Source: Mercantile Library Collection

On June 19, 1954 a ribbon cutting ceremony was held to celebrate the opening of a viaduct at Third Street and Lafayette. This viaduct was part of the new Third Street Expressway, which would be finished in 1955. Though the erection of the Third Street Expressway created a high-speed transportation link on which commuters could travel to and from downtown St. Louis easier and quicker, it did not solve the problem of driving within the Central Business District. Because its infrastructure was built in an era before automobiles, St. Louis' narrow streets and limited space were not designed for the new car culture. Drivers, visiting downtown, were confronted with congested streets, long delays, and limited parking. One of the ways that city planners tried to change this was by widening various streets. Streetcars, which took up a large portion of the road, were also phased out in favor of less obstructive buses. These changes made traveling easier in certain areas but did not solve the problem of congestion as a whole.

Another solution that city planners implemented was traffic routing. During the 1950s some streets in the downtown area changed to one-way only. This created a new traffic flow pattern in which drivers had fewer choices available and were forced to follow certain mandated paths. This forced more drivers to travel in the same direction, which decreased wait time caused by turns and other driving delays. Also some one-way streets changed their driving direction at certain busy times of the day in order to accommodate rush hour commuters. These new policies helped make driving downtown faster but also made it made it more constrictive. These new traffic patterns also changed what places people went and affected businesses downtown. Businesses often gained or lost customers depending on the amount of traffic that their streets were receiving. Though this was not an intended consequence of the plan, it happened nonetheless.

Learn more about one-way streets at Boyd's