Transforming the decaying stretch of U.S. Highway 40 between St. Louis and Frontenac into a shiny 21st-century interstate will take more than concrete, asphalt and steel.
Missouri highway planners say it will require a new look as well. Call it a designer highway.

Plans for the $300 million highway makeover will likely feature structural touches ranging from architecturally enhanced retaining walls and bridges to lush landscaping to public artwork.

The result will be a prototypical urban highway that blends form with function, one that treats aesthetic concerns and engineering concepts as equal, often intertwining, entities. It will also feature a distinctive St. Louis flavor and serve as a template for future reconstruction projects on Interstates 44 and 55.

Ed Hassinger, St. Louis district engineer for the Missouri Department of Transportation, calls it a watershed project in that sense.

"A lot of times we try to force our highway standard on a place where it doesn't belong," he said. "Our highway standards are basically developed to build interstates across wide-open country. It just doesn't work in these developed areas."

In Highway 40 (Interstate 64), Missouri sees a golden opportunity to discard those one-size-fits-all highway designs, with their requisite sterile concrete bridges, pillars and retaining walls.

"A lot of people get their first impression of St. Louis by the road they drive in on," said Lesley Solinger Hoffarth, project manager on the Highway 40 plan. "We have an opportunity here to rebuild it so the first impression we make on people is a good one."


A major undertaking

It's the biggest highway reconstruction project the St. Louis area has seen.

The 1940s-vintage highway is too hilly, its on- and offramps too short and close together to move heavy volumes of traffic very efficiently. The pavement is cracking, and the bridges are decaying.

The project is just entering the conceptual design stage. Missouri plans to start replacing the highway interchanges in 2003 and will begin rebuilding the pavement in 2008 to make Highway 40 smoother and safer.

The highway will be widened from six to eight lanes west of Interstate 170.

The project is supposed to be finished by 2010.

Missouri highway planners have hired Missouri-based consultant HNTB Corp., along with St. Louis-based Helmuth Obata & Kassabaum Inc., to steer the urban design effort and to produce high-tech traffic models.

They will also enlist civic leaders, artists, local history groups and others to watch over the highway's aesthetic and cultural impacts.

The three committees along the project zone will help the state tackle engineering challenges as well. They will meet for the first time this Wednesday at the St. Louis Science Center.

The state has launched an interactive Web site (www.thenewI64.org) featuring pictures of well-designed highways in other parts of the nation and details of the Highway 40 project.


Some criticize priority

Not everyone is sold on the idea that the state should spend its scarce highway dollars on beautification.

"I think it should receive a low priority," said St. Charles County Executive Joe Ortwerth, who sits on the regional East-West Gateway Coordinating Council. "I believe what the public is looking for from a transportation system is mobility.

"Are they looking for the systems themselves or the highway improvements themselves to have some artistic flair to them? I don't believe so."

Most of the motorists pumping gas at the Hampton Avenue Mobil station near Highway 40 last week agreed.

"That's a waste of money," said Angela Storey of St. Louis, 23, a nursing student. "A highway should just be a highway. There are plenty of other local causes that money could go for."

She doesn't really care about how the highway looks.

"Usually when you are on a highway you are moving at such a fast pace for such a short length of time that it doesn't matter what it looks like ," she said.

But after years of watching concrete-lined superhighways, people are starting to care about how highways fit into the urban landscape.


Sensitive to mood, design

The trend began in earnest during the late 1980s and early '90s -- too late for the largely built-out interstate highway system.

In passing the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act in 1991, Congress called on highway planners to be more sensitive to the public mood and the value of a project's design.

Doug Mann, director of urban design and planning at HNTB, said: "When you look at the first freeways that were built during the '40s, '50s and '60s, they were built by engineers, and they were wonderful. They move traffic well. But there was never a consideration given to where these were located."

So-called "new generation" freeways in metropolitan areas such as Phoenix and Dallas and even rural highways -- the stretch of I-70 through Glenwood Canyon in Colorado, for instance -- are more sensitive to their surroundings and less disruptive to the nearby communities.

Mann said well-designed highways can also help to attract business to a region.

The Papago Freeway (Interstate 10) in Phoenix features sand-colored sound walls depicting Southwestern and American Indian themes. Motorists pass large pieces of Indian pottery as well.

Amid concerns that the ribbon of asphalt would divide neighborhoods, the highway dips into a half-mile tunnel beneath a city park. The 20-mile stretch of highway was completed in 1990 at a cost of $700 million.

"We worked with the cities and the citizens to come up with a different look," said Matt Burdick of the Arizona Department of Transportation. "A lot of it does require cities to bring money to the table as far as some of the enhancements they want."


State, federal agencies are on board

Hassinger said communities and businesses along Highway 40 may have to contribute some of the money for aesthetic upgrades. But even if they don't, the state will ensure some urban design improvements.

