Amtrak riders: park elsewhere
If you plan to catch Amtrak in downtown St. Louis, leave your car at home. If you don’t, you could end up with quite a parking bill, and you may pull your hair out looking for an empty spot. Amtrak has closed its parking lot at the downtown station, with the exception of several handicap parking spots. Those will disappear next week. A city-owned lot underneath the Highway 40 (Interstate 64) ramps charges $1 an hour. However, it’s for short-term parking. Union Station has parking, for $16 a day. Park there and take MetroLink to the Civic Center stop, and then lug your bags down the street and across a muddy lot to the Amtrak station.
Amtrak closed its parking lot to build a track that’s needed to move its operations to the $27 million Gateway Center, where Amtrak will have four train platforms and Greyhound 10 bus bays. Amtrak’s move date has been pushed back another month, this time to September, spokesman Marc Magliari said. The new station:
You can also park for free at certain Metrolink lots further out - the ones at Hanley & 40 and the end of the line both offer free long-term parking in designated spots, and the fare’s the same as the one from Union Station.
Are these people nuts?
How long is the parking closed for?
That’s how to build a ridership!
Jim: Thanks for the tip about the long term parking at some Metrolink stations! I never knew that! Thanks!
You CANNOT park long-term at the metro station in Shrewsbury!
I’m not suprised. Sounds like another brilliantly short sighted plan implemented by the Amtrak management group. It does fit in with the general “not in my backyard” philosophy towards parking that seems to be pervasive in St.Louis. The lack of public parking, and parking in general that is open late, is a constant complaint against the city.
Wow. For all the effort that has been made and continues to be made as an effort to attract people to visit and live in the city, it is exactly this type of BS that puts checkmarks in the “no” column when weighing the options.
I say all this as a city resident.
The Metro website (http://www.metrostlouis.org/MetroBus/ParkRideLots.asp) lists their parking lots with long-term parking available, typically ±25 spaces in each lot. At Shrewsbury, they’re on the western edge of the lot, toward the north end, with signs laying out the rules. The lots listed include Shrewsbury, Brentwood & I-64, Emerson Park, Fairview Heights, Swansea, Belleville, Colege and Shiloh-Scott.
Momof1girl - yes you can park long-term in Shrewsbury, along the western side of the lot. There are signs every few parking spots indicating the time limit on those spaces.
“It does fit in with the general “not in my backyard” philosophy towards parking that seems to be pervasive in St.Louis. The lack of public parking, and parking in general that is open late, is a constant complaint against the city. ”
LOL. You’re being facetious, right? Parking NIMBYs?
Perspective, folks. Compared to the Hwy 40 project, this doesn’t even register. Temporary loss of on-site parking is the price of getting a respectable train station. Surely we can deal.
I love riding Amtrack, however the station is a dump and parking is terrible. On my journey, I have notce that every station stop in Illinois the stations and station area has parking and the station appearance is well taken care of, they are not dumps, We want to attract visitors but when they see the Amtrack station in St. Louis I can only image what they think of the rest of the city. First impressions are lasting.