St. Louis region: What's at stake in MetroLink expansion | stltoday.com

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

The four routes regional leaders are mulling for MetroLink expansion snake through wildly different neighborhoods.

Crumbling buildings and weed-choked lots line parts of proposed corridors. Other routes would run near tidy shopping centers and trendy restaurants, reaching deep into the suburbs of St. Louis County.

Experts say younger workers and empty-nest boomers are increasingly looking to live next to light rail stops and the amenities that seem to sprout up around them. Those changing preferences have made the land around light rail stops in other cities valuable real estate, attracting development dollars and residents that will shape neighborhoods for decades.

With a potential development magnet up for grabs, political discord has already surfaced over where the next route should be built.

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St. Louis region: What's at stake in MetroLink expansion | stltoday.com

MoBikeFed comment: What's relatively new for Missouri is the idea that transit expansion is good for communities, and various communities fighting for the next transit expansion, rather than working hard to avoid it.

The Ferguson Report called for transit expansion as one of the primary responses to the regions' inequality: http://cmt-stl.org/transit-included-among-ferguson-commission-reports-si...

A realistic response to the arguments about which of several proposed transit routes to build out, is that of course ALL of them need to be built out to ensure a prosperous St Louis region. The only question is, which first and which next.

The Transit Funding in St. Louis report explores many of these issues: http://cmt-stl.org/app/uploads/2015/07/T4America-Transit-Funding-in-St.-...