urbanSTL

Just get bus frequencies up and save this money for rail. Why we started over, I don’t know. Will hurt when a couple of these other cities that stuck it out break ground on their rail projects

BRT is never what people think it will be. Go to Omaha or Indy. It’s simply not the same asset as metrolink

The change in leadership was death to our rail project we worked on for 20 years and I will continue to be upset about it. If they want to go back to the drawing board, fine, but it needs to be the city and county and MO and bi-state figuring out how we expand rail. We have a master plan that they can literally pull up and start a competitive plan for funding in the next administration


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Chris Stritzel wrote: ↑

3:25 AM - Jun 17

addxb2 wrote: ↑

2:53 AM - Jun 17

I'm also not trying to "make a case". I was highlighting a component of the route adjustment that I thought we could all get excited about. Even my response to goat314 doesn't equate an argument.

You’re arguing with people who’ll never be happy unless billions are spent on a low ridership rail line that would embarrass St. Louis like the Loop Trolley did.

I don't think comparing a N-S Green Line to the loop trolley is totally fair, but there are similarities.  The problem with the loop trolley is the line stopped at a point where it almost became useful.  Maybe that was by design to get Forest Park Forever (and their wallet) involved, but having the loop trolley hit all the main attractions in forest park, with metro & loop access (maybe even CWE access) would have been amazing.  I still think they should finish it.

Personally, I think STL should sacrifice 14th street for a N-S green line.  
North line: 14th street to Florissant and then over to Fairground Park via Natural Bridge/Palm.
South line: 14th south to Gravois and then Gravois down to Grand.

You connect Gravois Park, Benton Park, Soulard, Lafayette Square, the Multi-Modal Transportation Center, City Hall/Clark Street, STL Library, Old North St. Louis, NGA (few blocks away) and Fairground Park.   

Plus, you calm down Gravois, overlap multiple Greenway intersections for bikers/riders.  If you need a new Metro depot, you can expand the Transportation Center in one of the many parking lots nearby, or drop a new Metro depot in an empty lot at 14th/Florissant.  

delmar2debaliviere2downtown wrote: ↑

2:40 PM - Jun 18

Just get bus frequencies up and save this money for rail. Why we started over, I don’t know. Will hurt when a couple of these other cities that stuck it out break ground on their rail projects

BRT is never what people think it will be. Go to Omaha or Indy. It’s simply not the same asset as metrolink

The change in leadership was death to our rail project we worked on for 20 years and I will continue to be upset about it. If they want to go back to the drawing board, fine, but it needs to be the city and county and MO and bi-state figuring out how we expand rail. We have a master plan that they can literally pull up and start a competitive plan for funding in the next administration


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I agree on upping bus frequencies as the most urgent thing, but with what the city's collecting in sales tax, you can't both be improving the bus services and saving up for rail. It's either or.

Yes like PeterXCV said, bettering existing bus route frequencies and stop amenities needs to come from existing (or new) funding structures, not the rapid transit infrastructure fund that's been building. Key word there is rapid. The BRT route as proposed with fully exclusive transit lanes, signal priority, further spaced stations, and off-board fare collection, and 10-15 minute frequencies will be fast and efficient to get people from North City and South City to MetroLink, bus connections at Civic Center, and employment centers downtown, in the same fashion as LRT would, period.
Examples from Omaha and Kansas City are not rapid transit, they are slow moving mixed traffic streetcars built mainly for tourists and to enrich the denser urban cores. Green Line's goal is not to be a circulator between some attractions, but a real mode of rapid transit, that frankly does not pass through many high property value or sales income areas (besides downtown) that would allow for TIF and transit districts to fund its construction like in KC or OMA. At $200M+ a mile and growing for light rail, there is very little reality in continuing to propose rail expansion that meets the same speed and length goals that BRT is proposing in STL's case. With only $100M saved in about 10 years and only growing $16-17M a year, it would take decades to fund just the proposed BRT alignment in rail without billions from the Federal government, which has been determined to be unlikely to happen under any admin. Yes it stings they taunted us with rail for so long.. but it's simply not a reality to accomplish the goals of a rapid North/South transit line.

