For St. Louis, a long-term strategy - St. Louis, MO's rail transit plan

Railway Age, July, 2002 by Julian Wolinsky

St. Louis has an ambitious rail transit plan that only needs a dedicated source of state financing or an increase in the local transportation sales tax to unlock what promises to be a continuing stream of federal funding.

Construction is scheduled to begin late this year on the Cross County extension of Bi-State Development Agency's MetroLink light rail system. It's the latest segment in a region-wide LRT network, first sketched out in the early 1980s, that won't be completed for several more decades.

Bi-State's service area is a mix of urban, suburban, and rural areas covering three counties in Illinois, the city of St. Louis, and four Missouri counties. With the core segment established as one of the country's most successful new light rail systems (sidebar, p. 34) and the Cross County line under way, efforts have turned toward yet another phase of the master plan, an extension into Illinois from East St. Louis to the new MidAmerica Airport in St. Clair County. Although it's 23 miles from St. Louis, politicians see MidAmerica as absorbing overflow traffic from Lambert-St. Louis International Airport, and transportation planners are promoting MetroLink as a key airport link.

The St. Clair extension, using mostly abandoned CSX Transportation right-of-way, is being built in two phases. Work on the initial 17.4-mile, S339.1 million segment to Belleville began in March 1998, with a federal Full Funding Grant Agreement providing $243.9 million. The remainder came from a half-cent sales tax approved by voters in the St. Clair County Transit District in November 1993. The Belleville segment opened May 7, 2001, and during its first year proved to be a major success. Average weekday patronage is approximately 12,609, compared with the predicted 10,052. Daily boardings for the entire MetroLink system, which now has 29 stations, exceeds 43,000.

But when it came time to complete the remaining 8.6 miles of MetroLink to the vacant MidAmerica airport, the Federal Transit Administration balked at providing additional funding because of low ridership projections. The project was then further divided into two sections, the first of which runs 3.5 miles to Scott Air Force Base, the third largest employer in the St. Louis region. Construction to Scott started in the spring of 2001 with $60 million of the $75 million cost coming from a state public works program known as Illinois First and $15 million from the St. Clair County Transit District. Completion is scheduled in May 2003. There will only be one station, at Scott AFB/Shiloh, but there will be two entrances. One is a secure gate from the Air Force base for military and Department of Defense personnel. The other is for the general public.

The remainder of the extension is on hold, although ready to be built if funding becomes available. "Right now, we have the final design complete from Scott Air Force Base to MidAmerica Airport," says Bi-State Deputy Executive Director-Engineering and New Systems Development Steve Knobbe. A retroactive application for federal funding of the Belleville-Shiloh segment is pending. If approved, it would reimburse the Illinois First program, freeing state money for the MidAmerica segment.

Back on the Missouri side of the river, the 8.2-mile Cross County line is the first increment of an extension that will form a second north-south alignment. It will run from the Forest Park station to Clayton and Shrewsbury and cost $550.3 million, $400 million of which will come from 30-year bonds, the remainder from local tax revenue. Utility relocation is set to begin by year-end. Revenue service should start in late 2005.

"It's an aggressive schedule, but we think-we can do it by '05," says Knobbe. "We're going to have two stations that will be underground under major intersections. They will be placed in a cut-and-cover tunnel." There will also be a section of tunnel beyond the second underground station. The Forest Park station will be replaced and converted from side platforms to a center platform. A junction to the Cross County line will be installed and a pocket track added, all while the system continues to operate.

When Cross County opens, two-car trains will run every 7.5 minutes during rush hours from the new terminal in Shrewsbury to the Emerson Park station in Illinois, where there's a pocket track for reversing trains, providing 3.75-minute head-ways on the central segment of the main line. This will require upgrading the GE Transportation Systems Global Signaling (originally Harmon) cab signal system.

MetroLink opened in 1993 with 31 Siemens Transportation Systems d.c.-traction SD400 cars. Bi-State soon ordered 34 ac-traction SD460s to handle the St. Clair extension. Included in Cross County's price tag is 22 additional SD460s, which will bring the LRV fleet to 87. Deputy Executive Director for Transit Operations Thomas Sehr says the SD400 cars are being upgraded with some of the improvements seen on the SD460s but will remain d.c-traction. Bi-State's cars are now averaging well over 8,000 miles per month, the highest among U.S. light rail systems and about double industry norms. The reasons are the length of the system--now 34.4 miles-and the large number of special events, which call for an average of 10 extra trips a day. The current timetable requires 254 weekday trains, with 42 cars operated in peak-hour service.