With Mayoral Support—What's Next for Proposed MetroLink Extension in St. Louis

Tony Messenger reports on a recent push by St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay to support a proposed north-south MetroLink extension, to "bring light-rail mass transit into the populous South Side and connect to the more abandoned North Side."

Messenger's article follows up on a proclamation tweet from Mayor Slay:

Top of my list to move forward: North/South Metro expansion. No new line has been added since 2006. #fgs

— MayorSlay.com (@MayorSlay) May 21, 2016

According to Messenger, the process of completing the proposed extension "will start with a $2 million conceptual design study that Slay hopes will be funded from the city’s parking division." Then "would be a $40 million detailed design and land-use study, getting very specific about where each of the stops would go." And finally would be "the matter of finding the more than $1 billion it would take to build such a system."

Mayor Slay has called the proposal "transformational," and the proposed MetroLink is one of the recommendations of the Forward Through Ferguson report, which makes recommendations for achieving racial equity in the St. Louis region.