New Mississippi River Bridge-St Louis

[urbanlover]

Work began on the approaches to this bridge a couple of weeks ago. Currently Interstates 70, 55, and 64 are routed across a single bridge as they approach St. Louis . The new bridge would involve building a new alignment for I-70 on the Illinois side and would connect to I-70 north of downtown St. Louis. The former stretch of I-70 through downtown would designated I-44 which currently ends at 70/55/64 split on the Missouri side.

Map
http://www.newriverbridge.org/docume...uation%203.pdf

[Simfan34]

You folks need to improve your waterfront.

[Frank IBC]

Originally Posted by Simfan34

You folks need to improve your waterfront.

@Simfan34 - I'm pretty sure that the shoreline shown is in the state of Illinois, which is opposite the city which is on the Missouri side of the river. The Illinois side is swampy bottomland which is much less developed.

[hammersklavier]

Originally Posted by Frank IBC

@Simfan34 - I'm pretty sure that the shoreline shown is in the state of Illinois, which is opposite the city which is on the Missouri side of the river. The Illinois side is swampy bottomland which is much less developed.

Scroll over. You can see both.

You know, the land around the Gateway Arch park looks like a metric ton of wasted potential. I mean, if I was an out-of-town developer, I would expect that part of town to have some of the highest land values in the metropolitan area! Geez, that's probably the only place in the metro where buying air rights over a trenched Interstate looks like it could work...what's wrong with the Gateway Arch neighborhood?

(Other than that, I see a working waterfront that's still intensively used. Greening it would be an economic disaster.)

[ChrisZwolle]

Most of St Louis downtown is bounded by industrial wasteland. There is an elevated I-64 south of it, complemented with a huge rail classification yard. Other areas are industrial in nature.

[Frank IBC]

Oops, hammersklavier is right, I didn't see the right side of the picture. Thanks, hammersklavier.

And Simfan34 and the rest are right, the area between the freeway and the river (Missouri side) could use a lot more and better development. Or a nice park, at least.

[Simfan34]

Nice bridge, btw.

[diablo234]

Originally Posted by Frank IBC

@Simfan34 - I'm pretty sure that the shoreline shown is in the state of Illinois, which is opposite the city which is on the Missouri side of the river. The Illinois side is swampy bottomland which is much less developed.

Not to mention it that side of the river is in East St. Louis which is a hollowed out shell of a city with numerous crime problems (basically an equivalent of Camden, NJ or Gary, IN).

Anyways on the Missouri side of the river there is already a few developments in place or taking place including Laclede Landing and the Bottle District.

Laclede's Landing

THe Bottle District

[desertpunk]

New Mississippi River Bridge St Louis



Technical information:

Dimensions: main span 609.6 m
...................total length 960.12 m
...................number of lanes 8 [later reduced to 4-6]

deck: deck width 67.67 m

pylon: pylon height 132.56 m

Cost: cost of construction US$ 370 000 000 [subject to change]

October 2010

image hosted on flickr

New Bridge under Construction by John Chulick, on Flickr

December 2010

image hosted on flickr

New Bridge by Michael R. Allen, on Flickr

February


http://visitmobistro.com/2011/02/15/...o-that-anyway/

March






all above: http://stlouispatina.blogspot.com/20...idge-work.html

[desertpunk]

June


http://www.roadtraffic-technology.co...sissippi1.html


http://news.stlpublicradio.org/post/...i-river-bridge

[desertpunk]

September 2011

image hosted on flickr

New Mississippi River Bridge Supports by cjaaron, on Flickr

image hosted on flickr

New Mississippi River Bridge Construction Site by cjaaron, on Flickr

[Jim856796]

8 lanes? I thought the number of lanes on the proposed bridge was reduced to 4 (with expansion to 6)?

[ChrisZwolle]

Correct, it was once planned as an 8 lane facility, but was scaled down to four lanes with space for six lanes.

http://www.newriverbridge.org/overview-bridge.html

[desertpunk]

Fixed.

[Jim856796]

How was the number of lanes in the bridge reduced from eight to four?

And it is also said that the bridge will also be designed so that a companion bridge could be built beside it.

[ChrisZwolle]

Eight lanes is not exactly necessary anyway. The suburbs in Illinois are declining in population (East St. Louis being the most notorious example), and they don't seem to rebound. Population growth in the western and southwestern areas was much higher. Through traffic on Interstate 70 will not use this new bridge as they can follow a shorter route via I-270, bypassing the city entirely. It's mainly interesting for traffic from I-70 to I-64, and for those who don't wish to use I-64 from Wentzville through St. Louis across the Poplar Street Bridge.

I don't even think the Poplar Street Bridge itself is the main bottleneck. It has 8 lanes, well capable of handling the current 115,000 vehicles per day. The main problem would be the 2x2 through lanes at East St. Louis and the I-55/I-64/I-70 interchange on the Missouri side, which is too tight and substandard for these kind of traffic volumes. There are only 2x2 through lanes for I-64 and the ramps to and from I-70 to the bridge has only one lane complete with tight curves. The same goes for traffic to and from I-55, which is also funneled down to one lane.

[Jim856796]

Population decline is bull$#!+ and needs to stop soon. New bridge and surrounding highways east of it may end up triggering new development north of East St. Louis.

[desertpunk]

Feb. 9

image hosted on flickr

New Bridge Coming by bobcrowe_com, on Flickr

[bhj867]

Originally Posted by ChrisZwolle

Eight lanes is not exactly necessary anyway. The suburbs in Illinois are declining in population (East St. Louis being the most notorious example), and they don't seem to rebound. Population growth in the western and southwestern areas was much higher. Through traffic on Interstate 70 will not use this new bridge as they can follow a shorter route via I-270, bypassing the city entirely. It's mainly interesting for traffic from I-70 to I-64, and for those who don't wish to use I-64 from Wentzville through St. Louis across the Poplar Street Bridge.

I don't even think the Poplar Street Bridge itself is the main bottleneck. It has 8 lanes, well capable of handling the current 115,000 vehicles per day. The main problem would be the 2x2 through lanes at East St. Louis and the I-55/I-64/I-70 interchange on the Missouri side, which is too tight and substandard for these kind of traffic volumes. There are only 2x2 through lanes for I-64 and the ramps to and from I-70 to the bridge has only one lane complete with tight curves. The same goes for traffic to and from I-55, which is also funneled down to one lane.

Population declining? You are full of shit LMAO.
The metro-east grew by over 100,000 people the past 10 years. Have you seen the census numbers? Only the old riverfront cities in the metro-east shrunk. Belleville, Ofallon, and Edwardsville, and Collinsville are growing rapidly.

[ChrisZwolle]

Originally Posted by bhj867

Population declining? You are full of shit LMAO.

You earn respect that way in real life too?

The metro-east grew by over 100,000 people the past 10 years. Have you seen the census numbers? Only the old riverfront cities in the metro-east shrunk. Belleville, Ofallon, and Edwardsville, and Collinsville are growing rapidly.

St. Clair County grew by only some 14,000 people. Madison County added 10,000 people. Other counties like Monroe and Jersey are not relevant to this bridge.

If you want to go from suburbs in Madison County to the Airport, only Collinsville (pop. 26,000) is on the flip side, further north I-270 is shorter.

There are also no ramps for southbound destinations along I-44, I-55 and I-64 coming from the New Mississippi River Bridge, so that traffic will continue to use the current Poplar Street Bridge. There's a reason why they initially only construct 4 lanes on this bridge.