Highway 40 Insight

What To Do With All The Empty Concrete?

You may not realize it, but the St. Louis area will be given a gift as part of the Highway 40 shutdown, one that we must decide how to best utilize: One mile of completely vacant concrete!

Everything you see marked in X’s will be vacant, along with another 1/2 mile east towards Spoede. This is outside the construction area, so there’s no rebuilding to do here.

Sure, I can hear Gateway Constructors complaining that they’ll need to run their dump trucks and tractors up and down this section of road, but they don’t need 8 lanes to do it! Give the community the southern half of the highway from the Ballas exit ramp to the temporary Outer Road crossover. That’s well over 5 acres of concrete!

The burning question is what to do with it? I’ve listed some ideas below and welcome yours. Only one rule: no suggestions that involve cars or trucks. They dominate enough of our roads. Besides, the neighbors deserve a break from the traffic noise.

• Bike Criterium Races — this would be a great addition to the annual Gateway Cup over Labor Day, which tours all the great sites of St. Louis: downtown, Lafayette Square, the Hill, the Loop, and now Highway 40!
• Skate Park – Skateboarders are always getting chased away from places to ride; let them rip it up on Highway 40
• Ice Rink — What until it gets below freezing, then send the fire department out to hose it down. The hilly parts would provide a better ride than Art Hill. Just don’t let MoDOT get near the area with their nearby pile of salt.
• Dog Park — let your dog “doo” on Highway 40 what you always wished you could’ve done while stuck in all those traffic jams.

What do you think St. Louis should do with all this prime concrete real estate?

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 6th, 2007 at 12:12 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.