File:Tubes (1945128358).jpg
An 1874 tunnel beneath Washington Ave. and 8th St., along with other bits of abandoned railroad ROW (notably the Eads Bridge), were creatively deemed St. Louis' 25% "local match" for the federal funds that built Metrolink's first phase, resulting in a cost of just $20M/mile.
Some bittersweet history: the tunnel was initially built to bypass St. Louis' already built-up downtown, connecting the terminal and railroads west of downtown to the Eads Bridge over the Mississippi and to the East. Unlike Chicago, which embraced the railroads a little too zealously (nearly giving away ROWs along the riverbanks and the south lakefront -- well, in exchange for political favors), St. Louis's trade centered around the docks, and its port interests jealously guarded their cargo from the new railroad competition.
According to William Cronon, this initial skepticism about the railroads ultimately sealed St. Louis' fate relative to Chicago -- Chicago's railroads had crossed the Mississippi (at Rock Island) 18 years before the Eads Bridge opened. In 1870, both cities had roughly 300,000 residents; twenty years thence, St. Louis had grown 50% while Chicago had leapfrogged to twice that size -- over one million residents.Licensing
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This image was originally posted to Flickr by Payton Chung at https://flickr.com/photos/41813589@N00/1945128358 (archive). It was reviewed on 10 June 2019 by FlickreviewR 2 and was confirmed to be licensed under the terms of the cc-by-2.0. |