Why wasn’t the two year shutdown of Highway 40 in St. Louis City and County, last year 170 to Ballas, this year Kingshighway to 170, the disaster that many predicted?
I think the reason is twofold: (1) The bad economy has meant less traffic overall, especially during rush hour, and (2) St. Louisans knew that there would be bad times in central St. Louis City and County, so they edged back on their rude habits accordingly. Had the shutdown happened without warning, things would have been much worse.
In a book about the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995, the book entitled Oklahoma City: Day One, by an OKC native (name escapes me) and sold on the Bill Cooper show, there is a section about the late afternoon and evening after the bombing. It said that the city is normally known as “Zoom City,” where you have to go 10 over the speed limit in order not to get run over, and drivers are rather impatient and rude. (Aside from the speed, that describes St. Louis drivers.) The morning of April 19, when the bombing actually occurred, was sunny in OKC, but by the time evening rush came, light rain moved in. People were doing the speed limit on their way home, and being courteous by slowing down to let people merge onto freeways.
That’s what partly happened in St. Louis — people were courteous because the knew of the inconvenience. And therefore, traffic flowed better than it otherwise would have on popular alternate routes.
Now, will these habits continue when 40 opens tomorrow morning? I doubt it.
I predicted right before the beginning of this year that the eastern closure would be significantly more painful than the western closure of 2008. There will be a big bonk when I review my predictions after Christmas.
I was able to go to the party today, but I don’t own a bike, so I had to join the people on foot on the westbound lanes, bikes got to use the eastbound lanes, but either group got to go both ways within their section. I won’t be able to drive the new stretch until I’m back in STL next weekend, but I was able to see it on foot. I’ve already driven the western half that opened almost a year ago.
Question for MoDOT: Why didn’t you use FHWA Clearview on the signs? All the new signage is still in the decades old Freeway Gothic font. Even a DOT like Illinois, slow as it is, and mostly ignorant of Southern Illinois as it is, has done all its new signage south of Springfield in Clearview.
I found a few other sign goofs and minor issues that I’ll mull over with a MoDOT official in St. Louis I was on good speaking terms with about 5-10 years ago. They’re too estoeric for a medium like this.
I’ve been following this project ever since MoDOT announced it in 1999, and not long after that, they put the original plans online. They were more ambitious than the plans eventually adopted, because the failure of a sales/gas tax referendum in MO in 2004 caused MoDOT to do some budget cuts, and they scaled back some of their plans for the 40 reconstruction. Here are some of the differences between what they originally planned and what we really got:
(1) There was supposed to be a west-facing half diamond (WB on, EB off) at Sarah St., just east of Kingshighway, to complement the existing east-facing (EB on, WB off) half-diamond at Boyle. It would have been an alternate entrance into the BJC/WU Med complex to/from the west, to take a little volume off of Kingshighway. It was taken out.
(2) Kingshighway’s new interchange is as originally planned, a SPUI.
(3) The SPUI at Hampton is as originally planned, including the extra ramp from WB 40 to Oakland Avenue just east of Hampton, around the old Channel 2 studios. That was put there to compensate for the always planned and eventual elimination of the west-facing half diamond at Oakland just east of McCausland. However, one of the original options for this area involved grade-separating Oakland Ave and Hampton Ave, i.e. have Oakland go under Hampton, to eliminate the stoplight on Hampton before 40. That part was taken out. The roundabout north of the interchange was always planned.
(4) Clayton/Skinker and McCausland are as they were originally designed, though the original plans called for 5 lanes per side on 40 between Hampton and Clayton/Skinker, then 4 lanes per side from there to McCausland, then down to 3 per side after McCausland. To make a smaller overpass for Tamm, that was cut back to 4 per side from Hampton to C/S, then 3 per side from there further west.
(5) There were never any plans to add main travel lanes beyond its original 3 per side between C/S and 170, save the slight exception above. All that was needed was to add auxiliary lanes. Traffic in that portion was only bad because of the old interchange designs and lack of aux lanes, and because 40 west of 170 also only had 3 lanes per side. It was always in the plans to add another through lane west of 170 to match the 4 lanes per side west of Ballas to 270, but there were never going to be any more than 4 lanes per side.
(6) Big Bend was supposed to be a SPUI, tied into the west-facing half-diamond at Bellevue by either braided ramps or C/D roads. Those were changed to make Big Bend a regular diamond, tied into Bellevue with C/D roads, though the WB slip ramp from Bellevue to 40 was eliminated and you have to sit at the light at Big Bend to get onto WB 40. (However, there is so much space between the barriers between Bellevue and Big Bend that I can easily see some dickhead trying to sneak onto WB 40 from Bellevue before they get to BB.) The interchange at Laclede Station, just east of Hanley, was always supposed to be eliminated. There was one plan to eliminate the half-interchange (EB off, WB on) at Bellevue, but it was kept because it’s a more direct route for emergency vehicles from the west to get to St. Mary’s Hospital along Clayton Road. (The Clayton/Skinker exit serves it from the east.)
