St. Louis Zeroing in on Safe Streets

In the first of a multi-part series, Streetsblog USA’s Kea Wilson explains how St. Louis, Missouri plans to spend $300 million in street safety infrastructure funds aimed at reducing traffic deaths and making the city’s dangerous streets safer for people walking and biking. 

Like other cities, St. Louis is benefiting from millions in federal infrastructure and transportation funding from the American Rescue Act and other federal programs. “After decades of disinvestment in sustainable mobility, it’s fair to say that the Jones administration is attacking the problems of car dependency on a number of policy fronts, too, developing its first-ever transportation and mobility plan while simultaneously overhauling its land use and zoning plans.”

Meanwhile, “The regional light rail network, Metrolink, is in the final stages of planning the first rail route to connect the overwhelmingly Black north side and with the central corridor and the southern half of the city, bridging the infamous Delmar Divide; the Missouri Department of Transportation is even talking about building its first-ever protected bike lane on a state-owned road.”

Wilson explains that the city, which has lost hundreds of thousands of residents since the 1950s, struggles with understaffing and an outdated ‘ward capital system’ for distributing transportation funding. It is now in the process of establishing its first Department of Transportation. “The new projects still need to be perfected, nevermind actually built. The city will need to contend with a state government that’s investing far more money into widening 250 miles of a single interstate than traffic-calming the dangerous roads within St. Louis that it maintains.”