May 15

Lawmaker: Bridge toll idea is out

A key Missouri lawmaker acknowledged Monday that his state’s leaders are no longer demanding that a new Mississippi River bridge into St. Louis must be built as a tollway.

State Rep. Neal St. Onge, R-Ballwin, the chairman of the House Transportation Committee, said Missouri leaders have dropped the tollway demand after concluding they must put up much more money of their own to nail down a deal with Illinois.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Missouri’s going to have to come up with some money,” said St. Onge, adding that he intends to sponsor a bill that in 2008 would ask Missouri voters to approve $580 million in new taxes for transportation needs statewide.

Up to $180 million of that amount, if approved by voters, would be earmarked for St. Louis, though not necessarily for the bridge.

Meanwhile, Missouri leaders are showing increased flexibility about the size of the proposed span. A year ago they had insisted on an eight-lane signature bridge costing more than $1 billion. Now they are considering the possibility of a smaller crossing with as few as four lanes — as long as it is built at the original location a good distance north of the Poplar Street Bridge.

“Missouri wants the bridge in its original place and we want to get whatever we can afford,” St. Onge said.

The new bridge could be “four versus six versus eight” lanes, the Missouri lawmaker said. “The first thing we need to do is get that we’re going to have a bridge in that location, and then, ‘What can we afford?’”

St. Onge’s disclosure that Missouri no longer is demanding a tollway is significant because it would clear away the chief obstacle to progress on the bridge for nearly two years.

Pete Rahn, chief of the Missouri Department of Transportation, had insisted on the tollway plan because, he said, Missouri lacked money of its own to pay its share of costs.

Illinois lawmakers, though, had pushed hard against the tollway proposal, arguing it would be unfair to Illinois commuters. Last summer Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich had even vowed that the new span would not be a toll bridge as long as he served as governor.

Since last month, however, Missouri and Illinois highway officials have refused to talk publicly about evolving plans for the much-delayed bridge. Meanwhile, they began conducting a series of secret meetings aimed at crafting a bistate agreement before June.

The motivation: their growing fear that failure to cinch a deal soon will provide other states with rhetorical ammunition for claiming the $239 million federal earmark for the bridge that has gone unspent for nearly two years.

Rahn could not be reached for comment. Sally Oxenhandler, a MoDOT spokeswoman, said her agency isn’t talking about the bridge project.

‘We’re not going to comment,” Oxenhandler said.

St. Onge said he has not talked directly to Rahn about the decision to drop the tollway proposal.

“I can only assume it’s because maybe they’re reducing the scope of the project and there is a potential, albeit a distant one, for some money coming from Missouri,” he said. “Maybe the unveiling of my proposal shed a little different light on the situation.”

Mike Claffey, an IDOT spokesman, also declined to discuss his agency’s talks with MoDOT.

But Claffey called it “good news that a leader of Rep. St. Onge’s stature has stated he agrees with what Gov. Blagojevich has been saying all along — that we should not rely on tolls for an additional crossing.”

Les Sterman, the executive director of the East-West Council of Governments, called it “welcome news” that Missouri leaders are backing away from the tollway demand.

“Of course it leaves other questions unanswered,” Sterman said, “like where the money will come from? And what the proposal will be that’s fiscally feasible?”