Then St. Louis County Councilman Pat Dolan (5th District) said in April 2016, posted in 40 South News, that the St. Louis County Council had approved the right-turn only lane on northbound Big Bend at Manchester, that it was an in-house county job. The city of Maplewood hadn’t been told at the time.
He said the county highway department had been waiting on federal money, which came through, and that road projects take time and work goes on before a municipality might be notified.
Dolan said in spite of adding the extra lane — going from five to six — the intersection will be safer for pedestrians because the lights will be timed for it. Also curb cuts and audible signals will make it safe.
In the same conversation, Dolan also said he was responsible for killing the so-called ‘South County Connector,’ proposed by the St. Louis County Highway Department in 2013. He said he stopped it by not approving funds for a study needed to take it to the federal level.
Dolan lost the 5th District council seat in the recent primary election to Lisa Clancy.
Is there an updated timeline for this project? Initially said summer of 2018, but the county’s report says the project is just ~40% completed. This is on pace to take ten months to add a single turn lane!
“South County Connector” would ruin mid-south county, mainly webster, all for the sake of south county. so yeah, south county vs webster/kirkwood … not a good way to frame the project. Should’ve been called “Friends of Better Roads” then it might have happened. But it would also need to be a program about better roads, not big hogways that divide and destroy neighborhoods.
St. Louisans against proper driving routes. Why would you block an idea to improve north to south traffic in St. Louis? Let’s just keep all those cars sitting in traffic spewing exhaust or better yet let them clog up McCausland from Manchester all the way to 40/64. Remember why 170 just stops half way to 44?
We don’t object to improving driving routes per se. There were specific and detailed reasons why it was blocked. If you go back and look at the actual proposal for the South County Connector, you’ll see that it had multiple problems, such as cutting through the Deer Creek Center parking lot and being blocked by a railroad overpass and easement. in addition, the traffic studies cited by the county relied on data that was out of date and did not accurately represent current traffic patterns. It was an untenable proposal from the start.
As someone who has occasion to cross that intersection on foot with children, I welcome the changes. Our children and neighbors cross here every day, and we owe them a safe means of getting to their destination. The temporary pain of the road construction is worth it. We also owe Mr Dolan a big thank-you for stopping the South County Connector.
Stupid, stupid, stupid idea! At last now we know where to lay blame == St Louis County, not Maplewood!
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