“We get so caught up in the big picture that we forget about small wins,” Franks says.

In the big picture of expanding mass transit in St. Louis, Tuesday was a day about one of those small wins, at least in a political context.

I ran into Franks and Krewson at Mud House awaiting the arrival of Mayor Francis Slay, who was giving the acting administrator of the Federal Transit Administration, Carolyn Flowers, a tour of the proposed Northside-Southside route. Flowers and the FTA recently awarded a $375,000 grant to the region to update the long-planned route that would travel through the core of the city and connect south St. Louis County to north St. Louis County.

Franks and Krewson weren’t there for the meeting with Slay and Flowers, but the irony is that they might be more important to the future of expansion of transit than the mayor. Come April 2017, Slay will be out of office, and the next mayor and other political leaders will have to figure out how to move the massive project forward in a region that is divided and a state that doesn’t fund transit.