St. Louis has a wide variety of many [lose the word many] streets and highways, anything from small streets which never see any traffic to large highways which are constantly packed with cars.  Many of these large roads and highways need to have work done to them, weather [spelling] it be just patching up some potholes or major work such as widening the highway and adding lanes.  The city has decided that it would be a wise decision to try and get a lot of this work on the roads done by the year 2004. [give me some more background information here--how much will this cost?  who is going to pay for it?  who is receiving credit for it?  Mayor Harmon?  Alderman Fran Slay? when was the plan proposed and how?  is there a name for it?] I think that this is a wonderful idea and only hope that they can address all of the problems out there by 2004 if not sooner. [your opinion is irrelevant--lose the sentence--what specifically do you plan to explain in this paper--the various means by which the city will recreate the highway system?  the areas on which it will focus, and how?  be specific]

Many of the streets or roads in the county are in grave need of much repair work as soon as posible [spelling]. I have several friends who live down in the city [are you talking county or city here?  in the first sentence, you mentioned county, now you're talking city--do you mean driving from the county to the city?  clarify] and when I go down to their houses, I have to drive on a lot of roads that are full of potholes, dips, and all sorts of nice things I need to dodge around with my car as I drive down these streets [bit of a wordy sentence--lose half a dozen words or so].  Despite all of those bad things in the roads, I have seen a little improvement [run-on--split the sentence here] in the past few months to a year, there has been a lot of patching and filling of potholes, along with some repaving.  [are these normal repairs, or are they part of a greater road and bridge repair campaign?] On Broadway [insert a comma] down by Anheiser-Busch, for example [insert a comma] it used to be one of the worst roads I would [what?] on, but recently I have noticed a lot of improvement in the smoothness of the road.  [ground this in more concrete facts--all your evidence is experiential--how much money has the city spent?   are these city dollars or county dollars, or is the work being done in escrow split between the city and the county?] It is wonderful to see all the improvements they are making to the roads, [run-on sentence] it makes driving on them much easier. [bring closure by telling me why these particular repairs are significant to the project--feasibly, you could end every paragraph by writing that repairs makes driving on them easier, but that's sort of lame and bromidic]

There are also wonderful improvements being made out in the county to the roads and streets.  Take Telegraph [insert a comma--actually, this clause can be deleted--it's redundant] for example, in Oakville at Christopher Road and Telegraph, it [clarify the pronoun reference here--you mean Telegraph or Christopher] turnes [spelling--present tense or past?] into a much smaller two lane road, whereas before Christopher it was a large four lane and sometimes five lane road.  It was always packed with cars on this small two lane portion of the road [invert this clause--This small two-lane portion of the road was always...], especially during the morning and evening rush hour.  A few months ago the [they?--clarify the pronoun reference--it's ambiguous] began a project to widen Telegraph from two lanes up to four from Christopher down to where it ends in Arnold.  They are expecting to finish the project by the year 2000 or a little after, [run-on] I certinley [spelling] hope they make that goal.  I have to rutinley [spelling] drive that stretch of Telegraph, [lose the comma] since my dad lives off that road, and it is wonderful not being stuck in traffic the whole way down to his house and back.  Of course [insert a comma] it still it's [lose the contraction--awkward syntax, clarify] fair share of traffic jams during the morning and evening, but it has improved imensley [spelling] since they [who?] began this project.  [develop this idea--is this stretch of road indicative of a larger network of road repairs and development?  or is it unique?   why is this idea of county road repairs important to the thesis?]

When I go to see my friends that [who, not that] live in the city, I will usually drive on the highways [are city highways kept up by the city?  does the city pay for repairs up to the county line and then expect the county to repair the roads past that line?] to get there, [run-on] that way I do not have to deal with all the stop lights and there is less traffic to deal with [wordy--'with all the traffic or lights.']. Most of the time [insert a comma] it is also a lot easier to drive on the highway rather [lose the rather] than on the city streets, except when the highways are in bad shape and in need for [of, not for]some repair work.  On I-55 [insert a comma] for example, they [who?] just finished repaving a large portion of street near Broadway and Arsenal.  Before they did the work on the highway[insert a comma] that portion of the highway was full of potholes and extremely difficult to drive on.  Now that they have completed paving that stretch of highway[insert a comma] it is tremendosly [spelling] easier to drive. [that goes without saying--how long, usually, are the roads out of commission, or is traffic stalled to two lanes on a four lane while construction is going on?  how much of this construction is done at night, when there's less traffic on the roads?]   By now [no, not now] means is the work done, [run-on] there is still a lot that needs to be done, [run-on] hopefully [insert a comma] by the time much of the repair work is done [insert a comma] the highways in the city will be much more enjoyable to drive. [again, this is inadequate closure--it goes without saying that they will be--tell me the significance of this idea concerning city highways to the thesis]  

