Route 66 travelers going through the St. Louis area received good news over the weekend: The long-closed McKinley Bridge is set to reopen to traffic on Sept. 25, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
The bridge, built in 1910 to link St. Louis to Venice, Ill., was closed in 2001 when it became too dangerously decayed to carry vehicle traffic.
Those who previously drove the bridge to follow one of St. Louis’ myriad Route 66 alignments will see changes, though:
The rebuilt span will be far from the dilapidated one taken out of commission in 2001. Its center lanes will carry two lanes of vehicle traffic. The outside lanes will carry bicycles and pedestrians.
And unlike in the past, it will have no tolls.
The Illinois Department of Transportation projects that almost 14,000 cars will use the bridge daily, meaning thousands of people at least passing through an area that has struggled in recent years. City officials envision Illinois Route 3, which connects directly to the bridge, developing into a commercial corridor.
Although it cost almost $45 million to rehab the bridge, taking it out of commission for good was never an option. The St. Louis area is rife with traffic woes, and closing a bridge over the Mississippi River wouldn’t have helped.
And the Route 66 towns of Venice, Madison and Granite City are relieved that greater access to St. Louis will be returning.
For more details about the history of the McKinley Bridge, go here.
Slight rat hole here, but….
This story makes me wonder why in the world Tulsa built another separate bridge next to the Cyrus Avery bridge rather than rehab the original. I can see that the Cyrus Avery would have been closed for quite awhile without an easy alternative but it could have be done.
I wonder how much was spent on the SW Blvd bridge and how much repair could have been done on the Cyrus Avery Bridge instead. Don’t forget the roads had to be realigned as well.
Looking hind sight at the Cyrus Avery bridge and seeing what St. Louis did, I would say St. Louis has greater forward vision than Tulsa. I hope that is changing.
Having lived near St. Louis for eight years, saying that city has more forward vision than Tulsa is a big stretch. But I digress …
I suspect that the new bridge was built in Tulsa because the old bridge wasn’t up to modern road standards anymore and that it was cheaper or cost-comparative for the taxpayers to build a new bridge than rehab the old one. In my experience, it’s often the case when you’re dealing with old bridges in general. Plus, this was done in the decades ago when historic bridge preservation wasn’t a big priority.
The huge difference between Tulsa and St. Louis is that the Mississippi River is more than a mile wide and its powerful currents present a lot of scary engineering challenges. As you well know, the Arkansas River is at a low ebb much of the time. Not the mighty Mississippi.
Plus, you have a lot of barge traffic on the Mississippi, which adds more danger and complexity to a bridge project. The Arkansas — at least in the Tulsa metro area — doesn’t have that problem.
Building a new, bare-bones bridge on the Arkansas can probably be done for $120 million, maybe a somewhat more. Building a new bridge — as what’s being proposed right now — across the Mississippi in St. Louis will reportedly take $900 million. It sounds horrendously expensive, but you’re talking about a big, powerful river that floods a lot, a bridge that will have to handle traffic on the order of 200,000 vehicles a day, and a design complexity that will also have to consider river currents and barges that sometimes stall out and hit the bridge supports (yes, that happens several times a year).
Considering that St. Louis is under constant traffic pressure to keep all bridge options open, rehabbing an ancient bridge for $45 million doesn’t sound too bad in comparison.
In short, St. Louis is rehabbing its old bridges not out of a sense of history, but out of necessity.
I think St. Louis’ official city motto is: “Demolish if you can, repair if you must.” The McKinley Bridge was a must-repair, which is probably all that saved it.
The pressing question for me is whether John’s Drive-In is still open. If so, the reopening of the bridge should be a wonderful boon to that business, which used to be just about the only reason anyone would want to stop in Venice. They took a huge hit when the bridge closed (no more commuters stopping for ice cream on their way home from work), and another huge hit when the school closed (no more kids pedaling their bikes to the ice-cream stand after school).
If John’s is still going, I highly recommend a stop while you’re checking out the reopened bridge this fall. Good ice cream, and being out there is one of the more surreal experiences you’ll find on the Mother Road: a charming little slice of 1950s Americana plopped down in the middle of a hellish, desolate vision of urban blight.
When school was in session, you could sit on the hood of your car and drink a milkshake and watch throngs of excited little kids come running down from the school to stand in front of the window, squealing and wiggling and counting up their change to see if they had enough for an ice-cream cone or an order of nachos. Meanwhile, maybe half a mile away, a desperate crack addict was selling her body in the parking lot at City Hall.
John’s was like an oasis of normality and innocence in the midst of some alternate-reality universe of crime and corruption. Being there was sad, strange, and yet oddly reassuring. You mourned for whatever these kids were facing at home, but at the same time, you gave thanks for the ice-cream stand, its universal appeal to children, and most of all, the fact that in the midst of this crime-ridden hellhole, kids could still get excited about sweets and could still be … well … kids.
should start working on better & more ascess to the McKinley bridge immediately
Mckinley bridge is now set to reopen on november 10, 2007.
https://www.bnd.com/news/local/story/129568.html
McKinley Bridge Grand Re-Opening will be a little later than the 10th. We still do not have an official date, but it will be a little later, maybe a week or two.