

The lesson here is that the City of St. Louis should not be in the transit planning and building business. The best solution is an independent transit board which designs the aspirational system based on data and is funded to build free of local political changes. 

I agree that if we're going with BRT we should be proposing a network of BRT or system-wide high-frequency lines.

I still wish that this was called the Gold Line!

Metro can't muster high frequency lines as it is.

The lesson here is that the City of St. Louis should not be in the transit planning and building business. The best solution is an independent transit board which designs the aspirational system based on data and is funded to build free of local political changes. 

That's what EWG is supposed to do.

Something that frustrates this discussion I think is how the transit ambitions of the city are limited to new BRT vs light rail.

I'm not against those things by any means but I imagine the priority for the beleagured transit riding public is almost certainly the frequency/efficiency of the existing bus/metrolink system. Even moving around the city is much more difficult via transit than driving, Metro has 1 bus line offering sub-15 minute frequency and there seem to be no forthcoming plans to improve on that. Which even if there was a new north south metrolink line the lack of a frequent bus network would hobble STL ever becoming a genuinely car optional city.

And I have to say I agree w addxb2 on the merits of the shrunken proposal, like once they dropped the Russell and Arsenal stops I was wondering if it was worth fighting for.

Good thing Austin didn’t sh*t their pants

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

11:56 PM - Jan 16

Good thing Austin didn’t sh*t their pants

It was never about the feds. It was all about the local government. The federal money is there. It's always about the local match and local political will. Not to mention the Dems will likely control the house and senate very soon. I think the public should vote this BRT sh*t down and tell them to go back to the drawing board on light rail or at least modern streetcar for N-S. How about collaborating with the county on a real regional ligh rail line? Maybe a real regional N-S line follows I-70 and I-55 ROWs. I preferred the grade separated approach to LRT. Cara just wanted to be contrarian to Tishaura and it shows. 

As I’ve stated in many posts about this it should be up to residents of the city in what they want. It was plain ignorant to strip away in what voters voted for. I have no issues with BRT but that’s not what they voted for. Street level light rail is not bad even if it’s a few miles it’s a start in the right direction& you just build upon it. St.Louis always shoots itself in the foot or always settles for less. It gets discouraging to see the same so call leaders fumbling the ball at the 1 yard line consistently. It’s time to start scoring touchdowns.


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dbInSouthCity wrote:Good thing Austin didn’t sh*t their pants

https://www.kut.org/transportation/2026 ... nistration

- they passed a massive property tax
- reduced the phase 1 route length
- they still aren’t confident the feds will award the $10B project

Also keep in mind that Austin is proposing a 10 mile light rail project that will cost $7 Billion dollars. Austin is still a slightly smaller metro than St. Louis, although that is likely to change in the next couple years. It's amazing to me that leaders there see no problem with building a $7 Billion dollar system, but St. Louis leaders were complaining about a line that barely broke 1 billion and is half the size of Austin's line. I remember about 20 years ago when Denver was really going big with it's system. They basically built a whole light rail network for what 1 line costs now. St. Louis should have built out the network 20 years ago when costs were way more reasonable. Just goes to show how regional fragmentation severely hurts big economic development project and infrastructure investment. 

addxb2 wrote:

keepstlbrick wrote:Just not an alternative as far as uplifting development in the city.

And agreed, we need to create a BRT system if this is going to be the alternative.

Can’t believe they just threw the money spent on the green line and years of N-S down the drain because federal funding wouldn’t be coming in the next two years

In the last five years, there have probably been more development projects inspired by Indy’s BRT system than projects inspired by existing MetroLink stations. STL has the opportunity to show it can leverage rail to bring development right now, why doesn’t it?

Threw money away each of the four times they changed the route between the 2017 vote and today. Remember it was 17 miles, then 10 miles, then 5 miles. The federal funding for a rail version of this project is closer to six years away and would require STL reroute AGAIN to connect Downtown to increase ridership. STL would also need to reduce initial length AGAIN to 2 miles given current construction costs.

You were probably looking at 2036 opening for 2 miles of downtown only streetcar. This you’re looking at 2030 opening of 10 miles BRT.

1) You don't even live in St. Louis.
2) IndyGo ridership declined significantly after the opening of the Purple Line. That's how "great" their BRT is.

It's also entirely disingenuous to compare the Loop Trolley to the Green Line. The Trolley was never meant to be a serious piece of mass transit and should have never gotten federal money in the first place.

And would you not agree that a better alternative to austerity would be to work harder to make the Green Line work? Raise property taxes, work with the county, use Rams money, etc. No serious person would say it is worth spending $400M+ on a glorified bus. That's a joke, and I'll be voting no.

