St. Louis Hates Its Citizens

Let me get this straight, St. Louis. You close HWY 40, the one major road that runs through the middle of the city, connecting the abandoned downtown and West County, where everyone seems to now live. Again, a major highway. Possibly the easiest way to get around the city. And you close it. For two years (maybe more). Would any other city do this? But you're not a real city, so I guess that question is pointless.

But you didn't stop there. Apparently you thought, "Hmmm, the mediocre people of St. Louis seem to be adapting OK to the closure. What else can we do to antagonize them? Oh, I got it, let's close Big Bend AND Hanley. Yeah, that's it. The two major veins that connect Clayton/UCity with Webster, Maplewood, etc... That's sure to drive people nuts."

Congrats. You succeeded.

But that's not what I'm writing about. I'm here to talk about how you somehow had the balls to take it one step further.

See, for the last couple of weeks a poor sap like me who lives in Webster and works in the Loop didn't have a whole lot of options left. My two defaults were always Hanley and Big Bend. But they're both closed. OK, so I have to find a new way. Fine, I won't be a baby about it. Well, Brentwood/I-170 is a nightmare, so instead I've been taking either Hanley to Dale to Laclede Station to Boland to Clayton to Big Bend to work. OR, Big Bend to Dale to Highland to Wise to Big Bend to work. Well, option two got me a ticket last week because for some reason the speed limit is 15 and 20 (depending on the street) when you go that way. Again, fuck you St. Louis. Those speed limits are embarrassing.

So the other day I decided to use option 1 on the way home. Guess what? They turned Boland into a ONE WAY STREET!!! That's right, so you can't access it coming from the North. So now you are forced to either go down Big Bend and take option 2, go all the way to Brentwood, which is miserable, or you can go Big Bend and a bunch of backstreets to try and work your way over to Boland/Laclede Station.

Unreal. You HAVE to drive to get anywhere in this sprawling suburb, yet the city is doing everything in its power to make driving impossible and miserable.

St. Louis, you are a joke.