{"id":171,"date":"2025-07-02T15:02:02","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T15:02:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/compass.siue.edu\/siue\/?post_type=story&#038;p=171"},"modified":"2026-03-20T17:06:41","modified_gmt":"2026-03-20T17:06:41","slug":"how-to-cross-a-river","status":"publish","type":"story","link":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/story\/how-to-cross-a-river\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Cross a River"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"iframe-fullwidth\" src=\"\/wp-content\/siue-stories\/how-to-cross-a-river\/index.html\" width=\"100%\" height=\"600\" style=\"border:none;\"><\/iframe>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>How do you cross a river?<br \/>\nIt sounds like a silly question, especially in a region with so many bridges. But for transit users in metro St. Louis, the Mississippi River, and with it the state line, pose significant challenges of time, money, and detailed knowledge of three different transit systems.<br \/>\nAlthough the Census Bureau includes fifteen counties in St. Louis&#8217;s statistical metro area, the region&#8217;s transit networks can get you to about six of those: St. Louis City, St. Louis County, St. Clair, Madison, Jefferson, and (in a pinch) St. Charles.<br \/>\nWithin those six counties, there are three main transit networks. Metro (including Metrolink, the region&#8217;s lightrail) primarily serves St. Louis City and County. St. Clair County Transit District and Madison County Transit each primarily serve their respective counties, but SCCTD is operated by Metro.<br \/>\nUnfortunately, those transit networks aren&#8217;t fully integrated. While a physical Metro ticket can get you onto any vehicle in any network, MCT passes aren&#8217;t as strong. A two-hour MCT pass can be used once on Metro, but monthly MCT passes are no good.<br \/>\nSince the networks aren&#8217;t fully integrated, it often costs extra for people traveling from the Metro East into St. Louis, versus people traveling from St. Louis into the Metro East. A further challenge is that mobile passes aren&#8217;t valid across any of the systems, so people often wind up paying double.<br \/>\nThese impacts aren&#8217;t negligible! St. Clair County riders account for about a quarter of Metro&#8217;s almost 20 million riders, plus additional riders from Madison County (which counts its ridership a little differently and is hard to compare).<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s a good reminder that the City of St. Louis is just one node in a much larger network. The city&#8217;s population of about 300,000 is just a fraction of the metro area&#8217;s 2.8 million people.<br \/>\nThere are lots of reasons people might travel without a car: affordability, disability, environmental concerns, and even just personal enjoyment! And each individual transit network does alright, although there&#8217;s lots of room for improvement. But crossing boundaries is hard &#8212; the river most of all.<br \/>\nSo how do you cross a river if you&#8217;re not in a car?<br \/>\n1. Take a train<br \/>\nIf you want to take the metro, you&#8217;ve only got one option: the Eads Bridge. Both red and blue lines cross here, from Laclede&#8217;s Landing on the MO side to East Riverfront on the IL side.<br \/>\nCost: $2.50 each way or a $5 day pass<br \/>\n2. Take the bus<br \/>\nIf you live in Edwardsville or Highland and want to commute to St. Louis, you&#8217;re in luck! The 16x and 14x express busses go straight to downtown STL. But bad news for St. Louisans: They only run to St. Louis in the morning and from St. Louis in the afternoon.<br \/>\nCost: $3.00 each way, or a $5 day MCT day pass<br \/>\n2. Take the bus<br \/>\nThere are two other busses with the same AM STL-bound and PM IL-bound routes. The 1x (Godfrey) and 5 (Granite City\/Tri-Cities) both serve those same downtown stops via the McKinley Bridge.<br \/>\nCost: $3.00 each way, or a $5 day MCT day pass<br \/>\n3. Walk or ride a bike<br \/>\nIf you have access to non-motorized transit, you have a couple more options. The McKinley Bridge has a bikeway and connects the Riverfront Trail in STL to the Confluence Trail in IL. Ride alert: the bikeway is often full of broken glass.<br \/>\nCost: Free<br \/>\n3. Walk or ride a bike<br \/>\nThe most scenic option is to ride all the way up the Riverfront Trail to the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge, formerly part of Route 66. On the other side, you can pick up the Confluence Trail, but there&#8217;s little nearby public transit if you need to go any further.<br \/>\nCost: Free<br \/>\nSt. Louis is called the Gateway City because we associate it with exploration and new frontiers. But gates can be open or closed. In this case, the Gateway Arch is a visible reminder of all the ways that our local infrastructures constrain and exclude.<br \/>\nThese are contemporary issues with historic resonances, from the Mary Meachum Freedom Crossing, where freedom-seekers crossed, to redlining practices that rendered African American communities most vulnerable to the river&#8217;s flooding. The river remains a powerful provocation to consider issues of spatial justice in our region.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":147,"template":"page-full-width","meta":[],"class_list":["post-171","story","type-story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story\/171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/story"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emplace.siue.edu\/stl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}