New bike/ped connection across Missouri under study at St. Charles

An STLToday article covers an effort by adjoining cities, Great Rivers Greenway District,  and MoDOT to work towards a new Missouri River crossing for bicyclists and pedestrians on the Blanchette Bridge: 

The new Blanchette Bridge bike/ped path might be similar to the path on the Page Avenue Extension near St. Charles

Bicyclists, walkers and runners could use the Blanchette Bridge over the Missouri River in coming years — via a separate structure attached to the bridge’s eastbound span.

The nearby cities of St. Charles, Bridgeton and Maryland Heights expect to team up with a regional parks agency and state transportation officials to pay for a $233,900 engineering analysis of the idea.

“It would be a nice tourist attraction for the area,” said Walt Siemsglusz, Bridgeton’s parks and recreation director. “It will give us access to the Katy Trail as well as St. Charles.”

Tom Evers of the Missouri Department of Transportation said the study would determine whether the Interstate 70 span could support the additional weight and which type of attached structure would work best.

This new river crossing would connect the Katy Trail on the north side of the river with a network of trails and bicycle routes on the south side of the river.  It could become a very important bike/ped connection in the area, complementing the existing Page Avenue crossing and the planned bike/ped crossing point on the new Boone Bridge on I-64/40.

The Hwy 370 bridge crossing near St. Charles is hypothetically a reasonable bridge crossing for bicyclists, but it has been closed to bicycling for some years due to construction.  Even when open the crossing is less than ideal, because of difficulties at each end of the bridge.

Hwy 370 and Page Avenue are the only available crossing points of the Missouri River for bicyclists and pedestrians from the St. Charles area all the way to the Hwy 47 crossing at Washington.  Hwy 47 is slated to include a high-quality bike/ped link when it is replaced in the next several years.  

The new Pat Jones Memorial Pedestrian & Bicycle Lane on the Jefferson City Missouri River Bridge was a similar project to that proposed for Blancheette--a separate lane was added to an existing bridge structure.  That project cost about $6 million--and tremendous savings over the cost of building a free-standing bike/ped bridge structure.

Creating more, better, safer bicycle and pedestrian links across major barriers like rivers is one of the main objectives of MoBikeFed's Vision for Bicycling and Walking in Missouri.  Your membership and generous support helps make our Vision reality!