St. Louis MetroLink Extension - Building with Optimism

We weigh the $150 million St. Louis MetroLink extension to MidAmerica Airport against projected ridership and explain how Illinois state funding, decades of pre-planning, and significant optimism have made this project a reality. 

• cost, scope and context of the MidAmerica Airport extension
• ridership at Lambert versus MidAmerica and what it implies
• lack of anchors near the new terminus and first-mile gaps
• Illinois’s Rebuild Illinois funding and shovel-ready advantage
• development logic behind building into empty fields
• the Green Line corridor, voter backing, and federal hurdles
• pivot from light rail to dedicated-lane BRT and timelines
• risks of BRT creep and ways to protect speed and reliability
• how to engage with local planning and share feedback

If you are in the St. Louis area or in Illinois and you want to give your thoughts about these two projects, the BRT line and the Mid-America Airport extension of the Red Line out of St. Louis, please send us an email. If you want to support the show, the best way to do so is via our Patreon. You can also just subscribe, like the episode, all that good stuff.

Transcript

Setting The Stage: Airport Extension

SPEAKER_01 0:18

St. Louis has an extension to its metro system opening this summer. But I can't help but wonder if this is really the extension that the city needed. We'll cover the new Mid-America Airport extension, the Green Line, and more coming up this week on transit tangents. St. Louis is finishing up an extension to its metro system that's going to open this summer. Now, I will take what I can get when it comes to metro extensions in the US at this point, but of all of the places to do it, this one feels like maybe not the right spot.

SPEAKER_02 0:49

This week we're going to dive into the new St. Louis Metrolink extension to the Mid-America Airport, as well as some potential plans for BRT in a system that they're calling the Green Line. We'll talk about the positives and negatives of this project, and we'll also talk about why some attempts at rail extensions in the denser part of the cities really haven't come to fruition.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

Yeah, and this is a project that I was pretty excited about until I started looking at the maps a little bit more. And Chris and I have some differing of opinions that we'll get into, I think, as we discuss this further on. But to give you some of the details, this is a 5.2 mile extension to the existing metro line that heads out to the mid-America Airport. Uh, it's set to open over the summer, like we said. And a major upside here is for a 5.2 mile extension, this is only coming in at a cost of$150 million. And that also includes some uh additional infrastructure that's being built out in this area, including a bike path as well as some enhancements to streets in the nearby area.

SPEAKER_02 1:51

Sounds like a really good price tag for a 52.2 mile extension. Again, we can think back to a previous episode we did about the Chicago area where there was about a five-mile extension that cost a billion dollars a mile. So I think this is actually uh really, really cheap.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

In that regard, it is really cheap, but when you look at a map and compare the two of them, these are nothing close to the same at all. Uh this one essentially is running through a bunch of empty fields to this secondary airport in the St. Louis area. And I'm being negative about it because as I said, this is the secondary airport. This is not St. Louis's main airport. The only airline that flies out of here is Allegiant, which is just a budget airline. And the numbers to make this make sense uh don't really add up to me, if I'm being honest. So uh when we look at the passengers, the the main airport in St. Louis sees 16 million passengers annually. That's great, a ton of people. The airport also has 15,000 people who work at it. Another really great thing. It makes tons of sense as to why uh years ago the city decided to extend the metro to their main airport. When you look at the data of how many people actually use the metro system leaving the main airport in in St. Louis, you end up with a combined total of about 1,500 people per day uh using the metro system there. That's actually down from about 2,000 per day in 2011. Unfortunately, we don't have more up-to-date data because the uh the transit agency there does not give us very good information in terms of per station boardings, unfortunately. Not the kind of ridership you would necessarily expect from an airport that sees 16 million passengers. Uh, but when we make the comparison to the Mid-America airport, the numbers are pretty stark.

SPEAKER_02 3:46

This airport did see a record passenger number in 2025, but that record passenger level was only 384,000 passengers.

