MO: St. Louis mayor: Green Line's demise could lead to better project

The decision this week to scrap plans for a new MetroLink rail line linking the city’s north and south sides could clear the way for a faster, more bike- and pedestrian-friendly project along the same route, officials said Wednesday.

Mayor Cara Spencer and MetroLink chief Taulby Roach said a proposed bus rapid transit line along Jefferson Avenue could cost several hundred million dollars less than the $1.1 billion rail project.

Roach said the savings could allow for a longer route that reaches neighborhoods left out of the rail proposal — and one that could open years sooner. Spencer said the extra money could support new bike lanes, pedestrian upgrades and road-safety improvements.

“I think what we could do is have a multimodal option, which could greatly improve the walkability, bikeability, and other transit mobility of the region,” she said.

Her remarks offered a first glimpse at the vision for what may come next for one of the city’s highest-profile public projects.

Officials have spent years planning the Green Line and collected roughly $90 million in a special city sales tax to help pay for it. Former Mayor Tishaura O. Jones promoted the line as a way to bridge the city’s north-south divide, attract investment to struggling neighborhoods and connect residents to jobs downtown and at the new National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency campus on the near North Side.

But the plan has faced mounting headwinds. The 5.5-mile line, projected to carry about 5,000 riders a day, had one of the highest per-rider costs of any project seeking federal transit funds. The project only narrowly secured approval from the region’s planning body, where suburban leaders predicted the project would fail to meet estimates. After defeating Jones in April’s election, Spencer quickly called for a review, and said no more city money would flow until she was convinced the project could work.

Then on Tuesday, Bi-State Development Agency — which runs MetroLink and MetroBus — revealed it would not seek federal funding, saying officials doubted the project would qualify.

At Spencer’s direction, the agency said it would begin exploring a bus rapid transit alternative.

On Wednesday, St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann, one of the rail line’s longtime critics, felt vindicated: He’d been trying to kill the project for years, fearful that a boondoggle would jeopardize future federal funding for other projects in the region.

“It’s a good thing for federal taxpayers,” he said of the news.

Aldermanic President Megan Green, meanwhile, was disappointed. She said the city should have at least applied for federal funding, and she also questioned whether the sales tax cash collected so far can legally be used for bus service.

The 2017 ballot measure, approved with 60% of the vote, specifically said tax proceeds would help pay for “North/South Metrolink.”

“The first step is to get approval from voters to do something different,” Green said.

Spencer and her aides, however, said they see wiggle room in the tax language. The ballot measure told voters the tax would “include” the rail line but did not explicitly bar using the money for bus service.

And Spencer cast the bus option as the only realistic path forward.

She said the city could attempt a shorter to cut costs. But the 5.5-mile proposal, running on Jefferson from Chippewa Street in the south to Fairground Park in the north, is already a fragment of an 8-mile plan pitched in 2017. And she said further cuts would probably make it even less competitive for federal money.

“I’ve asked Bi-State to take a look at the viability of an alternative,” she said.

What a bus rapid transit line would look like here remains to be seen. The concept has been described as a rubber-tire version of light rail: buses running more frequently than on standard routes, following a fixed line with station stops, ideally in dedicated lanes with signal priority at stoplights.

It was briefly considered here a little over a decade ago. Two routes were identified as worthy of further study — one running from downtown St. Louis to Chesterfield, and another running from downtown through north St. Louis County.

The Bi-State board is scheduled to vote Friday on whether to authorize another study, this time of Jefferson Avenue.

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