Not saying people can't dream and propose things, but the time for drawing imaginary lines on a map is over for this specific project (that includes continuing to push a Gravois route, MODOT is well into redesigning it now for the next 30 years and they are not and will not plan for dedicated transit lanes on it). A publicly planned preferred route has been chosen and it is time to actually design and build the thing, or else we're looking at tacking on more years, more tens of millions, more headache... 

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

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Someone will jump down my throat for saying this, but maybe it's time to turn LRT ambitions elsewhere. My preference in this whole fiasco would've been Krewson/Jones proactively trimming the original 2017 route to the central two miles Downtown. That would've been competitive and would've gone to Biden's FTA in 2020-2022. 

Once this gets underway, lets start talking about Olive Streetcar again. 

More like turning the UP Carondelete branch into a transit corridor of some kind.

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StlAlex wrote: ↑

6:29 PM - Jun 18

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

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It is interesting we are not seeing any analysis to this level of detail made public for the Green Line.

It is worth noting that in this report the MSP/Hennepin Co. Blue Line 13.4 mi extension is projected to add a little more than 10k daily riders, even with its thru connection to the existing Blue Line to MoA and airport. This is with a roughly $270M a mile budget, 83k population and 23k people/sq. mi density within 1/2 mi of stations, and got a FTA CIG rating of Medium-High (the minimum required for major grants is Medium). The Green Line alignment would not come near those population/ridership metrics and would most likely fall into the Medium-Low to Low category when the cost was $1.1B or more

Also worth noting in the 60% design plans for the Blue Line Extension how much adjacent street/sidewalk reconstruction (sometimes for multiple blocks surrounding the rail itself) and new bikeways they will be getting in that project. Definitely a perk of the project for locals whether you think it should be or not.

kg2024 wrote: ↑

9:59 PM - Jun 18

StlAlex wrote: ↑

6:29 PM - Jun 18

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

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It is interesting we are not seeing any analysis to this level of detail made public for the Green Line.

It is worth noting that in this report the MSP/Hennepin Co. Blue Line 13.4 mi extension is projected to add a little more than 10k daily riders, even with its thru connection to the existing Blue Line to MoA and airport. This is with a roughly $270M a mile budget, 83k population and 23k people/sq. mi density within 1/2 mi of stations, and got a FTA CIG rating of Medium-High (the minimum required for major grants is Medium). The Green Line alignment would not come near those population/ridership metrics and would most likely fall into the Medium-Low to Low category when the cost was $1.1B or more

Also worth noting in the 60% design plans for the Blue Line Extension how much adjacent street/sidewalk reconstruction (sometimes for multiple blocks surrounding the rail itself) and new bikeways they will be getting in that project. Definitely a perk of the project for locals whether you think it should be or not.

There is no way in hell Minneapolis has population density of 23k along this corridor. That would essentially make Minneapolis suburbia Chicago's Northside or Queens type of density.

I actually think it's laughable that people use density as a way to disqualify St. Louis from expanding rail. Charlotte, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix and Austin have all successfully secured funding for their transit projects. It's not about density or ridership numbers. We're a metropolitan area of 3 million people. If local leadership got their act together and it was a civic priority we could build out any system we wanted.

If St. Louis City was apart of the county. It would be the next logical line to build and probably would have been built years ago. A lot of St. Louis problems with coordinating major projects is that we are a fractured metropolitan area with poor leadership. It's really only that deep.

kg2024 wrote:

StlAlex wrote: ↑

6:29 PM - Jun 18

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

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It is interesting we are not seeing any analysis to this level of detail made public for the Green Line.

It is worth noting that in this report the MSP/Hennepin Co. Blue Line 13.4 mi extension is projected to add a little more than 10k daily riders, even with its thru connection to the existing Blue Line to MoA and airport. This is with a roughly $270M a mile budget, 83k population and 23k people/sq. mi density within 1/2 mi of stations, and got a FTA CIG rating of Medium-High (the minimum required for major grants is Medium). The Green Line alignment would not come near those population/ridership metrics and would most likely fall into the Medium-Low to Low category when the cost was $1.1B or more

Also worth noting in the 60% design plans for the Blue Line Extension how much adjacent street/sidewalk reconstruction (sometimes for multiple blocks surrounding the rail itself) and new bikeways they will be getting in that project. Definitely a perk of the project for locals whether you think it should be or not.

