Northside/Southside Study

The East-West Gateway Council of Governments has begun work on the conceptual design for portions of the Northside and Southside MetroLink Corridors that lie within the City of St. Louis. Gateway has contracted with HNTB to conduct the study. The project manager for HNTB is Kenneth Kinney.

The 18-month study will produce a conceptual design for light rail alignments that extend from downtown St. Louis through the Northside and Southside of the City of St. Louis. The work is predicated on Major Transportation Investment Analyses (MTIAs) conducted for the Northside and Southside corridors in 1999.The Gateway Board of Director’s adopted preferred transit alternatives in those corridors.

The study is being funded through $2.5 million in transportation tax credits provided by the state of Missouri. In this case, the qualifying expenditures are downtown residential developments located near MetroLink including Louderman Lofts at 317 N. 11th Street and Bell Lofts at 920 Olive Street, which are Transit Oriented Development projects that encourage the use of public transit. Both are projects of developer Craig Heller with Loftworks, a member of the CMT Board. Heller agreed to transfer the tax credits to East-West Gateway at no cost, and East-West Gateway soldthe credits to raise revenue for the study.

The study will re-examine the preferred alternatives in each area and will also carry out further conceptual engineering and environmental analysis required by federal and state regulations. When the study is complete, each corridor should be at approximately a 10 percent level of engineering design. The analysis will include the identification of environmental and socioeconomic impacts along with the preparation of travel demand forecasts, rail and bus operating plans, capital and operating cost estimates and schedules.

The study area will extend from a downtown loop in the City of St. Louis north to I-70 between Union Blvd. and Goodfellow Blvd. and from the downtown loop south to near I-55 and Loughborough Ave.

The Transportation Bill that Congress passed in the Spring 2005 earmarked funding of these projects. Senator Christopher Bond of Missouri earmarked $135 million for Southside and $275 for the Northside/Daniel Boone extensions. Both of these sums would still need to be appropriated by Congress toward the projects and would require local match.