Ridership Reality Check

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Yeah. When you do the math on that, divided by 365 days a year, we're talking uh just over a thousand passengers per day. So a thousand passengers per day total versus you know, sixteen million. Okay, not all sixteen million getting off uh in St. Louis, but probably ten million are. Uh with ten million passengers at the main airport in St. Louis seeing just fifteen hundred riders per day on the metro system. I mean, when you're dealing with only a thousand potential people per day and a much smaller employee count, this is not not boating well, uh, the airport has just five gates in total. Uh, they are hoping to grow. I'm being very doomer about this if you can't tell. They are hoping to grow the Mid-America airport to attract other low-cost carriers like the ones Chris mentioned. But I mean, even if they doubled their passenger counts, uh it the the the math still doesn't really make sense for me at this point.

SPEAKER_02 4:59

Yeah, it doesn't seem like it makes any sense. And so the other idea is, well, maybe there is a large industrial base around this airport. Um, but there's really not. There's mostly fields and a lot of low density in this region of St. Louis. There is an Air Force base, so that's a good use case for getting passengers to an Air Force base. However, the red line already extends to the Air Force base. So that passenger uh area or that passenger need is already being serviced.

Searching For Jobs And Anchors

SPEAKER_01 5:28

Yeah, the the the best thing I could find in terms of like, you know, uh having a workforce of people coming out. Obviously, you you are gonna have some, you already do have some employees who work at the Mid-America Airport, but we're not talking big numbers here. I mean, TSA agents who are processing only a thousand people per day. Same thing for allegiance staff members. I'm sure there are a few, you know, vendors and whatnot in setup inside of the airport, but we're we're not talking thousands and thousands of people. Again, it's 15,000 people at the main airport in the city. It's gonna be probably well less than a thousand, maybe maybe less than five hundred at at the airport here. You do have a Boeing facility uh that is located at the airport. Unfortunately, though, it would require a 1.2 mile walk to get from the end of the metro station to the Boeing facility. And from what I can tell, there's not even a sidewalk to do it. So uh I would not expect people to be doing it there. Um, but you know, that that's where we are with this, essentially. Uh that that is what's going on at uh the Mid-America airport. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:33

So local officials who are touting this project, they're not really out there promoting the huge gain in ridership that a lot of other metro systems would be promoting when they're getting ready to build something like this. Um, one thing that they are hoping is that the uh airport will have an expansion. So they, as Lewis said, they're trying to court these other low-cost carriers to uh increase the total number of gates at this airport.

SPEAKER_01 6:59

Yeah, when you mentioned the ridership, when we actually look back, uh some of the earlier extensions to this line uh were studied in the late 90s. I found uh an FTA report from 1999, actually, that references the eventual planned extension to the Mid-America airport station. And I'm gonna read one quote from it that says the Mid-America Terminal Station of the second phase is projecting one of the lowest ridership levels for any station on the entire metro link. And that was them projecting out to 2010. Uh, they went on further in the study. I was reading a good chunk of it, uh, to say that that is very unusual for terminus stations on any line because you generally we've talked about this on the show before, you want to have kind of anchors on either end of the line so that you have ridership using the whole thing. Not really an anchor to end your line here.

Why It’s Moving Forward: Illinois Money

SPEAKER_02 7:50

No, I wouldn't say that, no. Uh also 1999, if we're going back that far, I mean, really that only feels like it was what, 11 years ago? Right? That is interesting though, that uh in 1999 they were projecting out 10 plus years, and we're still saying the ridership is not going to be there. So why is this getting built? If it is not a uh major hub for travelers, if it is not a major employment hub for local residents, if it is already serving this Air Force base and now all that is left are fields, what is the driver for getting this done when we look at projects all across the country that are having their budget slashed and being canceled? Why is this one moving forward when it seems like it's gonna have such a little impact? And there is one really big reason. Actually, there's about 45 billion reasons. In 2019, Illinois passed the Rebuild Illinois Capital Program, which unlocked$45 billion in infrastructure spending for the state of Illinois.$33.2 billion of those dollars are set aside specifically for transportation projects, and a significant portion of that is set aside for projects just outside of the Chicago region. Because when you think about transit in Illinois, you're probably not thinking of anywhere except for that upper corner that hugs Chicago.

