St. Louis Opens $26.4 Million Transportation Hub

Gateway Station Makes Multimodal Connections

ST. LOUIS – The City of St. Louis and Amtrak are pleased to announce the official grand opening of the Gateway Transportation Center (GTC), the city’s new $26.4 million multimodal transportation hub. Mayor Francis G. Slay, Comptroller Darlene Green, Amtrak Board Member Thomas Carper, Greyhound, Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT), Citizens for Modern Transit and other local officials dedicated the facility today. It is located at 430 South 15th Street.

For nearly twenty years, a multimodal station to connect Amtrak, Greyhound, MetroLink and Metro Bus service has been an important concept in the overall design of St. Louis City’s transportation systems, but until recently, it was only a concept. When he was first elected Mayor in 2001, Francis Slay joined with other city officials to make the completion of this facility a top priority. This vision has now become reality, thanks to the cooperation of a variety of wonderful partners.

Today, the Gateway Transportation Center is the City’s state-of-the-art multimodal transportation hub operated by the City of St. Louis Comptroller’s Office, led by Comptroller Darlene Green. It is conveniently located in the heart of downtown St. Louis where Amtrak, Greyhound, MetroLink and Metro Bus service converge. This new facility provides passengers with a clean, safe and friendly transportation center featuring 24-hour operations staff, security and food service.

Since the March 2006 groundbreaking, the City of St. Louis worked in partnership with Bi-State/Metro, MoDOT, the Federal Highway Administration, Amtrak, and Greyhound to complete the new Gateway Transportation Center. Construction was managed by the City’s Board of Public Service and built in three phases.

Jacobs Engineering and Kennedy Associates were the primary designers for this $26.4 million project. Development Programming Associates provided coordination and oversight. K & S Associates served as general contractor for the $14.2 million terminal and concourse linkage project. R.V. Wagner, Inc. was the general contractor for the $4.5 million track package. RQC Quality Constructors was the general contractor for the $2 million Bi-State/Metro bus facility. The total project cost also includes design and other pre-construction expenses. The MetroLink portion of the complex was previously constructed as part of the original MetroLink alignment.

Amtrak Service

At St. Louis, Amtrak offers five daily round trips to and from Chicago via Springfield and Bloomington-Normal, two daily round trips to and from Kansas City via Jefferson City, and one daily round trip to and from Arkansas and Texas, via Little Rock, Dallas-Fort Worth and San Antonio. Amtrak passengers also have access to a daily shuttle connecting St. Louis with Carbondale, Illinois, and a daily train to and from New Orleans, via Memphis. There were 272,000 Amtrak passengers last year in St. Louis.

The Gateway Transportation Center is just south of the Scottrade Center (NHL Blues) and a short light rail ride or walk to Busch Stadium (MLB Cardinals), America’s Center/Edward Jones Dome (Convention Center/NFL Rams), the Gateway Arch and riverfront casinos.

In addition to easy intermodal connections, the new St. Louis station has free WiFi access, a Metropolitan Lounge for Texas Eagle sleeping car passengers and a food court offering deli sandwiches, snacks and other foods and beverages.

The Amtrak ticket office is open from 3:30 a.m. – 11:30 p.m. The first Amtrak trains from the Gateway Station operated on Wednesday morning, November 19.

Partially-covered short-term parking is available in front of the station at a lot operated by the City of St. Louis for $1 an hour (coins only), with a 12-hour limit. Long-term parking is available approximately three blocks away at the Hyatt Regency Union Station

Most of the service to Chicago is sponsored by the Illinois Department of Transportation. Both Kansas City round trips are sponsored by the MoDOT, which recently announced plans to rename the service. More information about the "Name the Train" contest is available at the Gateway Station or at morail.org.

A history of Amtrak service between St. Louis and Kansas City is attached.

Amtrak has relocated its trains and ticketing from a building at 551 South 16th Street, which had served as an interim station since 2004. Designed as part of this project, that facility will be converted into an operations base for Amtrak train, engine and maintenance crews.