Many of the highways in the county are in fairly good condition and really do not need a lot of repair work done to them. [is that because they're driven on less, or is it because they were built later, and therefore better, in the first place?] The only work that really needed to be done was [at] a couple of intersections, such as I-55 and I-270 in South County.  [for instance, what was wrong with them?  aren't there other intersections about the county in need of repair or receiving it?] They were very difficult to drive [upon--why?] and even more confusing to figure out what exits to take and where these exits were at [what was the source of this confusion?].  They have just recently finished rebuilding that particular intersection and it makes it tremendosly easier to drive [on] [what, specifically, improves the drive?] .  They have also used the same basic design to redo the intersection at I-44 and I-270, a little further west of the previous intersection [ditto for this one?   what makes it easier? is it the fact that one doesn't have to worry about crashing into cars crossing over to 44 when one is crossing from 270 to Watson?  clarify].  This one had the same basic design as the first one and also had the same problem [which was?  this sentence might be redundant with the one that precedes it--integrate the idea it is trying to express in the earlier sentence or in the development of that earlier sentence and lose this one].  It has also now been rebuilt and is also much less confusing and easier to drive. [this one is definitely redundant--bring closure by telling me why this idea of the county highways generally being in good condition is important]

Since we live so close to a major river, bridges are a very important part of our highway system.  One of the major bridges undergoing many new renovations for the year 2004 is the Eads Bridge. [consolidate these two intro sentences into one sentence in about half the words--where is this bridge in relation to the downtown area?]  When the bridge was originally builtit [spelling] [what?] was solely for the purpose of the railroad, and [it] only had railroad tracks on it. [wasn't that all that was needed?  when was it originally built?] Recently [insert a comma] with the addition of metrolink [isn't Metrolink capitalized?] to our city, they [who?] have added sets of metrolink [isn't Metrolink capitalized?] tracks in the lower parts of the bridge.  Hopefully [insert a comma] by the year 2004 [insert a comma] they [who?] are planning to have transformed the top surface of the bridge from the old tracks to pavement open to the public for daily use.  [is this going to be for automobile, bicycle or pedestrian traffic?]  The addition of another bridge to our system of highways should make the daily traffic jams much more tolerable to the average commuter,[run-on]  it should also help to lighten the load for the other bridges in the city. [see, this is decent closure--find a way to consolidate this concluding sentence into 2/3rds the words and lose the run-on]

One of the main bridges in the county is on Telegraph Road over the Meremac River.[what's the name of this bridge?  when was it originally built?   specifically where on Telegraphic is it--between what intersections?]   Before they [who?] rebuilt this entire bridge it was very old and litterally [spelling] falling apart.  [and "they" would still allow traffic on it?] My mother would often refuse to even drive over this bridge, [lose the comma] unless there was no way around it. [what was the traffic like on it at the time she was driving over it?  obviously, there were other ways around it]  Then [insert a comma] about a year or two ago[insert a comma--be specific--when did construction take place?   how much did they cost?  who funded it?] they [who?] began to build an entire new bridge right next to the old one [did they tear down the old one?  why not just repair the old one?].  They finished it a while ago and it is wonderful. [how so?  describe it]   My mother will drive over this one with no problem at all, [run-on] it make[s] traveling down Telegraph much less frighting [spelling] when driving over the river. [bring closure--why is this idea of fixing this bridge problem in particular important to the thesis?]

Some of the roads and highways of the St. Louis area are going to be undergoing many changes over the next few years.  During the construction[insert a comma] it may be bad to drive [upon] them, maybe even worse than it was before they began work on the bridge[eh?   bring closure by telling me the impact that this construction is having on St. Louis area--develop it considerably more than you have already].  We just have to keep in mind all the improvements that have already been made [why?  will this improve our appreciation of traffic? of roads and bridges? of municipal government?], and remember [we can't remember the future--we can't even reflect on it--we can only look forward to it and build expectations, however idealistic or realistic those may be] how much better it will be when they are finished with them.