SPEAKER_01 9:20

Later in the show, we're gonna talk specifically about another project that a lot of folks I think would have rather seen money go to, but people often for I mean, I don't think about St. Louis all the time. Sorry, St. Louis folks, but uh it I in until I really looked at it again, I kind of you forget that it's right on the the state line here. This is a unique system that crosses um both in the states of Missouri as well as Illinois. Um and obviously this extension is falling on the Illinois side. So when you know the state of Illinois is looking at at this and Metro uh the transit agency is looking at it, they see a project that's basically shovel ready and they see money that could potentially head their way. I mean, I really don't blame them for really trying to push this forward as as much crap as I've been talking about it the last couple minutes.

SPEAKER_02 10:08

No, and you made a good point about shovel ready, and this project truly was near shovel ready when the money appeared. Um, as we talked about in 1999, they had already done this study about extending it out to this airport. The authorities in this area had already started buying up right-of-way and securing that right-of-way for future expansions because as we know, and we've said many times in the show before, like the cheapest time to build something was yesterday. Every year you wait, things get more expensive. These local authorities knew that were buying up right away as they could. Uh, they also completed most of the environmental impact study, which, as we also talked about on this show, is such a huge drain of resources and takes so much time.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Uh it better have been short for this one. It better have been.

Shovel Ready And Environmental Box-Ticking

SPEAKER_02 10:56

What's the impact? We're building a railroad through a field. That's the impact. Um, but all of that was completed ahead of time, and so they had this project that had been sitting on you know a shelf, not really with that many hopes of getting it done anytime soon. And now Illinois has passed all of this uh transit infrastructure money, and it was the right place, right time. You know, you pull that plan off the shelf, dust it off, and you say, Here you go, Illinois, we are ready to move forward. And I think that's exactly what happened, and now they are moving forward and getting this done.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, no, absolutely. And again, you know, it it it at a price tag of only$150 million, and again, that's including a couple other pieces of infrastructure here. You don't hear about any transit projects being funded for that. And in an ideal world, I would have liked to see that$150 million be allocated to go towards the project we're gonna talk about next, which is uh kind of uh ironically also a five and a half mile proposed project. There were talks of doing this uh green line light rail in St. Louis proper uh in the on the Missouri side of the line, but the reality is that money would have not been available to do this on the Missouri side, as these were Illinois funds that were were making it happen. So as much as I'd love to be like, hey, even if this other five and a half mile project in the more dense part of town would have been much more expensive because you're dealing with roads and construction and a lot of more utilities and all this sort of stuff versus an empty field, you know, that money in a perfect world would be able to be used for either, but we don't live in a perfect world as we know for a whole variety of reasons that we're gonna be able to do.

The Development Hope Argument

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Right, Illinois's not gonna not gonna just like gift this money to the city of St. Louis, which is primarily on the Missouri side of the river. Uh, so yes, it makes sense. Also, Illinois, I believe, has a much larger GDP than the state of Missouri. So it's uh they have a much more impressive budget to be able to do these sort of projects. And outside of the the ridership numbers and everything that you would normally tout on this kind of project, what politicians are really touting about this is that they are planning for future economic development in this region. They are hoping that if they build this rail line, that these empty fields will become more, that it will become an industrial region, that you will have more connectivity to this area. And one of the things I was reading about this made a good point that if you don't build the rail, that investment's definitely not coming. If you do build the rail, there's a chance that investment might come. So it's really a uh if we build it, they will come sort of mentality. And uh the last thing that I will say about this is the folks in this region are actually very lucky that uh Illinois did pass this transit funding bill because most projects like this really rely on the federal new starts program. And as we've talked about also earlier last year, uh after the current administration took office, programs that rely on federal new starts or really any federal funding are have are really up in question right now. They're getting the bottom rock, they're getting scaled back. Um starts, if they were to look at this project and they saw the ridership numbers, I think it would have absolutely died uh in that program.