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PeterXCV wrote: ↑

10:47 PM - Jan 16

Something that frustrates this discussion I think is how the transit ambitions of the city are limited to new BRT vs light rail.

I'm not against those things by any means but I imagine the priority for the beleagured transit riding public is almost certainly the frequency/efficiency of the existing bus/metrolink system. Even moving around the city is much more difficult via transit than driving, Metro has 1 bus line offering sub-15 minute frequency and there seem to be no forthcoming plans to improve on that. Which even if there was a new north south metrolink line the lack of a frequent bus network would hobble STL ever becoming a genuinely car optional city.

Oh, this I agree with. We need increased frequencies on all the bus lines, especially those in the city and those that feed into Metrolink. Honestly, we could probably use increased frequencies on Metrolink itself at this point. In the city it's not too bad, but once you get out of town the wait can be rather lengthy. But that's an issue for another thread. The reason this one is BRT vs. LRT is because it's about the Green Line, not the system in general.

Man, I have long been a fan of switching from LRT to BRT, but it just CANNOT cost nearly half as much for the same milege.  We should be seeing quadruple the coverage.  If this is truly the case, it may not be worth it to do either ( as opposed to  beefing up the reg bus system)

The Jefferson alignment seems it was a compromise for making LRT work.  I'm not opposed to a Jefferson BRT alignment, but I dont think it should be the first, partly because I think it is less certain to have the intended effect on development and ridership.  A better alignment would be up Gravois/Tucker with a small jog to meet the civic center and then out N Florissant to meet Natural Bridge.  I think this route has a higher capacity for inducing development both in north downtown and old north, but in a much bigger way along Gravois, where a thousand crumbling car oriented businesses and vacant parcels (cutting through otherwise populated areas) have a higher chance of flipping to create a vibrant corridor.  

And, If you got rid of the Clark Ave highway 40 on ramp you could use that space for a nice Civic Center BRT station...

PeterXCV wrote: ↑

7:12 PM - Jan 16

I'm not anti-BRT but I think the argument that it provides an investment that could become light rail later is naive. They aren't going to spend hundreds of millions redoing Jefferson, Natural Bridge, etc for BRT just to tear it all up for more expensive light rail a few years later.

In Los Angeles they built a BRT in the 2000s they are hoping to convert to light rail maybe in the 2050s.

If it costs hundreds of millions for a BRT line, then BRT is a ridiculous sham.  Just stick with buses and the infrastructure you have in place.

If it helps prep for light rail, then it could be useful...but like anything, it comes down to a cost/benefit assessment.

dbInSouthCity wrote: ↑

11:56 PM - Jan 16

Good thing Austin didn’t sh*t their pants

Wow…exactly what I pointed to when we all of a sudden dropped our plans. Austin pushed forward. Now look. We just fell behind

Ridiculous decision making

Yeah, still fuming at Spencer over this. One thing to pause, brutal misjudgment to cancel entirely.

How much does street car from AB to North Riverfront cost?

For those of us a little out of the loop, what was the pathway to every building a meaningful amount of north / south lrt?

ldai_phs wrote:For those of us a little out of the loop, what was the pathway to every building a meaningful amount of north / south lrt?

If ~300,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had voted differently, there was a solid 60-70% chance STL would have gotten the federal grant for the Green Line.

So should America remain a semblance of a democracy come 2028 and Democrats win control of Congress and the Presidency again, there's a pretty decent shot lots of transit funding will become available again. So the argument would be to largely sit on the Green Line for the next 3 years, maybe make refinements and improvements here and there, maybe work with the county to try and have a larger line under planning, so comd 2029, STL is ready to apply and receive funding ASAP.

If we had done that from 2017-2021, we would have been ready for Biden-era funding, but we weren't at all.

As for why it makes no sense to do BRT, what they've floated is about twice as long but costs over $400M+ based on their current estimate. The Bi-State CEO also said it would utilize ~$250M in federal funding through, I'm pretty sure, the same grant program as the LRT would get money from.

So, 1) we are admitting STL will never expand MetroLink on the MO side ever again, 2) we are willingly making all the money we spent planning the Green Line mostly wasted (to the tune of millions of dollars) and 3) we still have to wait 3+ more year and apply/rely on federal funding regardless.

Beyond all that, it will become another example anti-transit leeches and conservatives will point to for why STL is poorly run and wastes money. And in this case, they'd be right and we'd have no one but ourselves to blame.

