The folks who work on the MetroLink system – who inspect the tunnels, bridges, and tracks and generally keep everything running – work long, crazy hours (note the date/time stamp on the photo below!) but they do get to see things from a point of view that the rest of us will never get to see. Here’s a cool example.

Inside the downtown St. Louis tunnels between MetroLink stations at 2 a.m.  Nice!

In the next two years, Metro is currently working on a technologically advanced and easy-to-use electronic Smart Card fare system. A new computer system will be installed to make this exciting Smart Card system work.  As part this project, Metro will either retrofit or replace its aging and outdated fareboxes and ticket vending machines, which are getting harder and more expensive to maintain.

Smart Cards will:

• Alleviate the need for paper tickets and transfers
• Be more convenient for our customers (no more digging for change while the bus idles, or as the train pulls into the station!)
• Increase efficiency and lower Metro’s costs in several ways

Metro received a special federal grant just to do this project. Metro’s project partner is Madison County Transit, which has assisted with the project study and evaluation and may also implement the new system.

This project is still in development and won’t be in effect for two years, so there are a lot of policy decisions and practical decisions that still need to be made. But we’re so excited about it that we’re going to go share the possibilities that the technology will bring. As the decisions are made later, we’ll keep you updated on how the system will actually work here in St. Louis. (more…)

St. Clair County MetroLink Bike Trail System Plan

Metro and our partners at the St. Clair County Transit District are working to extend the bike trail network serving St. Clair County, Illinois, providing additional multi-modal options. Thanks to funding from St. Clair County Transit District and federal funds, a new leg of the bike trail will be constructed to extend the trail that currently goes from SWIC to the Belleville MetroLink Station. The new segment will extend to Swansea, and there is a proposed future extension that would take the bike trail all the way to Memorial Hospital Station. At the same time, the Village of Swansea is adding its own northern extension route that will connect up at the MetroLink station.

This project will not only create a grade-separated bike trail that parallels MetroLink, but will also fix some slope stability and drainage problems to protect the MetroLink alignment from creek scouring and erosion. It will also provide a safe egress for train evacuation if there were ever an emergency on MetroLink. And finally, having the trail in place will make it easier for Metro’s maintenance vehicles to reach the tracks if there is a need for maintenance.

The Notice to Proceed on this project was issued in June 2010, and it will be completed within one year.

East Riverfront Arcade, which will soon see some changes.

The work on the historic Eads Bridge rehabilitation project is expected to take about three years total. The best way to assure a quality rehabilitation, but still maintain service levels, is to perform the work on one track while still running both eastbound and westbound MetroLink trains on the other track. To do that, Metro will first construct a new interlocking just west of the East Riverfront MetroLink Station, actually out on the bridge structure.

An Interlocking being assembled; it then gets dropped whole into place

An interlocking is essentially a rail crossover – it allows a train to cross from one track to another. Of course, all of the requisite switches and signals are a part of that package, too.

When used in conjunction with the existing crossover adjacent to the Arch-Laclede’s Landing MetroLink Station in Missouri, Metro will be able to operate MetroLink trains on the current (12 minute) headway without delay to customers, for the duration of the Eads Bridge project. Once work on one side of the bridge is complete, the work will move to the other side.

East Riverfront Station - those inside pillars will be removed and the interlocking dropped into place there.

At some point during this project, Metro will actually have to cut into the road deck of the Eads Bridge, in order to drop the fully-assembled crossover into place. The road deck of the bridge will be closed during this process, and Metro will close up the hole and repair the bridge deck once the crossover is in place. The contractor on the project is STV Inc.

Thanks to ARRA, Metro has just started working on improvements to the North Hanley MetroLink Station. Nothing fancy, but these improvements will help the station accommodate higher frequencies of bus service, improve traffic flow, segregate bus traffic from customer vehicles, and provide a smoother ride for customers.

Of course, all time schedules are based on cooperative weather!

What Changes Will Be Made?

• Reconstructing the bus road & loop to a heavier-duty and more durable concrete;
• Constructing a new bus berth to accommodate more bus service to the station (currently 180 buses/day here);
• Removing asphalt and resurfacing the entire customer parking lot (except the newest section that was just added last year and is still in good shape);
• Repairing sidewalks, replacing curbs, storm sewer work, striping and other miscellaneous work.

How Does This Impact Me?

• Due to the bus road construction, riders are currently catching the bus at temporary stops. When the bus road is completed mid-May, the temporary stops go away and you will be back in the bus berths.
• These temporary stops mean that there are fewer parking spaces available in the lot due to the construction. Also, some of the disabled access spots had to be removed, so we’ve added more of them in the parking garage to accommodate our patrons. Those spots will come back (and the temporary ones added in the parking garage will go away) when the bus road construction is complete and the temporary bus stops are gone.
• Beginning mid-May, the parking lot will be resurfaced in four (4) phases. This is being done so that no more than 20% of the parking area is impacted at any one time.
• You will still be able to park at North Hanley during this resurfacing project! Our Project Manager tells me this lot isn’t reaching capacity except on baseball game days, so regular commuters should have no trouble finding a parking spot even during construction.

