Saint Louis University Transit Alliance will be holding a festival to celebrate the connection that public transportation makes between SLU students and the city of St. Louis, as well as to inform students of alternative travel routes during Grand Bridge’s upcoming reconstruction.

Entitled City Sound Tracks: Grand Days, the event will feature free music and food.
The festival will be supported by six musical artists from St. Louis and multiple restaurants from the South Grand neighborhood, according to a proposal written for the event.
Three of the musical artists are current SLU students, including senior John Donovan, junior Chris Wagner and Xquizit, SLU’s hip-hop dance group.
The restaurants, including the Gelateria, Tower Grove Creamery, and MoKaBe’s Coffee House, will be serving free samples and sharing information about the South Grand neighborhood, hoping to “create a stronger sense of community between SLU students and their neighborhood,” the Transit Alliance event proposal said.
There will also be representatives from the South Grand area who will be talking about the construction, which is starting soon to improve the neighborhood.
The purpose of the festival is to inform students of the upcoming reconstruction of the Grand Metro station and the bridge, and of alternative routes that can be used to access the medical campus and other areas south of the main campus.
“The construction was originally set to start in November of this year, but the start time has been pushed back to 2011,” Jon Roper, a member of Transit Alliance and one of the festival’s coordinators, said.
According to Roper, in order to help students plan for and circumnavigate the construction, John Nations, the current president of Metro, will be in attendance, along with members of the American Planning Association.
Students will be able to talk one on one with these representatives, who will be “asking questions and giving feedback on students’ transportation concerns in St. Louis,” the event proposal said.
The festival is not entirely focused on the bridge construction, though.
“[The construction] was certainly a big part of the inspiration for hosting City Sound Tracks: Grand Days, but I think we would have wanted to do something like this either way,” Danny Jendusa, another Transit Alliance member and coordinator for the event, said.
The purpose of the festival is to promote public transportation and help students connect to the St. Louis area’s culture and its community.
“We believe that our University has created a problem by insulating itself from the urban fabric and the communities surrounding us. Perhaps the greatest complaint SLU students have is dealing with and trying to break the ‘SLU Bubble’,” the Transit Alliance event proposal said.
Transit Alliance hopes that this event will help students get off campus and experience the St. Louis culture by using the Metro public transportation system, as well as by removing the stigma that the MetroBus system is unsafe and unreliable.
“It is part of a larger series of music and art festivals focused on building stronger communities in St. Louis through art and transit,” Jendusa said.
According to Jendusa, the series started last spring, and Transit Alliance has been working with the original organizers, Ryan Albritton and RJ Koscielniak, in matching SLU’s festival with their original goals.
The festival’s acts will be performing between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Oct. 9 at the SLU clock tower.