The Green Line's projected ridership was 5.2k, you could assume that would go up with a re-alignment and funding could be made more competitive with a TDD.

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StlAlex wrote:

kg2024 wrote:

StlAlex wrote: ↑

6:29 PM - Jun 18

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

Sent from my SM-S936U using Tapatalk

It is interesting we are not seeing any analysis to this level of detail made public for the Green Line.

It is worth noting that in this report the MSP/Hennepin Co. Blue Line 13.4 mi extension is projected to add a little more than 10k daily riders, even with its thru connection to the existing Blue Line to MoA and airport. This is with a roughly $270M a mile budget, 83k population and 23k people/sq. mi density within 1/2 mi of stations, and got a FTA CIG rating of Medium-High (the minimum required for major grants is Medium). The Green Line alignment would not come near those population/ridership metrics and would most likely fall into the Medium-Low to Low category when the cost was $1.1B or more

Also worth noting in the 60% design plans for the Blue Line Extension how much adjacent street/sidewalk reconstruction (sometimes for multiple blocks surrounding the rail itself) and new bikeways they will be getting in that project. Definitely a perk of the project for locals whether you think it should be or not.

The Green Line's projected ridership was 5.2k, you could assume that would go up with a re-alignment and funding could be made more competitive with a TDD.

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Lower than the FTA projections for the $350 million KC Streetcar extension that just opened.

goat314 wrote:

kg2024 wrote: ↑

9:59 PM - Jun 18

StlAlex wrote: ↑

6:29 PM - Jun 18

It sure does suck that they never even went through with the FTA CIG project rating or even released their data on it so we could actually see what needed to be improved or if the rating is actually as low as people like to act like it would have been.

https://www.lrl.mn.gov/docs/2026/mandated/261010.pdf

Something like this would have been nice.

Sent from my SM-S936U using Tapatalk

It is interesting we are not seeing any analysis to this level of detail made public for the Green Line.

It is worth noting that in this report the MSP/Hennepin Co. Blue Line 13.4 mi extension is projected to add a little more than 10k daily riders, even with its thru connection to the existing Blue Line to MoA and airport. This is with a roughly $270M a mile budget, 83k population and 23k people/sq. mi density within 1/2 mi of stations, and got a FTA CIG rating of Medium-High (the minimum required for major grants is Medium). The Green Line alignment would not come near those population/ridership metrics and would most likely fall into the Medium-Low to Low category when the cost was $1.1B or more

Also worth noting in the 60% design plans for the Blue Line Extension how much adjacent street/sidewalk reconstruction (sometimes for multiple blocks surrounding the rail itself) and new bikeways they will be getting in that project. Definitely a perk of the project for locals whether you think it should be or not.

There is no way in hell Minneapolis has population density of 23k along this corridor. That would essentially make Minneapolis suburbia Chicago's Northside or Queens type of density.

I actually think it's laughable that people use density as a way to disqualify St. Louis from expanding rail. Charlotte, Denver, Dallas, Phoenix and Austin have all successfully secured funding for their transit projects. It's not about density or ridership numbers. We're a metropolitan area of 3 million people. If local leadership got their act together and it was a civic priority we could build out any system we wanted.

If St. Louis City was apart of the county. It would be the next logical line to build and probably would have been built years ago. A lot of St. Louis problems with coordinating major projects is that we are a fractured metropolitan area with poor leadership. It's really only that deep.

It is true that there would be much less debate had the city and county been like every other city and county and have county-wide vote. The sales tax would cover all 1.3 million residents of the two and would make the entire scope way closer to what was originally plotted in 2017.

An example would be Charlotte, who approved a county-wide 1% sales tax increase for a ton of transit expansion, including a 29-mile east-west line that will cost nearly $300M per mile. Both MetroBus and MetroLink have better ridership than Charlotte's equivalents, but they're putting their heads together to push transit forward while we are settling for an inferior deal, just like STL always does.

Charlotte will be asking for $4-5 billion from the feds and they'll get it while we pretend that there's no possible way STL could get $600M.

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StlAlex wrote:

ldai_phs wrote:

StlAlex wrote:The Green Line's projected ridership was 5.2k, you could assume that would go up with a re-alignment and funding could be made more competitive with a TDD.

