City officials are again pushing to let voters decide if tax dollars meant for a MetroLink line can instead pay for a new “rapid transit” bus route.

But it isn’t clear if supporters have won over critics.

A bill from Alderman Rasheen Aldridge would, if approved, ask voters in April next year if a special sales tax approved in 2017 to build a north-south MetroLink line could be repurposed for a "bus rapid transit" route — a high-capacity bus service meant to work like a rubber-tire rail line.

“It went to the people in the first place, so it should go back to the people now,” Aldridge said.

That viewpoint has been contested since last fall, when the rail line was scuttled over concerns the federal government wouldn't fund the $1.1 billion project and Mayor Cara Spencer and the Bi-State Development Agency — which runs MetroLink and MetroBus — announced a pivot to the bus line, saying it would serve more riders, open years sooner and cost several hundred million dollars less.

Aldermanic President Megan Green, a longtime supporter of the rail proposal, said the city risked a legal challenge if it diverted the $90 million in tax dollars sitting in the rail line account without another public vote.

Spencer and Bi-State disagreed with Green, and they spoke against an initial push from Green last year to put the issue on the April 2026 ballot. Other aldermen, too, worried there wouldn't be enough time for an effective campaign for the change.

This week, however, Aldridge and Green said they had gotten everyone on the same page.

“The mayor’s office has been at the table,” Green said. “And Metro has been there too.”

But in an interview this week, Spencer said she had not yet read the bill and declined to comment on it.

Bi-State chief Taulby Roach said he would let Spencer, Green and the aldermen figure things out before weighing in.

“We want to stay out of that,” he said. “These are political decisions that they will make.”

Alderman Michael Browning, another erstwhile critic, said he still needed to be convinced it can pass.

“What I don't want to have happen is to have it fail,” he said, “and we're stuck with a rail line we cannot afford.”

It's just the latest turn in the debate over how best to expand public transit in the city. For years, the focus was on a north-south extension of the MetroLink network, running up Jefferson Avenue from Chippewa Street on the south side to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency facility and Fairground Park on the north side.

Former Mayor Tishaura O. Jones championed the proposal as a way to bridge the city's north-south divide, attract investment to struggling neighborhoods and connect residents to jobs.

But the route was one of the most expensive proposals before federal officials on a per-rider basis, and it barely cleared the region's planning board amid opposition from suburban leaders. Shortly after Spencer defeated Jones to become mayor in April 2025, she ordered a review of the project, paused city funding, then made the bus line the priority.

Last month, as the region's planning board approved the proposed bus route — notably with more stops than the rail line as well as stops downtown that the rail line lacked — Spencer told fellow board members they were doing “what's best for the citizens of St. Louis and the region.”

Green said it made sense given a Trump administration pushing for cuts to federal support for public transit.

But both Green and Aldridge said voters should still have the final say.

Green said recent polling, commissioned by the St. Louis Association of Realtors and shared with officials, found that many residents aren't yet familiar with bus rapid transit.

Green, who will also be up for re-election in April 2027, said a ballot campaign would help educate residents and build trust.

“The crux of this is having voter trust in using their tax dollars,” she said.

Charlie Hinderliter, a lobbyist for the Realtors association, confirmed Green's account of the polling, though he declined to share the data.

The bill filed this week would also leave the door open to investing in a rail line or other mass transit in the future, Green said.

“The funding goes on in perpetuity,” Green said. “We don’t know what the federal funding landscape is going to look like in 10, 20 and 30 years.”

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