Useless and Expensive: The Proposed St. Louis MetroLink Extension
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The proposed St. Louis MetroLink extension, with its staggering $1.1 billion price tag, would be useless and expensive.
Demand for public transit along this proposed new light rail route, spanning 5 miles primarily along Jefferson Avenue, is such that there is currently NO bus route that serves this same route, yet we are to believe a light rail system is sorely needed and will be heavily used.
The projected ridership of 5,000 boardings per day is underwhelming, especially when compared to past forecasts for MetroLink ridership. In 2004, Metro predicted 80,000 daily boardings by 2025 for the Missouri side alone; yet, in 2023, the entire system averaged just 16,700 boardings.
We can look to the Loop Trolley debacle as a cautionary tale. Despite abysmal ridership numbers, St. Louis is stuck funding the trolley due to federal funding stipulations. The exact same thing will happen with this latest MetroLink extension proposal. It will cost over a BILLION dollars, have VERY FEW riders, and we will be forced to operate and fund it for decades. This project isn’t merely wasteful. It is an actively harmful expenditure of federal and local tax dollars.
