St. Louis has a shortage of number of lanes that crosses the Mississippi River. To address that problem, it has been proposed to move I-70 off of the Popular Street Bridge and build a new I-70 cable stayed bridge just north of downtown. This new river crossing was officially named the Ronald Wilson Reagan Memorial Bridge on August 28, 2005.

The project went through a design phase that picked a sleek cable stayed bridge and associated highway projects totalling $1.6-billion. The bridge featured a 2,000 foot main span that entirely cleared the Mississippi River. The key architectural feature would be the two slender towers soaring 510 feet into the air configured to arch back away from the river, with an assymmetrical cable arrangement.

In late 2005, both states decided that the costs were simply not feasible. As a result, a year long bridge redesign was undertaken. A new more conventional cable stay bridge with two towers at each end emerged. It will by symmetrical with a 1,500 foot main span. As of late 2006, construction is scheduled to start early in 2007. The completion date depends on funding levels from year to year, which is approved by the states on a yearly basis.

Note—Renderings are borrowed from the New River Bridge web site. The top two images are the newly revised cable stayed bridge. The third image is the original cable stayed design that proved to be too costly. The bottom image shows the areas of construction on various roadways in the St. Louis area to reroute I-70 and provide access to the new bridge.