THIS MONTH, THE CITY cancelled a major expansion project to the Metrolink over fears that federal funding would never be approved. The $1.1 billion Green Line would’ve spanned 5.6 miles and created 10 new stations, which could’ve provided cheap transit across significant segments of downtown. This represents a significant curtailing of innovation of American public transit today. Either you take an Uber, drive or on occasion, find a bus. That shouldn’t be the status quo in a country with the highest GDP on Earth.
A century ago, there were 1,650 streetcars and 450 miles of track laid across St. Louis. But as the years passed, all the tracks were torn up, the streetcars were removed and the roads were widened. Now, the ruins of the Trolley Company are all that remains. But the reason why this happened is far more complicated. In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower passed the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which was initially bipartisan but is now divisive. It served as an accidental attack on intra-city public transit by funding its primary competitor. Highways tore through densely populated areas, separating neighborhoods and pushing people out of the cities. Suburbia encourages sprawl, which naturally serves as the antithesis to public transit and light rail.
There have been attempts to construct proper transit. In 2018, St. Louis constructed the Loop Trolley, a brand new streetcar, which hadn’t been done since 1966, the year the last streetcar was dismantled. But it was costly. Despite over half of the total funds being federal, the project couldn’t get off the ground, and $51 million later, the trolley shut down. It was revived years after, and runs for 36 hours a week, half of the year. Even this was a drop in the bucket.
Despite this, some innovation has been made. In the 90s, the MetroLink was born, stretching across 46 miles and stopping at 38 stations. It would also be disingenuous not to mention the success buses have had in St. Louis, serving nearly 13 million people on plenty of the routes the streetcars once perused. However, buses fail to address the issue at large, without permanent infrastructure. Incentives for a higher density city aren’t there.
St. Louis has been largely forgotten about — once a city of immense progress, now the dying light of an empire that never was. But there are methods of revival. Public transit will rebuild St. Louis because as trains come to cities, so does community and denser housing. Transit also provides significant economic opportunities, which are necessary to overcome the current ‘death loop’ St. Louis finds itself in. But aside from urban renewal, transit has plenty of other key benefits. For one, taking the train to work is the most significant method of energy saving an individual can use. Rail also minimizes traffic: the more people there are on the train, the less there are on the road.
St. Louis still has room to change. There are methods to bring about a proper transit system that aren’t the creation of trolleys that run for a few hours a week, a few months of the year. For example, in Washington D.C., a city of 702,000 — significantly less than the 2.8 million people living in the greater St. Louis area — over 100 miles of light rail were built in the second half of the 20th century. St. Louis built the MetroLink in the 1990s, which, as small as it might be, still services thousands of people a day. There is precedent for proper transit in St. Louis, both through the preexisting line and the entire D.C. metro. Through increased pressure on Missouri politicians proper change is very possible.
