New Bridge Brings a Gateway to St. Louis

The City of St. Louis is counting on a new Mississippi River bridge to revitalize a neighborhood and connect businesses more securely to their workers.

By Mayor Francis G. Slay, city of St. Louis

Since our founding as commercial capital on the west bank of the Mississippi in 1764, St. Louis has been fascinated by the other side of the river.

For the first 100 or so years of our history, we crossed our river and conducted our business in boats, dugouts, ferries, canoes, cargo barges or passenger steamers. Trains? We let those tracks be built elsewhere — to our eventual regret and Chicago's subsequent enrichment.

It was not until 1871 that a predecessor of mine, Mayor Joseph Brown, a transportation executive with an interest was able to dedicate the Eads Bridge, the first bridge to cross the Mississippi River in St. Louis and the engineering marvel of its era. The Eads was one of the first large-scale structures in the world to use alloy steel, the first major steel bridge in the United States, and with three 500-foot arches, the largest spanned structure built until then. The Eads was followed by the Merchants (1890), the McKinley (1910), the MacArthur (1917), the Old Chain of Rocks (1929), the Martin Luther King, Jr. (1951), and the Poplar Street (1963). After that, our enthusiasm — and perceived need — for bridges flagged. The three interstate highways that pass through St. Louis cross the river on the Poplar Street bridge; the others still carry tracks, roads, bicycle lanes, and pedestrians.

But, as the population dispersed beyond the city's 62 square miles of tidy neighborhoods and busy commercial districts and into the rich river bottoms and farms of southern Illinois, the growing population of the Metro East began agitating for a new, modern bridge across the Mississippi to connect them with jobs and recreation on the St. Louis side.

After a false start or two, the states of Missouri and Illinois agreed to build a new — and, as yet, unnamed — Mississippi River bridge connecting St. Clair County, Illinois to the city of St. Louis, Miss. The structure is designed to relieve interstate traffic on the Poplar Street bridge. I expect it to do far more than that for St. Louis.

The new bridge, a 1,500 foot cable-stayed span, will carry four mainline traffic lanes —down from the originally planned eight — with room to add a lane in each direction. It is designed so that a companion bridge could be built beside it. When all stages are complete, I-70 will be rerouted over the new bridge. It will meet the existing I-70 at Cass Avenue and connect with the existing Interstate 55/ Interstate 64/I-70 in East St. Louis.

The Federal Government has appropriated $239 million for the project, and the states of Illinois and Missouri make up the remaining funds to cover an estimated cost of $279 million. Ground was broken officially in April 2010 with plans for completion by 2015. Currently, crews are building both the Missouri and Illinois approaches, attracting both live and cyber-gawkers.

On my side of the river, the new bridge has created the need for some additional infrastructure, both to make the bridge itself work and to take full economic advantage of the bridge's placement.

One of the most important — and interesting — projects connected to the new Mississippi River Bridge consists of filling an old railroad tunnel just north of Downtown and constructing a new street above it. Divided into two phases, the North Tucker Boulevard Reconstruction Project will create a major thoroughfare and a new commercial corridor between the new bridge and the Central Business District.

Illinois Terminal built the original tunnel under Tucker Boulevard in the early 1930s to run commuter trolleys to its terminal. The trains stopped running in 1958, and the passing winters' road salt quietly corroded a majority of the underground steel bridge structure. The rust caused the structure to weaken enough that the City closed the road above the tunnel to traffic, annoying, among others, the region's daily newspaper which had historically relied on a rail spur in the tunnel to deliver newsprint in the event of a work action at its suburban presses. Thankfully, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds became available for what truly was a shovel-ready project before any major "investigations" were launched from the landlocked newspaper headquarters.

The Tucker Boulevard reconstruction consists of two phases: The first phase, funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery act, costs about $16.7 million. During this phase, crews ripped out the corroded steel structure that existed underground since the 1930s. Crews then filled the hole with (EPS) Styrofoam, a practice which is becoming increasingly common for road and bridge work in places where dirt can take years to settle because of soil conditions. In this case, the Styrofoam blocks, whose placement drew the rapt attention of newspaper, will prevent future foundation damage to several adjacent buildings. Phase one also included the construction of a new street, sidewalks, lighting, and a planted median.

The second phase of the project, paid in part by Surface Transportation Funds, will complete the removal of the existing structure and the new street, sidewalks, lighting and planted median started on Phase 1 with the ARRA funding. This phase is projected to cost $8.8 million dollars. And when it is finished, the span of Tucker Boulevard will become one of the City's major north-south thoroughfares.

These major infrastructure projects – river bridge and reconstructed connector -- have already sparked investment in the nearby areas. Gas stations and fast food restaurants, the first robins of a commercial spring, are already being built between Tucker and the new Mississippi River Bridge. Previously disinvested neighborhoods along the route are seeing new life and new activity.

These two projects will bring thousands of commuters through a part of the city that sorely needs the traffic. I expect the increased traffic through these neighborhoods to increase interest, to make more property developable, and to direct even more commuters from across the river directly to Downtown.

The Tucker Boulevard reconstruction is expected to be completed in 2012, two and a half years before the Mississippi River Bridge is slated to open.

Mayor Francis G. Slay was sworn in as the 45th Mayor of the city of St. Louis in April 2001. He was re-elected by large margins in April 2005 and April 2009. For more information, go to www.mayorslay.com.