I’m Bullish on the Loop Trolley
Which seems to not be the popular position.
The vanishing streetcar is one of our city’s greatest loses. Businesses and workers alike used to be able to plan around these permanent transit lines. Brick buildings built to curve along tracks are one of my favorite vestiges of their promise.
So, ever since Joe Edwards — the most nostalgic man in St. Louis, if not the world — dedicated his life to getting some trolleys running again, I’ve been rooting for it. After all, he birthed the Delmar Loop, possibly the single greatest influence toward my love of the city. Bumming around The Loop as a teenager taught me to appreciate the comforts of the urban fabric.
My hope has always been that this trolley endeavor was a step toward more integrated light rail. In particular, I still hold onto a theory that Flamingo Bowl, Joe’s only business outside of The Loop in St. Louis, was a flag to mark the trolley’s ultimate destination: clanging down Delmar, turning to Washington around midtown, and meeting up Downtown.
It is unfortunate that the first iteration provides little more than novelty, as it connects two existing Metrolink stations. Even more disappointing is how much everyone loves to hate on it. No doubt excavating the old tracks and laying new ones disrupted the busy stretch of Delmar. I’ve personally ate it slipping across wet tracks a couple times. St. Louisans can be curmudgeons, and their response to the streetcar has been one of the worst I’ve seen from them.
We must think bigger than the little demo running from The Loop to Forest Park. I remember when they shut down the intersection at Skinker and Delmar for construction, and resulted in one of the most peaceful periods of my biking career. The potentially lethal game of Frogger crossing Skinker was reduced to a quiet and gentle ride. It led me to imagine the popular destination street entirely as a pedestrian mall. It’s often worthless trying to drive a car through, anyway. Also, with vehicular traffic denied, the trolley would have a practical purpose for folks commuting in.
If the current track goes just a little bit further east, it will connect Delmar Divine, The Maker District, and the north end of the CWE and Fountain Park (which are just a little bit much for a regular comfortable walk from the CWE station). I would actually make use of this line to get to TechArtista from the CWE.
As Joe was recently quoted in a local NPR article: “The trolley still hasn’t started, in my opinion…there’s nothing but positive coming from this trolley project long-term.” I’d like to see this party get started.
