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By Matthew Halverson
A funny-but-bittersweet refuge and forum for mourners of Highway 40’s unique aesthetics that brothers Dan and Jon Cornwell fear will be lost when construction is complete. They hope like-minded residents with fond memories of the stretch of roadway will visit and share their stories.
The brothers drew from the urban tradition of pouring out a 40-ounce beer on the pavement for a dead friend. “It’s half-joking and half-serious,” Dan says. “We’re not trying to incite people to get real angry, but to really talk about it and discuss it.”
The brothers don’t plan to update the site much, so its survival will depend on other Highway 40 lovers’ willingness to come out in support of it—but how many are there?
A tongue-in-cheek approach by LoftWorks to sell frustrated Highway 40 refugees on the benefits of living downtown. “We’re not trying to make light of the fact that people will be stuck in traffic,” says Craig Heller, LoftWorks’ owner, “but the fact is that there are so many people worried about it, so it might be worth having a little fun with it.”
Taking the image of St. Louis streets as clogged arteries as a starting point, a send-up of prescription medicine ads and their “feel-good images of people running through parks” was a natural next step, says Jesse McGowan of Atomicdust, the creative agency behind the ads.
The mock-pharma tone is pitch-perfect—right down to the reassuring, we’re-there-for-you tone. Whether commuters take the time to distinguish the Fortysil message from the rest of the prescription-medicine white noise they’re regularly subjected to, though, will be the test.
A fiery—if slightly late—attempt to organize support for halting the construction. The site’s founder, former traffic engineer Joe Passanise, encourages visitors to write Jay Nixon and request an economic impact study for the project.
A belief in the need to occasionally fight the power: “Democracy only works if you have an active citizenry,” Passanise says.
No amount of 11th-hour letter writing—
or a last-second lawsuit—could stop the first phase of the highway closure, but it will be interesting to see if Passanise soldiers on and has any success in altering MoDOT’s plans for a full shutdown in the second phase.
An unbiased—and surprisingly in-depth—blog about the construction from “everyday driver” and Kirkwood resident Jason Hunt that’s equal parts informative and insightful. “What I’m doing,” he says, “is just trying to get into a few details that the traditional media isn’t covering or throw in some opinions that they might not be willing to throw out there.”
A newcomer to the blogosphere, Hunt decided someone needed to give drivers something beyond run-of-the-mill “what’s shut down today?” updates.
Hunt is upfront about his complete lack of traffic engineering knowledge (he’s in IT sales), but you’d never know it. With its combination of informed analysis, YouTube videos and annotated Google MyMaps, this could become an indispensable guide as long as Hunt keeps it up.