SPEAKER_01 14:13

And to be honest, it should it it should have died in that pro like there are if we're looking at federal, you know what I mean, federal dollars should be spent in ways that are gonna impact way more people. I I do appreciate the effort here. Uh I I'll be curious to see if it does generate some new buzz in the in the rural part of far western. I I don't know. I I I remain skeptical. Um we'll see. We'll see.

SPEAKER_02 14:37

And I maybe honestly, I I disagree with you. I think federal money should go to projects like this as well. I mean, I don't think we should discriminate based on large population centers versus the project.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

LA's projects that run through much more. So in a perfect world, I agree. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 15:09

But I will say a couple episodes ago, if you recall, you were really excited about a train to nowhere in Germany.

Pivot To The Green Line Idea

SPEAKER_01 15:14

So that's true, but the Germans for a while funded it. Right now it's a little more quite. I mean, there's they're spending some money now, but the U.S. is not Germany in that regard. But you're not wrong. You're not wrong. All right, let's let's move on to the green line here. Uh so like I said, it is also a five and a half mile project. It would run down Jefferson Avenue, uh, through a more dense part of St. Louis, especially in the portion south of downtown. Um, you've got uh kind of some row homes, you've got some apartments, some commercial districts. Uh, it runs through kind of the the edge of downtown, um, connects with the existing red and blue lines, and then heads uh into the north part of the city in an area that I am not going to pretend to know all of the history here, but um it seems like an area that's that's seen better days. I know there is some new uh investment coming in there with a new government campus for the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. They've built a huge compound here that's brand new.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

Hey Lewis, can you can you tell us exactly what the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency does? Just for our viewers.

SPEAKER_01 16:24

No. The point is, is this is an area that uh a lot of people live in, a lot of people work in, it is adjacent to downtown. And uh when we compare it to the line we were just discussing, we'd would see a lot more ridership. But let's not compare it to that anymore. I'll stop being doomer about the about the uh the airport extension. This green line actually went up for a vote in 2017, and St. Louis voters approved a half cent sales tax uh for this Metrolink extension.

Voter-Backed Rail That Stalled

SPEAKER_02 16:55

So the estimated cost for that Metrolink expansion would have been about$1.1 billion in June of 2024. When the project started to go through the NEPA phase and all of the FTA federal approval process, they realized that they needed to bring the price tag down a little bit. They tried to achieve about an$850 million project by reducing the number of stations and trying to use uh existing maintenance maintenance facilities that they already have. Um but at the end of the day, when they went through the process and they looked at their ridership numbers, they realized they were not going to be competitive enough for other federal grants and ultimately had to pivot away from the light rail extension to another type of project.

From Light Rail To Real BRT

SPEAKER_01 17:41

Yeah, and it's it's unfortunate because you know this thing did make it, it was it was formally approved by the FTA to get into the project development phase and everything. They were well into doing the NEPA process and everything. Um, but yeah, the the funding from the half cent uh sales tax just wasn't enough. They had$96 million kind of already accumulated from that new tax, and they were estimating to get an extra$12 to$15 million per year from it. But that was not enough even to finance doing this on their own, obviously. So, like you said, they did have to pivot into doing a BRT. And not all of the work that had been done on the light rail portion of this was lost, though. Uh, by pivoting to the BRT, they're still staying on a similar alignment, likely. Right now, they're kind of trying to determine the locally preferred alternatives at this stage, but they're able to use a lot of the same work that had already been done preparing for the NEPA facility or the NEPA process to be able to do this with BRT, which is nice to see. And they're from from some of the renderings that we're seeing, again, that none of this is set in stone at this point. Uh, this is looking like a real BRT project, not a like you know, glorified express bus, but uh uh bus that's operating in dedicated lanes, uh, not with mixed traffic. Although it will still have to navigate intersections, but hopefully you'll get some sort of transit priority.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So as we progress through 2026, this project has started the sort of tier two evaluation with plans on that being completed sometime in spring. And then by the end of the year, they will have the locally preferred alternative uh solidified for their plans, which again, we've gone over this on an EIS episode in the past. You always have to have those locally preferred alternatives to go into the plan to get that federal funding.

