Hanley/Eager overhaul
St. Louis County released details Monday about the overhaul planned for that mess-of-an-intersection we fondly know as Hanley Road, Eager Road and Highway 40. After months of negotiations, the county is contracting with Gateway Constructors to build a $6 million “jug handle” interchange there, at the same time Gateway rebuilds the Hanley bridge over Highway 40.
In January or sooner, Hanley Road is expected to close, and for eight months (the closing will coincide with Highway 40 reopening between Ballas and I-170, and closing between I-170 and Kingshighway). The future interchange will allow drivers to make left turns without clogging up the through lanes (see drawing below). Drivers on northbound Hanley will not have direct access to Eager; they’ll turn right onto Dale Avenue, drive past the Metro parking garage, and then onto Eager. Several jug handles are on Lindbergh Boulevard, between Olive and Manchester.
For years, the county wanted to build a tunnel connecting the center lane of northbound Hanley to westbound Eager. The cost estimates shot up to $40 million to $50 million.
The controversial aspect here will be time. Rebuilding the Hanley Road overpass would have taken about six months, by Gateway’s estimate. Adding the interchange to the project will make the work last eight months. And, for a while, Hanley and Big Bend will be closed at the same time. Big Bend is scheduled to close for bridge reconstruction by June, 2008, and Hanley might not reopen until August.
Don’t worry about getting to the shopping, They plan on building another Target at Olive and 170 (BRILLANT!!!)and I am sure the other stores will follow. Pitting one municipality against another for the almighty tax dollar. Merge these municipalities for goodness sake and stop the insanity of TIF’S and reduced services. (off topic I know had to get that off my chest)
On topic, when are our local gov’t’s going to require the infastructure to be in place before we allow the building of one shopping center after the other, office buildings, garages, subdivisions etc. It seems idiotic to me to allow the building you see in an area like Hanley and Edgar without a safe, easy ingress and egress infastructure. It simply shows who really runs our city halls, the companys who have the money.
I live in the area and I avoid it like the plague because of the hassle. The stores in this area are not hard to find elswhere.
Didn’t they just finish tearing up this intersection? And isn’t Dale currently torn up because of construction? One of the main reasons this intersection is such a mess is because of the highway 40 construction. I have a great idea, why don’t they stop tearing up the roads in this area and THEN see how bad the problem really is.
OMG - I can not believe all the crying going on here… deal with it!
HOPEFULLY MODOT CAN ASSIST THE CITY WITH FIXING THE INTERSECTION OF HIGHWAY 40, MARKET AND COMPTON. TOTAL MESS, YOU HAVE CARS EXITING HWY 40 TO MAKE A RIGHT-HAND TURN FROM THE FAR LEFT LANE, AT THE SAME TIME YOU HAVE CARS EXITING FOREST PKWY TRYING TO GET INTO THE LEFT-HAND TURN LANE FROM THE FAR RIGHT. ALSO, AT THE SAME TIME YOU HAVE TRAFFIC COMING OFF HWY 40 AND TRAFFIC COMING OFF FOREST PKWY TO CONTINUE DRIVING STRAIGHT ON MARKET, WHICH PARKING IS ALLOWED ON THE STREET IN THE RIGHT LANE, CAUSING TRAFFIC TO MERGE INTO THE CENTER AND FAR LEFT LANE. THIS IS A TOTAL MESS MORNING, NOON AND EVENING. CONTACTED MODOT, THEY SAID CITY PROBLEM, CONTACTED ST. LOUIS CITY, NO RESPONSE.
What about the idiots that over-developed eager without a traffic plan to support it. I think that the retail stores on Eager between Hanley and Brentwood have caused this problem in the first place. The built all these stores and the roads can’t handle the traffic. So, no, I don’t care that it will be more a problem to access eager going southbound–either deal with it or shop elsewhere.
The southbound Hanley road traffic will also include some traffic exiting from eastbound Hwy 64/40 that now have direct access to Eager Rd. via the right lane of current highway exit ramp. To think that sending that traffic to the Bus lanes, parking and strip mall access is very poor planning. I have a strong concern to pedistrian access to the whole area. Just having a light to allow pedistrian to cross this madness to access the above stated area and the metro link is very poor design and planning. If that State is planning to spend the amount of money they are spending they ought to get it right the first time. I think I will call this the Jug Head Handle.
I honestly think that people need to stop complaining about this. With the complete redesign of the Brentwood/170/Hanley interchange, the Hanley and Eager road intersection had to be reworked. End of story. My personal suggestion to those angry about the fact that there will not be any access to Eager from SB Hanley, take the Westbound collector/distributor road to Brentwood and hit Eager that way. I understand that it will take all of maybe 5 mintues more (how unfortunate), but that’s just something that will have to be dealt with. What the people who are complaining have to understand is this. The right-of-way that the contractors have to deal with is simply not large enough to do anything better than this. Why do you think it took them so long to come up with this plan for a jughandle? I’ve heard people say that they should rebuild Hanley as a single point interchange, and I’m here to say that simply wouldn’t work with how the entire 40/170 interchange is being redesigned. It also wouldn’t work because you basically have to cut off Eager access to Hanley. Someone earlier mentioned flyovers for this intersection in particular. While that’s good in theory, there is not enough room. They’re taking up all of the right-of-way they have to rebuild the entire 40/170 interchange, or so it seems from their diagrams. There would just be no place to put a flyover. All this said, I like this plan. Their original plan for Eager road upon the completion of the project gave no access to Highway 40 from Eager road at all (unless you illegally crossed a flat white line which was a short distance to begin with and was also free flowing traffic from SB 170). That was my biggest gripe with the original design. Now that they’ve reworked this intersection and reworked the striping at Eager and Brentwood you can access 40 from Eager in both directions. Hell, at least you can access it at all now with the new design. Sure, I’m not thrilled I can’t go from SB Hanley to WB Eager, but I’m happy that I can get on 40 from Eager now.
With four dollar gas, milk, eggs etc etc etc the problem should correct itself shortly.
People won’t travel far to shop and won’t have the extra money to shop stores other than for the necessasities of life
Whatever the cost of the new interchange, it will be taxpayer subsidy of the Sansone development on the south side of Eager Road. That’s the development that stands in the way of any future extension of I-270. Too late now for the County “planners” to realize that the cost of that development far outweighs the benefits.
No direct access to Eager from sounthbound Hanley? How how will residents of Clayton/U.City access it? Brentwood? Pain in the A$$! What sense does this make? REDESIGN!