When Will This Project End?

The contractor has until the end of November to complete this project. We’re phasing it out over a longer period of time to ensure that the parking lot and bus loop remain as useable as possible and the work only minimally impacts our customers.

If you have any comments or questions, let us know!

If you’re familiar with downtown St. Louis, you’re familiar with the bridge that was completed in 1874 by James Eads. Metro shares ownership of the Eads Bridge with the City of St. Louis. In 2003, the City rehabbed the road deck – its portion of the bridge – but MetroLink’s track portion hasn’t been rehabbed since MetroLink was first constructed. Metro owns all the bridge structure below the vehicle deck, and it hasn’t been rehabbed since the 1920s.

An historic postcard showing the Eads Bridge.

Our engineers keep a close eye on the bridge structure. They get geared up in these elaborate safety harnesses – and, since they will be dangling over the Mississippi River, they also put on orange floatation vests – and climb on the bridge structure to do a literally hands-on inspection.What they found is that some of the structure is, understandably, showing signs of age. Further, the bridge needs painting to protect it from future rust damage, and the MetroLink track system also needs repair.

Our Project Manager, Eric, wearing his safety gear during a hands-on inspection.

Thanks to the ARRA (stimulus) bill, Metro has received a grant to do a complete rehabilitation of this important historic and iconic asset. Support steel that dates to the 1920s will be replaced, the entire superstructure will be sandblasted and painted, and the MetroLink track system will be upgraded, including rail, ties, and wire connections. To find out how all this will be done with minimal impact on the MetroLink customers, continue reading after the break. (more…)

Current conditions on Grand Avenue Viaduct.

MetroLink’s Grand Avenue Station is about to undergo a substantial redesign with exciting improvements to become the Scott Avenue Transit Plaza – all while the City of St. Louis replaces the Grand Avenue Viaduct with its own exciting design over the MetroLink tracks.

In cooperation and conjunction with the City’s project, Metro is at the same time improving the MetroLink Station, bus waiting area, and passenger amenities: The Scott Avenue Transit Plaza Project!

The project details:

• Wind and rain shelters on the bridge for Metro customers;
• Removal of on-street parking on Scott Avenue at the MetroLink Station and creation of a 50-70 car park and ride lot;
• Removal of current bus shelters on Scott Avenue;
• Construction of a new transit plaza with seating, vending area, landscaping, and public restrooms;
• Access to MetroLink platform will be changed from east end to west end;
• Elevator and stair towers will be moved north, so they touch down in the new plaza area rather than on the MetroLink platform, for better visibility and line of sight;
• New bus turnout area at the new transit plaza;
• Improved and pedestrian-scale, more welcoming lighting;
• Funded by FTA capital grants (money that can’t be used to support operations, in other words) and local match (required to get federal capital dollars).

Meanwhile, the City of St. Louis will be replacing  the six undivided lanes with four divided lanes plus dedicated bus pullouts (no more buses stopped in traffic on the bridge!), widening sidewalks, and improving pedestrian accommodations on the bridge. The city’s intent is to make this a “signature bridge” for St. Louis.

The new transit plaza area will be built under the bridge where the bridge piers (supports) are located now. (Those piers will be removed when the City demolishes the current bridge.) If you’re finding this hard to visualize, please check out the nifty slideshow we put together for Saint Louis University about this project.

Scott Avenue Transit Plaza CCP Feb 09 2010 (2)

Decorative "organic-feeling" iron fencing.

Metro is working with an artist, Barbara Grygutis, who has helped make the design of the plaza more “organic” and welcoming, with touches like enhancing the fence to a decorative iron fence and using different colored paving stones, including some clear blue stones that will be lit from below with LED lights. Ms. Grygutis will also create a lit art piece in her unique style that will help enhance the area. Check out her website for some images of her previous work. Ms. Grygutis’s work on the project is funded from the 1% public art and enhancement funds as required by federal guidelines.

Metro’s project team, overseen by Senior Project Manager Jerry Wittenauer, also includes the engineering firm Horner & Shifrin, as well as The Lawrence Group and its sister company, Austin Tao & Associates.

Did you know that Metro is carrying on a Bus Stop Enhancement program? Last year, 65 bus stops – mainly in St. Louis County – were upgraded to ADA compliance, thanks to a Freedom Grant  that Metro received from the FTA for this very purpose. This year, 115 additional stops have been flagged for upgrades.

