Support Builds For Highway Removal in Saint Louis

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch editorial board endorsed a highway removal concept publicized by the grassroots-based City to River group. The existing lanes are planned to be duplicated on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River as part of the new Ronald Wilson Reagan Mississippi River Bridge. The existing lanes were planned to become a three digit spur of I-44. City to River has been active in lobbying participants in the international interdisciplinary competition for the redesign of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial grounds and riverfront to consider highway removal as a viable option.

The Post-Dispatch says of this section of highway, "The 1.5-mile stretch of steel and concrete is one of the most heedless examples of highway planning in the age of urban renewal. It forms a forbidding and confusing barrier along the park's western boundary - a dismal counterpoint to Eero Saarinen's transcendent symbol of westward migration."