St. Louis Transit Blues

St. Louis’ mayor asked the local transit agency to stop working on a light rail extension until they can answer whether it will be competitive with other projects for funding during the current administration. The project is a 5.6 mile line that is expected to cost $1.1B.

I don’t doubt there will be attempts to cut more transportation funding that go to projects like these and there are a lot of requests for good projects. And Project 2025’s hatchet men would cut all transit funding at the federal level if they could. But we need to start giving ourselves a head start. We have to ask ourselves AGAIN why a mile of light rail costs $200m.

I think this is a good project in that it connects places left out of previous investments, but it’s fighting a war on the wrong battlefield. Inflation or not someone needs to come up with ways to do it better and cheaper. Then we can say “look we did it better, we should do more, and maybe you should give us some of that highway money because they are wasting it on expensive and over budget expansions.”

We can’t get there with the way we’re going. Maybe some people like it the way it is because it’s comfortable and not confrontational. Personally, that doesn’t work for me anymore.