Linda Wilson, spokeswoman for the transportation department, said the amount of money and where it all will come from is still to be decided. It may boil down to setting aside a percentage -- possibly 1 percent -- of the project's cost to urban design features.

The Federal Highway Administration has already given its blessing to the concept, she said.

Mann said good design doesn't have to be expensive.

He wouldn't speculate on what Highway 40 would look like in the end. That is up to the kind of public input the state gathers.

"The process is going to dictate what these things are," Mann said. "It is not a consultant or MoDOT coming in saying this is what the standard is going to be."

But some local leaders are already tossing in ideas that include the use of St. Louis brick in the bridge structures, as well as ample bicycle and pedestrian crossings.

State highway officials mention two recent local examples that broke the cookie-cutter mold for highway interchanges.

In October, THF Realty opened the privately financed Boone's Crossing interchange at Highway 40 and the sprawling Chesterfield Commons shopping center.

The distinctive lighting fixtures, landscaping and architectural features probably added about $500,000 to the $15 million project -- money that "came right out of my pocket," said Michael Staenberg, principal at THF.

But he said it was money well spent.

"It helps the entire valley," Staenberg said. "Everybody loves that interchange. They should do that the entire length of the 12 miles."


Success in Manchester

At Manchester Road and Highway 141 -- a notorious traffic chokepoint -- the city of Manchester paid $300,000 from its general revenue to enhance a new interchange near the city's historic district. The state also contributed money.

The steel bridge beams are masked by textured concrete panels. Forms were used to give the bridge columns and abutments a cut-stone look. There is also a fleur-de-lis treatment on some abutments.

In keeping with the historic zone, 12 historic light fixtures are on the bridge and four at the intersection below the span.

The modular block wall includes planter pockets with flowers. Pine trees were planted there as well.

Former Manchester Mayor Frank McGuire, an architect, said he knew the bridge would define the city. He approached the Missouri Department of Transportation over a decade ago to see what could be done.

At first, he said, the state was resistant. It was a new concept, and there were cost considerations.

"I would say it probably upped the valuation of every building in town," McGuire said. "Maybe we started a trend. I am delighted to hear that they are promoting it now."

Local urban design experts and artists are watching the Highway 40 project closely.

"This Highway 40 project is an incredible opportunity," says Jacqueline Tatom, professor of architecture and urban design at Washington University.

"The highway system here was the greatest public works project ever. We did it. Now we must ask: 'How do we re-experience it?'"

The state maintains that incorporating art and other aesthetic concerns into the early stages of design and engineering is an economic winner -- that adding to the project later will only drive costs up.

Elizabeth Wright Millard, executive director of the Forum for Contemporary Art, believes that addressing aesthetic concerns early in the planning process -- whether it be a bridge or a highway -- proves well worth the effort.

"There is a feeling that these projects are not just about moving traffic, but are about the experience we have as a community with the structure and as users of that structure," said Millard, who serves on the regional advisory committee for the Mississippi River bridge planned north of downtown.

"These are both important to establishing a sense of place."


A cohesive theme

Although the Highway 40 planners talk of adding community character and flavor to individual stretches of roadway, they also insist that a cohesive, thematic aesthetic sense will remain intact.

"Illinois has incorporated a Cahokia image, or symbol, into the design of its new bridges in this region, and that is a nice touch," Millard said. "But in other cases you need to be more subtle, to think more in terms of how we view ourselves in our environment and in our landscape.

"Those are wonderful issues to think about, and they show that it's not just about 'decorating' a highway."

Like the Highway 40 project, the westward expansion of MetroLink will place a premium on aesthetic concerns. Three visual artists are on board early in the design process.

Sarah Smith, director of Bi-State's Arts in Transit program, said state highway officials are familiar with the model that Bi-State has used.

"Our artists are invited to work hand-in-hand with architects, engineers and landscape architects on the project as integral team members," Smith said, adding that visual artists will work on everything from new design elements to station layouts to sound walls.

"It's very much a place-making approach that integrates public art, urban design, community and economic initiatives," Smith explained. "I think that is what the MoDOT people are looking toward in this Highway 40 project."

The project includes the stretch of Highway 40 from Tower Grove Avenue in St. Louis to Spoede Road in Frontenac. Along the way it passes through some of the area's most prominent suburbs.

Even the state realizes that that might open it up criticism that it is favoring one part of the region over others by focusing so intently on how this highway looks. It's just a coincidence, they say.

"We aren't doing it because the wealthy communities are there," said Wilson, the spokeswoman for the transportation department. "We have to sta rt somewhere, and it just happens to be that 40 is the oldest and is in desperate, desperate need of being completely rebuilt.

"It is time for it to be done."