Riding New Metro Link Light Rail Extension in St. Louis is a Trip

It’s always been hard for me to get excited about riding the bus. My grandparents took the bus, my mom took the bus every morning to get to her job at the factory, and I rode it twice a day to get back and forth to high school. Back in those days, bus riders were sort of frowned upon in St. Louis. It was acceptable if you worked downtown or if you were a student that was too young to have a driver’s license. Other than that, the perception was that if you took the bus, you were too poor to own a car.

Riding the bus to school every morning for me meant waiting up to thirty minutes in the cold, being jostled around when the bus started moving and you were trying to find a seat. There was the choking smell of diesel early in the morning and the curious smell of a gentleman who sat in front of me nearly every time, wearing some of the strongest cologne imaginable. Then one year, after I decided to enroll in a technical school, I had to wait for another bus after I got to school to take me to the technical college and back. This amounted to four bus trips in a single day.

Streetcars first made their appearance on the streets of St. Louis on July 4, 1859. They ran on rails, but were drawn by horses. Steam powered cars were tried in 1870, but they met with some resistance because the noise frightened the horses that were still on the streets. Electrified cars started replacing the steam-powered ones in 1890. A man by the name of Fred Wilson wrote a song about riding the streetcars in 1870:

“A riding in the cars, on a wet and muggy day, along with Pa and Ma, you’ve fifteen cents to pay. You sit down side by side, on seats so well arranged, and fumble through your pockets, for the necessary change.”