Bus stops in St. Louis area that have already received ADA upgrades

Working list of bus stops to receive ADA-compliance upgrades in 2010

A little background: The Americans With Disabilities Act was enacted in 1990 to provide protection against discrimination for individuals with disabilities. Part of that mission includes ensuring that public facilities, like courthouses and bus stops, are accessible to all. It’s particularly important for transit to be accessible, because people who are dependent on transit due to disability absolutely must be able to access our facilities! Our old bus stops were “grandfathered in” but any new stops we build have to be ADA-compliant. What to do about those old stops, though? We want to upgrade these stops to make our system as accessible as possible, even though the law says we don’t have to. That’s where the Freedom Grant comes in – it supplies the funds necessary to bring the old stops into compliance and provide much-needed mobility to our transit-dependent customers. I recently sat down with Dave Sander in Metro’s Engineering Department and with Lance Peterson and Linda Baker in Metro’s Planning Department to discuss Metro’s Bus Stop Enhancement program. Here’s what I learned:

• Metro planners surveyed each one of our 9,100+ (at the time) bus stops to determine which were ADA-compliant and which were not.
• Metro planners developed criteria to help prioritize which stops needed help first; factors included: Number of customers using the stop, whether the stop was a transfer point (a place where you can get off one bus and catch another), whether ADA-compliance was technically possible at a stop, who the stop serves, the condition of adjacent sidewalks, and more.
• Metro partnered with Paraquad for input and reviewed customer complaints, along with the above criteria, to decide which stops would be addressed first.

Bad sidewalk at St. Louis Ave. & Newstead

“Enhancements” are different depending on the location of each stop, but include:

- creating the concrete “landing pad” for boarding the bus
- adding a concrete pad for a bench
- correcting the slope of adjacent sidewalks
- adding missing accessible curb ramps,

and even in some cases fixing sidewalks that were, as the planners put it, in “deplorable” condition – even if those sidewalks don’t technically belong to Metro. In some cases, fixing the sidewalks was the only way to get the slope down to ADA compliance. The planners then share that information with St. Louis County, the City, and the municipal streets departments to alert them when sidewalk conditions are bad. At the same time, Metro is using the information gained from this project to evaluate each bus route, stop by stop, to eliminate unnecessary stops and improve operating speeds and efficiency. And the planners are adding a unique stop number to each stop, so if customers have a question about schedules or routes, they can give their stop number to Customer Service when they call. The contractor is getting permits and, weather permitting, construction can start any time.

Do you have any bus stops to nominate for this program? If you do, let us know here at the blog and we’ll check with Planning to see whether your stop is on the list.

Thanks to the Post-Dispatch, Metro holds a live online chat every other Wednesday at noon, hosted on the Post-Dispatch website. You have to have a login set up on the STLtoday website, but you can submit your questions any time before or during the chat once you’re logged in.

We also keep a transcript of past live chats on Metro’s Newsroom page (click the “Chat Transcripts” tab at the top).

Drop by the Post-Dispatch and submit your questions, even if you can’t be available for the live chat at noon; we’ll link the transcript here when it’s available. This is your chance to ask questions about anything and everything Metro-related: The long-range planning process, the results from the first round of public workshops and what’s in store for the second round of public input; how long the $12m appropriation from the State of Missouri will last; questions about the Vandeventer Bridge project; essentially, anything and everything you’d like to know.

UPDATE: Here’s the link to the Metro Live Chat transcript, thanks so much for your questions!

In the excitement and chaos of planning big Thanksgiving dinners and plotting our Black Friday shopping routes, we at NextStop just want to pause a moment and say, Thank you. Thank you for making NextStop a part of your daily or weekly routine. Thanks for reading, for linking, and for thinking about what’s going on here.

Thanks for all the emails we receive, and suggestions for posts, questions, and criticisms.

Thank you, all of the commenters who come here and make this an interesting place to read and write. I’d like to especially thank RTBones, Jazzy Jeff, TPlesko, Claire-ian the Librarian, and JimmyZ for your dedication to providing thoughtful, critical feedback, and support on all sorts of urban and transit issues.

Thank you, Alex Ihnen, for guest posting. Thank you, Steve Patterson and Jim Barnthouse, for doing ride-alongs. Thank you, Dotage St. Louis, UrbanReviewSTL, Citizens for Modern Transit, St. Louis Urban Workshop, Curious Feet, and all of our friends on the internet who link, tweet, talk, and support us.

Thank you, Miss Metrolink and your prom-planning friends, for keeping life interesting and fun.

Thank you, interns Matt and Melissa, for helping start the ball rolling. Thank you, Dianne and Angela in our Communications Department, for getting us started and keeping us on track.

Thank you, Paul in IT, for all of your technical support and your guidance and knowledge.

Let’s be real: It’s been a tough year everywhere, economically. People lost their jobs. Transit agencies all over the country, including ours, are struggling with cuts to service, fare increases, staff reductions, and a population that needs transit more than ever. We think that by carrying on these discussions and trading these ideas, and by participating in the planning and dreaming, we’re all helping improve transit for the region. Thanks for being part of it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, from Courtney, Jennifer, and Todd.