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Lower than the FTA projections for the $350 million KC Streetcar extension that just opened.

Do you think it's shocking that a train replacing the region's busiest bus line, that connects a major regional university and a hospital complex with downtown, and will be available to ride for free has a higher ridership projection than a line that explicitly was not designed to be the main trunk of the region's transit system, does not connect a major university, does not connect a hospital, and did not go straight through the middle of downtown?

The projection is also higher than Minneapolis' Blue Line extension. It's probably higher than whatever they're gonna project for the $360-$590M BRT.

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The KC project scored medium-high so provides another data point on where N/S might place.

ldai_phs wrote:

StlAlex wrote:

ldai_phs wrote: Lower than the FTA projections for the $350 million KC Streetcar extension that just opened.

Do you think it's shocking that a train replacing the region's busiest bus line, that connects a major regional university and a hospital complex with downtown, and will be available to ride for free has a higher ridership projection than a line that explicitly was not designed to be the main trunk of the region's transit system, does not connect a major university, does not connect a hospital, and did not go straight through the middle of downtown?

The projection is also higher than Minneapolis' Blue Line extension. It's probably higher than whatever they're gonna project for the $360-$590M BRT.

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The KC project scored medium-high so provides another data point on where N/S might place.

What it actually does is show why STL should have been moving forward in 2017-2019, when costs were far less than they are now, like KC did. The 2018 study had Phase 1 of N-S at $118M/mile for 8 miles with a $200M funding gap that could have been filled with- wait for it- a TDD.

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StlAlex wrote: ↑

11:32 PM - Jun 18

ldai_phs wrote:

StlAlex wrote:Do you think it's shocking that a train replacing the region's busiest bus line, that connects a major regional university and a hospital complex with downtown, and will be available to ride for free has a higher ridership projection than a line that explicitly was not designed to be the main trunk of the region's transit system, does not connect a major university, does not connect a hospital, and did not go straight through the middle of downtown?

The projection is also higher than Minneapolis' Blue Line extension. It's probably higher than whatever they're gonna project for the $360-$590M BRT.

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The KC project scored medium-high so provides another data point on where N/S might place.

What it actually does is show why STL should have been moving forward in 2017-2019, when costs were far less than they are now, like KC did. The 2018 study had Phase 1 of N-S at $118M/mile for 8 miles with a $200M funding gap that could have been filled with- wait for it- a TDD.

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Slay and Stenger really failed the region. Slay literally sat on his hands for over a decade when it came to Metrolink expansion and only supported a tax for it when they thought they could grift tax payer money for the MLS stadium. Stenger went out of his way to come out against a true regional plan that was adopted by the city, county, and EWgateway. It's really sad. 30 years of regional apathy and using the Metrolink for political click bait really set us back when it comes to having a true regional light rail system. We could have really done some great things for the region when costs were reasonable. It's insane to think that the original Metrolink was built for something like $400 Million for 17 miles of grade separated light rail. A line like that today would be over $2-3 Billion. $2-3 Billion in the 90s could have easily gotten us a true regional network. 

What is even more insane is that the cost of light rail per mile is even outpacing inflation. Even if we accounted for inflation the red line would still not cross the $1 billion mark. Something is seriously wrong with the consultants and costs for implementing transit, costs have gotten out of hand and the federal government should do something about it. Outside of a select very wealthy regions, it seems like true rail transit will be out of reach for most American cities. The fact that we are trying to justify spending $500 million on a bus just goes to show how insane the discourse around public transit has gotten in this country. 

Light rail is up there with subway costs now, streetcar is the same as light rail was, and now BRT is the same cost as streetcars. Will bike lanes eventually cost hundreds of millions? Oh well i got your answer, the Brickline Greenway cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars for a buffered bike lane and street trees. 

addxb2 wrote: ↑

1:31 AM - Jun 17

2031 according to HNTB is when the line could begin operating. 

For those disappointed, I recommend focusing on right-of-way improvements. This updated route will improve West Florissant, Tucker Boulevard, Clark Street, and of course South Jefferson. This project is the quickest way to boulevard Tucker and enhance Clark Street, frequently highlighted gaps.  West Florissant through Old North will be unrecognizable. North Jefferson just received a significant upgrade. 

