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Metro zeros in on short-term, long-range plans
(by Kara Krekeler - January 06, 2010)
Following a series of meetings in December, Metro is one step closer to creating a strategic plan for the future of St. Louis transit.
The meetings, which were held throughout the month at various locations within Metro’s service area, presented the public with the results of an initial round of community workshops that were held in October 2009.
At those meetings, attendees were given information on a wide variety of potential expansion corridors and transit types while Metro officials were on hand to answer questions. Attendees were then asked to rank their priorities in regards to expansion and amenities.
Based on those meetings, Metro determined that the public is most interested in increasing security and expanding light rail and bus transit along corridors stretching from north to south in the city of St. Louis, and from the city to the Westport area in St. Louis County.
Metro’s Chief of Planning and System Development Jessica Mefford-Miller said that her staff has been taking those priorities — as well as the agency’s own guidelines regarding population and employment density, transit dependency and infrastructure — into consideration as they create a rough draft of a long-range plan, which will be presented to the public at a third round of public meetings this month. A finalized plan is set to be adopted by the agency in March.
While the central corridor has the strongest employment center, Mefford-Miller noted that Westport, Earth City and Creve Coeur are also growing as employment centers. A potential problem with expanding transit to those locations, however, lies in their lower density; the buildings are farther apart and many areas lack infrastructure such as sidewalks.
Similarly, while the city of St. Louis is the most densely populated, St. Charles and Illinois are the fastest-growing areas, and have less transit-oriented infrastructure and a lower public transit-dependent population, Mefford-Miller said. That transit-dependent population is based instead in the city core and the inner-ring suburbs.
Mefford-Miller said that Metro’s immediate goals would be to restore service that was cut in March 2009 following the November 2008 defeat of Prop M, a half-cent tax increase in St. Louis County that would have helped provide operating funds for Metro. Prop M will return to the ballot in April of this year.
Other short-range goals include creating transit centers, increasing security and lighting at bus and MetroLink stops, and improving technology, including introducing computer-aided dispatch and implementing a Smart Card fare system.
In the longer term, the public has expressed interest in creating a commuter rail line into St. Charles County and implementing bus rapid transit, a system that uses higher-capacity, train-like buses that run in dedicated lanes and have fewer stops than regular bus routes.
BRT is already in use in several cities throughout the country, including Cleveland, Boston, Los Angeles and Kansas City, Mo. Mefford-Miller said that, if implemented, St. Louis-based BRT would likely run along the area’s major highways.
“It’s clear we can’t build light rail to every far-flung community; BRT serves the same purpose as light rail in lower-density areas,” said Ray Friem, Metro’s CEO of transit.
Friem said that any potential long-term expansion of transit options such as BRT or commuter rail would depend on Metro securing local, state and federal financing, noting that all three are necessary for Metro’s success and are currently lacking. Friem said that Missouri is well behind the curve when it comes to supporting public transit at the state level.
“The federal government really likes to build things, but it doesn’t do operating funds,” he said. “We have to be able to support it locally and with state support. We have to get our region in compliance with federal demands for supporting transit.”
Friem said that a sustainable long-term plan would help secure more support from the state and federal government, and noted that Metro would likely update the plan every three to five years, depending on how population growth, density and technology change.
“We’re going to try to pull together a comprehensive document we can work on,” he said. “We want to formulate the building blocks for the future of transit in St. Louis.”
• For more information visit www.movingtransitforward.org.
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