Amtrak has posted six consecutive years of growth in ridership and revenue, carrying more than 28.7 million passengers in the last fiscal year. Amtrak provides intercity passenger rail service to more than 500 destinations in 46 states on a 21,000-mile route system. For schedules, fares and information, passengers may call 800-USA-RAIL or visit Amtrak.com.

Greyhound Service

From the Gateway Transportation Center, Greyhound offers 35 daily scheduled trips to destinations across the United States, including Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, New York, Kansas City, Denver, Springfield and Los Angeles. Greyhound also provides Greyhound PackageXpress (GPX) shipping from the St. Louis Transportation Center location.

Greyhound has been serving the St. Louis area for nearly 80 years. Greyhound is the largest North American provider of intercity bus transportation, serving more than 2,300 destinations with more than 10,500 daily departures across the continent. The company also provides GPX, as well as charters and shore services. For fare and schedule information and to buy tickets call 1-800-231-2222 or visit the Greyhound’s website at www.greyhound.com.

MetroLink and Metro Bus Service

The MetroLink Civic Center station (located immediately adjacent to the Gateway Transportation Center) offers daily arrivals and departures to destinations like Lambert Airport, Scott Air Force Base and Shrewsbury. The Metro Bus terminal (located just east of the GTC) offers daily routes to destinations throughout the St. Louis metro area. For a complete listing of all MetroLink and MetroBus routes, visit www.metrostlouis.org or call 314-231-2345 from Missouri or 618-271-2345 from Illinois.

Passenger Trains between St. Louis and Kansas City

Today’s Amtrak trains use tracks owned by Union Pacific Railroad, the successor to the Missouri Pacific, whose trains included the Missouri River Eagle (to Omaha), Colorado Eagle (to Denver) and Missourian (overnight). Other railroads ran trains on different routes between Missouri’s two largest cities, including the General Pershing Zephyr and Night Hawk (overnight) on what are now the BNSF and the Kansas City Southern railways. The City of St. Louis, City of Kansas City and Midnight Limited (overnight) ran on what is now the Norfolk Southern Railway. Other trains were operated over the Rock Island Railroad, which is now largely abandoned.

When Congress created Amtrak to take over passenger train service on May 1, 1971, one St. Louis-Kansas City round-trip was offered, first as the Spirit of St. Louis and then known as the National Limited, both of which operated between Kansas City and New York, via St. Louis. However, federal budget cuts lead to the decision to end that service in October 1979.

Rather than let the loss of an interstate rail route result in the loss of an intrastate route in Missouri, the state and Amtrak began a partnership that month, with Missouri and Amtrak sharing the cost of extending the Ann Rutledge train that previously operated only between St. Louis and Chicago.

Ann Rutledge was a friend of the young Abraham Lincoln. Born in Kentucky and raised in New Salem, Ill., she never lived in Missouri and likely never visited. Although Lincoln law partner and biographer William Herndon believed that Lincoln and Ann Rutledge were sweethearts until she died in 1835, many present-day Lincoln scholars are dubious. Nonetheless, the Chicago & Alton Railroad named a train for her in 1937. Amtrak and the Illinois Department of Transportation stopped using the Ann Rutledge name for St. Louis-Chicago trains in 2006 and Missouri followed suit this year.

In October 1980, the Missouri/Amtrak partnership was doubled and a second round-trip was added, with the state choosing to call the westbound train the Kansas City Mule and the eastbound train the St. Louis Mule. These names were advanced by State Rep. Frances Barnes of Kirkwood, and a mule was photographed there when the first of these trains came through on October 26 of that year.

The Mules names were replaced in 1984, when trains were renamed River Cities, connecting to the City of New Orleans train at Centralia, Ill. The route went on to Carbondale, Ill., in 1987. However, a budget cut in 1994 led to the trains again operating only within Missouri and the return to the Mules names, which have continued until now.

The elimination of the Ann Rutledge name, the constant need to explain the Mules names and a new commitment by the Missouri Legislature to support the passenger rail program of the Missouri Department of Transportation have presented a chance to rename all the St. Louis-Kansas City passenger trains under a single name or brand. See morail.org for more information.

-- includes information from “Amtrak in the Heartland” by Craig Sanders, Indiana University Press, 2006, and newspaper archives at the St. Louis Public Library. Photos by Mike Schafer.