This. Thank you for the good takes per usual. Highlighted routes have also been identified in the St. Louis Streets Plan for road diets, so this project will achieve that. 

A large swath of city-maintained infrastructure will see quality of life upgrades for all who travel on them. 

Hasn't S Jefferson just been redone?

PeterXCV wrote:Hasn't S Jefferson just been redone?

Yes, along with a bunch of other corridors, which is why it's so dumb to use basic infrastructure improvements that should be happening anyway as a big reason to be excited for this generational transit investment.

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Repaved and redone are quite different. North Jefferson was redone; South Jefferson was re-paved.

The safety improvements (ie. Orange triangles and medians) are great but are small compared to overhauls that address lighting, carriage walks, tree lawns, sidewalks, potential greenway partnerships or multimodal paths, medians, bus bump outs…

North-south Bus Rapid Transit takes a big step forward in St. Louis
https://www.stlmag.com/news/north-south-bus-rapid-transit-east-west-gateway/

https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... rward.html

-They have now shifted to using $360M to $590M as the cost range, they should know a more accurate cost estimate over the next year.

-"Frequent" 7-day service.

-Enhanced stations.

-Level boarding, ADA accessibility.

-Off-board fare collection.

-Real time arrival time information.

-Dedicated lanes.

-Signal priority.

-Spencer described BRT as "the technology of the future."

Some of HNTB's other BRT projects include:

-Miami South Dade TransitWay ($18.4M/mile)
-Madison Rapid Route A ($12.9M/mile)
-Oklahoma City RAPID Northwest Line ($3M/mile)
-San Francisco Van Ness BRT ($173M/mile)
-Minneapolis Gold Line BRT ($50.5M/mile)
- MIlwaukeeEast-West BRT ($6.1M/mile)
-IndyGo Red Line ($7.4M/mile)

Of these, the Van Ness BRT is the only "Gold" rated.

Our's is slated at $31.3 to $51.3M per mile.

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StlAlex wrote:https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... rward.html

-They have now shifted to using $360M to $590M as the cost range, they should know a more accurate cost estimate over the next year.

-"Frequent" 7-day service.

-Enhanced stations.

-Level boarding, ADA accessibility.

-Off-board fare collection.

-Real time arrival time information.

-Dedicated lanes.

-Signal priority.

-Spencer described BRT as "the technology of the future."

Some of HNTB's other BRT projects include:

-Miami South Dade TransitWay ($18.4M/mile)
-Madison Rapid Route A ($12.9M/mile)
-Oklahoma City RAPID Northwest Line ($3M/mile)
-San Francisco Van Ness BRT ($173M/mile)
-Minneapolis Gold Line BRT ($50.5M/mile)
- MIlwaukeeEast-West BRT ($6.1M/mile)
-IndyGo Red Line ($7.4M/mile)

Of these, the Van Ness BRT is the only "Gold" rated.

Our's is slated at $31.3 to $51.3M per mile.

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Van Nes is LA?

ldai_phs wrote:

StlAlex wrote:https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/new ... rward.html

-They have now shifted to using $360M to $590M as the cost range, they should know a more accurate cost estimate over the next year.

-"Frequent" 7-day service.

-Enhanced stations.

-Level boarding, ADA accessibility.

-Off-board fare collection.

-Real time arrival time information.

-Dedicated lanes.

-Signal priority.

-Spencer described BRT as "the technology of the future."

Some of HNTB's other BRT projects include:

-Miami South Dade TransitWay ($18.4M/mile)
-Madison Rapid Route A ($12.9M/mile)
-Oklahoma City RAPID Northwest Line ($3M/mile)
-San Francisco Van Ness BRT ($173M/mile)
-Minneapolis Gold Line BRT ($50.5M/mile)
- MIlwaukeeEast-West BRT ($6.1M/mile)
-IndyGo Red Line ($7.4M/mile)

Of these, the Van Ness BRT is the only "Gold" rated.

Our's is slated at $31.3 to $51.3M per mile.

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Van Nes is LA?

Van Ness BRT is on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.

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VN is rated silver last time I checked. The best rated BRT route is in Connecticut (also silver) but not necessarily comparable to STL. Cleveland is second best in US (silver) and is the best comparison in my opinion. $44M per mile in 2026 dollars.