ST. LOUIS – Today, the Missouri Department of Transportation celebrates the 10th anniversary of the opening of the Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge.
The bridge opened to traffic February 9, 2014 in the early morning.
The nearly $700 million bridge project included work in both Illinois between the Interstate 64, Interstate 70 and Interstate 55 interchange and I-70 just north of Cass Avenue in the city of St. Louis. The project removed I-70 from the Poplar Street Bridge between Illinois and Missouri. At the time, I-55, I-64 and I-70 crossed the Poplar Street Bridge. High levels of congestion marked the Poplar Street Bridge crossing, with roughly 140,000 vehicles crossing between the two states daily.
The project was the culmination of nearly 20 years of discussions between Illinois and Missouri on the location of the bridge and funding, with approximately two years of design and four years of construction. The project’s centerpiece was the roughly $239 million Stan Musial Veterans Memorial cable-stayed bridge, a 2,800-foot-long, 400-foot-tall bridge crossing the Mississippi River. Due to available funding, the two states constructed a four-lane bridge that could be restriped to six lanes as traffic levels increased, and paired with a companion bridge, to the south, if traffic levels rose as expected over the next 30 years and additional funding could be determined.
“The Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge has become an integral part of the St. Louis skyline and was the impetus to plans to reimagine and rework the Mississippi River entrance to downtown St. Louis. Completing the Stan Musial allowed the region to make updates to reconnect the Arch grounds to the city with the Park Over the Highway project and allowed needed updates and repairs to the I-64 interchange from the Poplar Street Bridge to downtown St. Louis,” said Tom Blair, P.E., MoDOT St. Louis district engineer.
The Stan Musial Veterans Memorial Bridge project was a finalist for the America’s Transportation Award in 2014 and was a part of the downtown infrastructure improvements that won the grand prize in the America’s Transportation Awards in 2019.
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