Before the renovation, you couldn’t access Big Bend from EB 40 directly, nor enter WB 40 from Big Bend. An inconvenience which caused a friend’s sister a lot of time and gas when she drove to STL from Milwaukee about ten years ago. She somehow ended up in Cedar Hill after getting confused for the lack of an offramp from EB 40 to Big Bend — how in the HELL you end up in southern Jefferson County for a lack of concrete in central St. Louis County is beyond me, and it was beyond her :)
(7) The biggest cost-saving cuts were made in the 170/Hanley/Brentwood region. It’s too complicated to describe here in full, but the original plans called for C/D road and slip ramp interconnected SPUIs at both Hanley and Brentwood, with connections to the WB 40 to NB 170 and SB 170 to EB 40 flyover ramps to both their respective C/D roads. Add to that a new off-ramp from SB 170 to the Galleria Parkway (old Hoover Lane.) Part of that I think was because St. Louis County was toying around with re-doing Hanley at Eager with short tunnels, and making Hanley an expressway from 40 south to Laclede Station. STLCO I think tabled that, and money issues forced MoDOT to scale this area way back. What we will have are double diamonds at Hanley and Brentwood, connected to each other with C/Ds, but no slip ramps, meaning you have to use one exit for both Hanley and Brentwood in either direction of 40. (Even under the original plans, you would have had to use the same exit for H or B, though you wouldn’t have had to sit at a light if you wanted the road further from you.) The 170 semi-directional T remains, with flyovers, but only the northern C/D road has a direct connection to 170, but not the southern C/D road. The new offramp from 170 to Galleria Pkwy was taken out, and they compensated for that with a circle-around ramp from SB 170 to NB Brentwood at 170′s end, using the northern C/D between H and B.. The NB 170 to Galleria Pkwy and Galleria Pkwy to SB 170 ramps were always supposed to be eliminated.
Before the renovation, you couldn’t access NB 170 from EB 40 — You had to get off at Brentwood, turn left, then right at Galleria Pkwy, then north at 170.
(8) McKnight was not altered. It was always supposed to be, and is now, a diamond. That’s what it was in its old configuration. The overpass was rebuilt; It was on one of those several Art Deco overpasses.
(9) The only alteration made at Clayton/Warson was that plans to move the ramp to EB 40 along the south outer road westward to about where the Racquet Club is, instead of where it was at the end of the outer road where it turns into Log Cabin Drive and residential Ladue, was eliminated. The ramp still is where it originally was. Part of the reason why the whole western half was closed at once in 2008 was that the original overpass for 40 over Clayton/Warson was all in one piece, and had to be removed in one piece, so both side of the highway would have to have been closed anyway.
(10) Lindbergh was always supposed to be a SPUI. One of the original designs wanted to grade separate Lindbergh from Clayton road, near the Schnucks, to the south of the SPUI. That didn’t happen.
(11) Spoede is as it was planned, that set of offset roundabouts with the outer roads.
The original thought that it would be a 6-year project with no persistent closures. Until the 2004 statewide defeat of a gas/sales tax for roads, the time jogged between 4 and 6 years. After the tax failed, they claimed that it might take 16 years. Then wholesale year-long closures were brought up, and with that, the project only needed 2 years and 8 months — remember, the project started in April 2007, but the western half closure didn’t occur for 8 months because all they did from April 07 to January 08 was start in on the flyover ramps at 170 and the Tamm overpass. Technically, the project has another six months to go, until July 2010, but most of that will be polish and landscaping.
Even with the alterations forced by 2004 budget cuts, and even if St. Louisans return to their rude driving habits, the new design is going to work a lot better, and result in fewer traffic jams along that stretch. Even though the new overpasses will be high enough (16.5 feet) for massive tracker trailers to use the new stretch (they could not before; see the Art Deco link above), they can’t use 40 as a route through St. Louis because there are still some low overpasses between Kingshighway and Downtown.
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Even though a lot of the designs were scaled back, I could easily see in the near future that MoDOT could bring them back in sorts. For instance, the Kingshighway SPUI could be retrofitted as a SPUI/F (SPUI with frontage roads) to sorta provide the half-diamond at Taylor Avenue, to provide the extra entrance at BJC/WU Med taken out when the Sarah Ave half-interchange was deleted. The diamond at McCausland could be made relatively free-flow with two roundabouts. It wouldn’t take too much money to grade separate Oakland Ave from Hampton. Big Bend could be made a SPUI if they can add on to the overpass, or a DDI (diverging diamond) if they didn’t, just add a slip ramp back onto 40 so that Bellevue traffic can avoid it. Convert the two diamonds at Hanley and Brentwood to SPUI/Fs. Create a slip ramp from the SB 170 to EB 40 flyover to access the south C/D road between Brentwood and Hanley. Roundabouts to replace stoplights at McKnight. And when the signs need replacing, do them in Clearview.