SPEAKER_01 19:31

Yeah, so if you're from St. Louis, keep an eye out. I'll put some links in the description. Uh, there is lots of opportunities to kind of get involved and share your thoughts on this process process and project. Um, so keep an eye out for those. Um, I there's also an advocacy group called Citizens for Modern Transit that had a decent amount of good information, uh, as well as a video that kind of had a recent update that was posted only about two weeks ago to their YouTube channel that I'll link below for folks to check out as well if you are interested. One other benefit to the pivot to BRT is the potential for this to actually go a little bit further than it would have with LightRail. Obviously, the budget was a concern with the light rail, but depending on how much infrastructure they they build out for the BRT, this could run much further in either direction, which could connect more people to more places.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

So overall, I think we can be pretty supportive of this pivot from light rail to BRT. I do think it's always a little disappointing when we're moving away from uh tracks to road-based systems. One of the reasons for that is, again, something we've talked about on the show in the past is that BRT has uh a lot of potential to be scaled back, especially when a new government's in place and they see BRT or see this as uh an easy uh funding cut for uh city services. So always a little worried about that.

Risks Of BRT Creep And Scope Cuts

SPEAKER_01 20:59

Yeah, even as like they're in the process of building it out, it's like, oh, we're a little over budget, maybe we don't need to separate the lanes, like there's not usually traffic in this area, it can probably just operate here, and then you have a system that's just you you end up with BRT creep, um, where it just starts to turn into a glorified bus.

SPEAKER_02 21:17

Um turns into John Whitmer in Houston.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

Yes, John, yeah. Uh if you're interested, we we've talked about that in our Houston using only public transit episode. Um only other thought on the the green line here is it is a little disappointing that like a five and a half mile new rail line for roughly a billion dollars, like that feels like a pretty good deal. And sure the ridership wasn't there today, but when you when you look at the potential for investment along the line, I mean that doesn't mean that that ridership won't be there tomorrow. To the point that you're making about the the airport, there could maybe they'll have a big boom at that airport, new airlines will come in, a whole bunch of industrial. Industrial will will be built right next to the station and it'll be a majorly successful spot. And I I hope that's the case. I don't I don't think that's gonna be the case there, but I hope that it's the case.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

That that trademark Lewis optimism right there.

SPEAKER_01 22:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, it's a little disappointing to see to see it not actually go through. But um, you know, resources are are slim at the moment. Uh I hope that that's not gonna continue to be the case.

What Could Have Been And What’s Next

SPEAKER_02 22:26

But so if you are in the St. Louis area or if you're in Illinois and you want to give your thoughts about these two projects, the BRT line and the Mid-America Airport extension of the Red Line out of St. Louis, please put a comment in the comment section on YouTube, send us an email. We do really appreciate all the feedback that we get on the videos, and we do go through uh and read all of those, even if we're sometimes a little slow on uh responding to emails and comments.

SPEAKER_01 22:54

Or even if sometimes people are mean to us.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Sometimes people are mean to us.

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Usually they're positive, though. Uh if you want to support the show, the best ways to do so are via our Patreon. We just put uh some bonus content from last week's episode in there featuring an extended part of our conversation with the one of the architects for the gondola uh project in Paris, which was pretty interesting. Um we try to get episodes out early there. You can also check out our merch store, buy us a coffee, or things like that. You can also just subscribe, like the video, all that good stuff. So, with all of that being said, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your Transit Tangent Tuesday.