From Two States to a Common Region

For Illinoisans, the light rail represents a crucial mobile connector, the vital link between home and work. Every weekday morning, thousands of commuters make the trek from Illinois to Missouri for work.

The exchange between Illinois and Missouri workers is crucial. Illinois residents count on companies like Barnes Jewish Hospital, Anheuser Busch, and Purina to hire a larger number of people for a wider variety of jobs than they will find in Illinois. Also, there are a wide range of citizens who live in Illinois that find more unconventional and artistic jobs in the city.

Illinoisans are not the only ones who benefit by traveling to Missouri for work. The businesses in St. Louis certainly benefit from the access they have to a number of employees with a wide range of degrees and skills.

As travelers cross the Eads and consider the congested morning traffic on the Popular Street Bridge, they perhaps give a small sigh of relief that they are using public transit instead of a car. The light rail seems more desirable at times like these.

And although there's a crowd of passengers during peak hours, something about light rail travel creates opportunities for napping and day-dreaming. Perhaps it's the smoothness of the ride, the scenery outside their windows, or simply the freedom from driving. Whatever the case, it's possible to be all alone there in the crowd while riding.

Notably, this mode of transportation might be completing another, larger feat in addition to taking so many commuters to and from locations near their places of employment. By easily connecting Illinoisans to Missouri, the light rail seems to achieve the task of transforming two different states into a common region.

Travels and Transfers

When we first began a project on the light rail system of southern Illinois, we were primarily concerned with creating short artistic portraits based on our travels. The idea was to present a collection of creative reflections and speculations about people’s journeys, as we did in our “First Time Travelers” and “Naps and the Light Rail" posts, for example.

The subway section of Colson Whitehead’s The Colossus of New York was a useful model for what we were doing.

Over the course of the past few months, however, our interests have gone in slightly different directions. We continue to produce the creative reflections. But we have begun to focus more on the politics of public transportation, the crucial St. Louis County November vote, and the value and values of public transit, and the cultural interactions and conflicts that arise in relation to light rail travel.

Attending the public hearings related to the Metro system really energized our political interests and helped us recognize the firm links between politics and public transportation.

We’re hoping that paying attention to artistic matters and the politics of public transit will give us special insight about the implications of light rail travel. Ideally, that cultural knowledge will extend our cultural knowledge concerning the region.

Image: View of Metrolink map at Grand station courtesy of H.R. from Along the Light Rail.

The Value and Values of Public Transit

“If you think the sale of Anheuser-Busch or the closing of the Chrysler plant was a problem for St. Louis,” observed an editorial in Sunday’s St. Louis Post Dispatch, “wait'll you see what happens if Prop M fails.”

Prop M is the proposed half-cent sales tax increase for St. Louis County that would provide support for the operation of the Metro bus, light rail, and call-a-ride services.

The Post Dispatch editorial continued: “Simply put, the outcome of the sales tax vote will influence whether St. Louis remains competitive among metropolitan regions that are trying to attract top talent, top jobs and other economic opportunities.”

According to the writers, “Dynamic public transportation — systems that are smart, efficient and convenient — is a key indicator of a community's confidence and vibrancy.”

The authors of the “Yes to Proposition M” Post Dispatch editorial, along with other writers and organizations in the region that have been advocating for the passage of the sales tax increase, have rightly identified the economic benefits of public transportation and the vital attributes of an efficient transit system for getting commuters to their places of employment in the region.

Since our reasons for implementing this light rail project correspond to our interests in the arts and humanities, we are inclined to also consider the cultural implications of public transportation in the region. We’re in the early stages of identifying and examining the cultural benefits of light rail travel.

In order to fully appreciate what “dynamic public transportation” might mean for the existence of “a community’s confidence and vibrancy,” we’ll want to think through and beyond the economic and employment factors associated with the transit system.

The experience and idea of a broad range of people in this region utilizing the light rail as a shared mode of travel come with its own sets of value and values. But how do we quantify that value, and in what ways can we measure those values?

Image: Train arriving at the East Riverfront station. Courtesy of H.R. for Along the Light Rail.