I don't disagree with Spencer's view that the Green Line is way less than what the original pitch was in 2017. But she is also being completely bad faith to act like this wasn't just phase one, and her comments about it on the Overarching podcast pretty much show she has no clue what she's talking about (for example, one of her concerns was that there would be a transfer station where you have to go down or up to the other train....as if this doesn't exist literally everywhere including STL right now). It shows incredible lack of vision and a surrender to austerity to instead of trying to make the LRT plan better, downgrade it to BRT. And then to do it in an undemocratic and sleazy way just makes it even worse. And during the election cycle, we now know why her answers on transit were so obtuse and indirect. She actually was worried she'd lose some support by openly opposing the Green Line.

And as good as BRT *can* be, it is not what we should be using for this alignment. If we want to do BRT, we should do "lite" BRT along high ridership bus lines like Minneapolis and suburban Chicago do. The 70 Grand is effectively a BRT line as it is, just with less than ideal amenities. You don't need to look any further than Indianapolis to see IndyGo's ridership dropped over 4.2% as of Q325 despite opening the $188M Purple Line.

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Since the new information pages and BRT website make it clear that "this is not a restart" and "much of the information gathered during the environmental study previously performed will be used", I struggle to see how another 15 months and $10 million (+10%) is needed to get to the same point in design we were supposedly at months ago. There should be significantly less design and technical expertise required for removing the rail scope and ultimately rebuilding 2 lanes of street and putting in some platforms. Not to mention North Jefferson, South Jefferson, and Chouteau (with it's new protected bike lanes) will all be recently resurfaced when the time comes to tear them up again. Are they really burning +$20k a day to give us 7 more glorified bus stops that won't even be fully designed until likely 2028? 

^ my assumption is they need to get Downtown back into the plan which was cut before the latest stage of engineering in 2024. Same is true for the extension up Natural Bridge and the southern terminus.

They’ll have to take the route back to East West Gateway to approve the “Locally Preferred Alternative” which is necessary to receive federal funds. Meeting the requirements of the LPA process is what cost the Jones administration when they decided to change the route in 2023.

The council review of the Jefferson only LPA in early 2024 was the first public indication that there was skepticism at EWG and other agencies that the Green Line was not exceptionally competitive.

StlAlex wrote:

ldai_phs wrote:For those of us a little out of the loop, what was the pathway to every building a meaningful amount of north / south lrt?

If ~300,000 people across Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania had voted differently, there was a solid 60-70% chance STL would have gotten the federal grant for the Green Line.

So should America remain a semblance of a democracy come 2028 and Democrats win control of Congress and the Presidency again, there's a pretty decent shot lots of transit funding will become available again. So the argument would be to largely sit on the Green Line for the next 3 years, maybe make refinements and improvements here and there, maybe work with the county to try and have a larger line under planning, so comd 2029, STL is ready to apply and receive funding ASAP.

If we had done that from 2017-2021, we would have been ready for Biden-era funding, but we weren't at all.

As for why it makes no sense to do BRT, what they've floated is about twice as long but costs over $400M+ based on their current estimate. The Bi-State CEO also said it would utilize ~$250M in federal funding through, I'm pretty sure, the same grant program as the LRT would get money from.

So, 1) we are admitting STL will never expand MetroLink on the MO side ever again, 2) we are willingly making all the money we spent planning the Green Line mostly wasted (to the tune of millions of dollars) and 3) we still have to wait 3+ more year and apply/rely on federal funding regardless.

Beyond all that, it will become another example anti-transit leeches and conservatives will point to for why STL is poorly run and wastes money. And in this case, they'd be right and we'd have no one but ourselves to blame.

I don't disagree with Spencer's view that the Green Line is way less than what the original pitch was in 2017. But she is also being completely bad faith to act like this wasn't just phase one, and her comments about it on the Overarching podcast pretty much show she has no clue what she's talking about (for example, one of her concerns was that there would be a transfer station where you have to go down or up to the other train....as if this doesn't exist literally everywhere including STL right now). It shows incredible lack of vision and a surrender to austerity to instead of trying to make the LRT plan better, downgrade it to BRT. And then to do it in an undemocratic and sleazy way just makes it even worse. And during the election cycle, we now know why her answers on transit were so obtuse and indirect. She actually was worried she'd lose some support by openly opposing the Green Line.

And as good as BRT *can* be, it is not what we should be using for this alignment. If we want to do BRT, we should do "lite" BRT along high ridership bus lines like Minneapolis and suburban Chicago do. The 70 Grand is effectively a BRT line as it is, just with less than ideal amenities. You don't need to look any further than Indianapolis to see IndyGo's ridership dropped over 4.2% as of Q325 despite opening the $188M Purple Line.

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Again only asking because I’be not followed this project as closely. If this line didn’t get much federal traction under Obama, Trump 1, and Biden, what changed that makes you soo confident that it would have advanced under Kamala,

Best,
Liam